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Warhammer Fantasy: Divided Loyalties - an Advisor's Quest

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The real problem with this entire argument is that people are trying to make Bretonnia functional, but Bretonnia doesn't need to be functional, it is a nation in Warhammer.
If it was functional while all of its neighbors remained the same shambling wrecks they usually are, nothing would make sense.

In point of fact that is one of the biggest problems with Bretonnia, in that they are either almost too dysfunctional to exist or almost too functional to not rule the Old World depending on what take on them you use.
 
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065tdsa said:
The real problem with this entire argument is that people are trying to make Bretonnia functional, but Bretonnia doesn't need to be functional, it is a nation in Warhammer.
If it was functional while all of its neighbors remained the same shambling wrecks they usually are, nothing would make sense.
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Define functional.
Empire may be dysfunctional mess, but it is not literally impossible.
Bretonnia, in many of its worst depictions, could not exist longer than a generation without starving or burning down, even with divinely backed warrior elite.
 
Valmond said:
Define functional.
Empire may be dysfunctional mess, but it is not literally impossible.
Bretonnia, in many of its worst depictions, could not exist longer than a generation without starving or burning down, even with divinely backed warrior elite.
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Sure, except Fully Functional Bretonnia has the opposite problem, it would casually eclipse the Empire and everybody else except the elder races.

People seriously underestimate how much of a game changer it would be to consistently have good governance enforced by a patron goddess as well as an ever replenishing blessed warrior elite that is forbidden from ossifying. Oh, and extremely good magic.
 
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Codex said:
I understand that, but the three peasant factoid isn't a central part of Bretonnia that would require a full rewrite. I fully understand rationalising away certain things, but things like this don't need to be taken as gospel either. Boney's explanation of how he would do the Dark Elves was that everything would be toned down in his quest if he portrayed them, and the three peasant thing can easily be handwaved away as him toning down the grimdark by just not having that factoid be a thing.

It's not a must-have fact of the setting.
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No, it's not. But people often prefer to keep little things like that from canon, even if they can be handwaved away. It's not wrong to go "hey this fact is canon, let's have it make sense" just because it can be gotten rid of.
 
Since peasants becoming knights is being discussed: It's ambiguous how canon it is, but in "The Peasant Knight", a recently released short story about Bretonnia on Total War Access, a Bretonnian lord returns from their quest in silence and refuses to help protect his lands from goblins. One of the peasants then drives off the goblins, heads to the lord's manor and discovers that the lord is some sort of nurglite. The peasant then is asked by the Lady to kill him, complies, and is given the grail.
 
On another topic, I added this to the Character list:
Codex said:
Wolf the Familiar: Mathilde's familiar, who gives her Magic Power and shares mental faculties with her. A Large wolf with a collar of Move who can speak the language of magic. A Very Good Boy.
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Codex said:
Ranald: God of Luck, Trickery, Freedom from Oppression and Thievery. Mathilde's oldest and most annoying friend. Shallya's paramour. Parent of two children.

Shallya: Goddess of Mercy. Ranald's paramour. Mother of two children.

Ranald and Shallya's Daughter 1: Looks like Her father with a hint of Her mother.

Ranald and Shallya's Daughter 2: Looks like Her mother with hints of Her father.
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I want the character list to be a focus on characters, rather than the more ephemeral gods, but I felt it was important to at least acknowledge them. I also never put Wolf in the list for some reason. Wolf is in Karak Eight Peaks section, Ranald, Shallya and their children are in Miscellaneous.
 
The solution to the demographic inconsistencies is obvious: The Lady of the Lake is secretly a space lizard and the nobility is actually a stock of genetically engineered warriors who are created en masse from fourteen standard genotypes, each tweaked to observe the deviations and find the ones improving on the originals.

Grail Knights who "succeed" in their quests are actually failures space lizards decide not to bother with and leave on the planet after brainwashing them in a lab and installing a couple more obsolete cyber mods to perpetuate the legend, while the rest of questing knights are divided in two categories: the ones who fail hard enough they die, and the ones who succeed enough in killing nasties space lizards kidnap them to fight in their space wars.

There, how is that for lore interpretation.
 
picklepikkl said:
Now, granted, it is possible that we go full "Lady-backed eugenics" and the way they cheat is "through magical blessings their nobles have a far higher rate of reproduction than historical parallels did," but if we're already leaning into the notion that the story Bretonnia tells itself about itself is held together via polite fictions, then "social technology for quietly smuggling ringers into the aristocracy" feels like a better solution to me.
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One thing I imagine is common for Bretonnian nobility is that their infancy survival rates must be far higher than say, the Empire or Kislev. Where a family in Kislev might have six kids and only two survive to adulthood, a family in Bretonnia might have five kids and all survive to adulthood. If three of those are boys and two girls, if one girl gets married off and one becomes a Damsel and two boys go off as errant knights, then you've just about got the one kid left to marry elsewhere and have another five kids. And maybe he has only one daughter and four sons, but all five kids go off on errantry, leaving him to leave his demesne to his brother's bastard, who just so coincidentally was born on a peasant girl...

Which segues into my other thought, which is that between errantry and questing knights and the fact that there's at least three destroyed Duchies in Bretonnia, lapsed noble bloodlines are actually not that rare and therefore rather easy to fabricate. I imagine there are a lot of 'rediscovered' bloodlines where suddenly the family tree dips into Mousillon, Cuileux or Glanborielle.
 
Raiseth said:
The solution to the demographic inconsistencies is obvious: The Lady of the Lake is secretly a space lizard and the nobility is actually a stock of genetically engineered warriors who are created en masse from fourteen standard genotypes, each tweaked to observe the deviations and find the ones improving on the originals.

Grail Knights who "succeed" in their quests are actually failures space lizards decide not to bother with and leave on the planet after brainwashing them in a lab and installing a couple more obsolete cyber mods to perpetuate the legend, while the rest of questing knights are divided in two categories: the ones who fail hard enough they die, and the ones who succeed enough in killing nasties space lizards kidnap them to fight in their space wars.

There, how is that for lore interpretation.
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Space Lizards...? Wait what are the Slann doing in the old world and why are they so awake? :V
 
Droman said:
Which segues into my other thought, which is that between errantry and questing knights and the fact that there's at least three destroyed Duchies in Bretonnia, lapsed noble bloodlines are actually not that rare and therefore rather easy to fabricate.
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Mousillon technically isn't destroyed. It's still there, it just has no Duke and the best parts were cannibalised by Lyonesse. Also, Cuileux and Glanborielle are technically destroyed Duchies, but they were destroyed before the Twelve Great Battles and Gilles united the Bretonni, so it's difficult to say if they were ever really part of "Bretonnia".

However, there is this adventure hook from Page 16 of Knights of the Grail:

"The knights of Cuileux all died in their last battle, but some had children at home, and the arrival of the armies of Brionne and Quenelles meant that the Orcs had no chance to wipe them out. Thus, descendants of the Cuileux army still live in Bretonnia. It is possible that a village has maintained a tradition of marrying only among the descendants of those knights, and since Bretonnian kings through the ages have paid tribute to the sacrifice of the noble knights of Cuileux, that means that those peasants are all, legally, nobles. A player character from the village might have an interest in proving this to the courts of Bretonnia."

And from Page 91:

"A peasant from Cuileux is circulating through the countryside, claiming to be the true heir of the last Duke of Cuileux. The nobility are treating him as a bandit and revolutionary, but he is acting more like a Faceless and winning the support of the peasantry. The adventurers have contacts in Quenelles and get caught up in the problem. The man may well be a fraud, and even if he is genuine, he might not have the best interests of the country at heart."

Both are adventure hooks, so how they're implemented and even if they're implemented is entirely up to the given GM.
 
Droman said:
Nothing on Glanborielle, @Codex?
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Cuileux is mentioned 28 times in the book, Glanborielle only 4 times. Glanborielle, unlike Cuileux, was completely wiped out by the Orcs. All that's left of them is the many forts in their former territory which are currently occupied by Carcassonne. Many of these forts are haunted.

There is this adventure hook from Page 66 in Carcassonne:

"Summersfall Fort is a medium-size hill fort in east of Carcassonne. It is famous for being definitely haunted. If a small group of people spends the night of the last day of summer within the walls of the fort, they encounter the Ghost of the Glanborien noble who once lived here. He asks them to perform a task, which always involves fighting against Orcs. If they refuse, his ghostly warriors rise up from the ground and attack them. If they accept, they are safe unless they give up, in which case the warriors attack them, wherever they are.

The noble's ghost seems to know a lot about where there are Orcs, and a few particularly brave "shepherds" have visited the Fort on more than one occasion. These hardy souls say that the tasks get steadily harder, as if the noble is testing the volunteers. They suspect that he has some great task in mind, but if he has, no one has yet completed enough tests to learn what it is."
 
065tdsa said:
Sure, except Fully Functional Bretonnia has the opposite problem, it would casually eclipse the Empire and everybody else except the elder races.

People seriously underestimate how much of a game changer it would be to consistently have good governance enforced by a patron goddess as well as an ever replenishing blessed warrior elite that is forbidden from ossifying. Oh, and extremely good magic.
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They have relatively stable governance enforced by the Lady, but I strongly disagree if you think enforcing a feudal system barely held together by sheer good intentions from the majority of their rulers, that is noted to face regular peasant revolts, is "good" governance.

And of course, the ever-replenishing warrior elite is being spent just as fast, with divinely-mandated handicaps severely restricting their tactics and ranged weaponry.

You say they'd eclipse the Empire? They're a peer power that is going to fall further and further behind as the state-of-the-art in Imperial weapons technology - and limited industrialisation, such as it is without fossil fuels - advances.
 
Chopak said:
I think it's a literal translation of "Beyond". The fact that this literal translation does not work at all is not something that has stopped GW before.


OK, maybe this requires a bit of longer explanation on my part :) As a Polish, I can only analyse it from the polish perspective. Maybe it makes more sense in russian or bulgarian.
Warhammer wiki states that Za is not a word for Chaos itself, but rather for the Chaos Realm, Aethyr. And it's supposed to mean "From beyond". Now, while "za" is a correct (in some uses) translation of "beyond", it is not a correct translation of "from beyond". It would be "spoza" or "zza" (I think in russian it's "из-за" - "iz-za") . Maybe GW chose "za" as a common part of polish and russian translation? But there's more...
English is a very flexible language, you can verb almost any noun (see how I just used "verb" even tough it's a noun? :) ) and noun verbs, adjectives and so on.. so while in english, calling the Chaos Realm "From Beyond", "Beyond", or something like that works, in polish it just does not. We do sometimes turn adjectives or adpositions into nouns, but very rarely it's done directly. Moreover, now that bit is my personal feeling, we have very few such short nouns and so they feel weird and unnatural. Like it's a foreign name. So personally, I feel it should almost never be called simply "Za", but rather "Ląd Poza", "Kraina Zza" or maybe "Zakraina" (I actualy like that one).
Now, one could argue, that ages ago, it was indeed called "Kraina Zza", which then due to language drift was shortened to "Za" and then extended to all of Chaos. But I don't buy that.
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Interesting. In southern slavic languages the term used is called "iza", meaning beyond or behind.

Honestly, when "Za" was being used, I thought it was inspired by "zao", meaning the "evil one"...
 
Deathbybunnies said:
They have relatively stable governance enforced by the Lady, but I strongly disagree if you think enforcing a feudal system barely held together by sheer good intentions from the majority of their rulers, that is noted to face regular peasant revolts, is "good" governance.

And of course, the ever-replenishing warrior elite is being spent just as fast, with divinely-mandated handicaps severely restricting their tactics and ranged weaponry.

You say they'd eclipse the Empire? They're a peer power that is going to fall further and further behind as the state-of-the-art in Imperial weapons technology - and limited industrialisation, such as it is without fossil fuels - advances.
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Stability is extremely good, however. Everyone else doesn't have it and manage to maintain their borders, so Bretonnia should if anything be constantly growing through the great power of not regularly shooting themselves in the foot every century. Peasant revolts are no threat when everybody can be counted on to dutifully suppress them as they appear, and when there's a huge pipeline that takes all sufficiently martially capable peasants into the nobility.

The ever replenishing warrior elite isn't actually much more heavily restricted than everyone else, since they can always have someone who is not them do other battlefield roles. And their blessings do make them that much better at their own role.

And yes, they'd 100% eclipse the empire, simply by being a peer power that is that powerful at all times, as opposed to the empire only being able to use its full power once in a blue moon.
 
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065tdsa said:
Stability is extremely good, however. Everyone else doesn't have it and manage to maintain their borders, so Bretonnia should if anything be constantly growing through the great power of not regularly shooting themselves in the foot every century. Peasant revolts are no threat when everybody can be counted on to dutifully suppress them as they appear. The ever replenishing warrior elite isn't actually much more heavily restricted than everyone else, since they can always have someone who is not them do other battlefield roles. And their blessings do make them that much better at their own role.

And yes, they'd 100% eclipse the empire, simply by being a peer power that is that powerful at all times, as opposed to the empire only being able to use its full power once in a blue moon.
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Bretonnia has no gunpowder (except very primitive for navy), mediocre infantry and archers and limited magic albeit with good casters. On the administrative side the Lady isn't noted for giving blessings on administration - the utmost uppermost tier (King and some dukes) are selfless Grail Knights... that don't necessarily know how to balance a checkbook and probably don't have much clue on agricultural matters either.

Bretonnia's system is good at making high martial, high piety and probably not too terrible at diplomacy warrior elite. Economy? Intrigue? Learning? Zilch. Complex, sophisticated army? Nope, cavalry all the way with some bottom tier peasant levies. Laws and administration? Very narrow competence. Magic? Pretty narrow competence.

Bretonnia is a one trick pony not the next best thing to Ulthuan.
 
Zero Gravitas said:
Bretonnia has no gunpowder (except very primitive for navy), mediocre infantry and archers and limited magic albeit with good casters. On the administrative side the Lady isn't noted for giving blessings on administration - the utmost uppermost tier (King and some dukes) are selfless Grail Knights... that don't necessarily know how to balance a checkbook and probably don't have much clue on agricultural matters either.

Bretonnia's system is good at making high martial, high piety and probably not too terrible at diplomacy warrior elite. Economy? Intrigue? Learning? Zilch. Complex, sophisticated army? Nope, cavalry all the way with some bottom tier peasant levies. Laws and administration? Very narrow competence. Magic? Pretty narrow competence.

Bretonnia is a one trick pony not the next best thing to Ulthuan.
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Well first of all Bretonnia has multi-wind casters, that is not 'pretty narrow competence' its 'they may be superhuman, because humans aren't supposed to be able to do that'.

Second, nobody else has any economic blessings or boosts either so Bretonnia is not inherently any more incompetent at administration or diplomacy than everyone else. Cultural factors mean they de-emphasize it, but those same cultural factors mean less stealing and a lot less frivolous expenditure and random dickery. So it all balances out. A legal system where the people who judge know immediate divine consequences will hit them if they heavily abuse this power is one that can make do.

Their infantry isn't much more mediocre than that of other human countries, though admittedly their ranged attack suffers.
 
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Bretonnia procudes individual heroes, chivalric knights, champions.
But it does not produce armies.
And in the end, armies with logistic chains, cannons, and firing lines, trump heroes when it comes to warfare.
 
065tdsa said:
Well first of all Bretonnia has multi-wind casters, that is not 'pretty narrow competence' its 'they may or may not be post-human, because humans cannot do that'.

Second, nobody else has any economic blessings or boosts either so Bretonnia is not inherently any more incompetent at administration or diplomacy than everyone else. Cultural factors mean they de-emphasize it, but those same cultural factors mean less stealing and a lot less frivolous expenditure and random dickery. So it all balances out.

Their infantry isn't much more mediocre than that of other human countries, though admittedly their ranged attack suffers.
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No, the other countries whose leaders get training in stewardship and intrigue from a young age are more competent at those things than FightGood McMonofocused who is also chained to a particularly archaic system of government by divine mandate.

The Damsels are cool, but they're propping up the current system of government, not running the show.

And I'm pretty sure their infantry is notably mediocre, too? It's vastly peasant levies, with some squires and knights who can't afford horses thrown in.
 
065tdsa said:
Well first of all Bretonnia has multi-wind casters, that is not 'pretty narrow competence' its 'they may be superhuman, because humans aren't supposed to be able to do that'.

Second, nobody else has any economic blessings or boosts either so Bretonnia is not inherently any more incompetent at administration or diplomacy than everyone else. Cultural factors mean they de-emphasize it, but those same cultural factors mean less stealing and a lot less frivolous expenditure and random dickery. So it all balances out. A legal system where the people who judge know immediate divine consequences will hit them if they heavily abuse this power is one that can make do.

Their infantry isn't much more mediocre than that of other human countries, though admittedly their ranged attack suffers.
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Damsels are not in fact multi wind casters.
 
Deathbybunnies said:
No, the other countries whose leaders get training in stewardship and intrigue from a young age are more competent at those things than FightGood McMonofocused who is also chained to a particularly archaic system of government by divine mandate.
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Except nothing enforces that they get this training, let alone succeed at it. Indeed you'd expect them to be about as good as the IRL noble class, which is to say you'd expect them to be very bad because the IRL noble class was bad at all these things. At least the Bretonnians have one thing that they must be good at.
notbirdofprey said:
Medieval nobles.

No frivolous expenses.

Choose one.
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Except, frivolous expenses IRL were done to enhance your status in the eyes of your peers, but expensive stuff doesn't enhance your status in a society which is all about piety and martial feats, it just makes you look weak and foreign. The things that enhance your status are raw skill at arms and visible divine favor in the form of either blessings or Damsels.
Valmond said:
Bretonnia procudes individual heroes, chivalric knights, champions.
But it does not produce armies.
And in the end, armies with logistic chains, cannons, and firing lines, trump heroes when it comes to warfare.
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Except, it does produce armies, it produces enough armies to fend off all enemies, and send out a big old Errantry War every now and then when the surplus piles up. And such a surplus is actually rather rare, compared to all other countries since they are extremely likely to start killing each other and make the number go down before it ever gets to that point.
 
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