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Warhammer Fantasy: Divided Loyalties - an Advisor's Quest

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DragonParadox said:
There are two ways to get around that just off the top of my head, pay a priest of Heinrich, elves of high station are obscenely rich by human standards, or if you are feeling like allying with the local corsairs capture an entire village and threaten the local priest that if he does not cast you will start blowing up his friends and family one at a time. Any Archmage wishing to study the phenomenon over the literal millennia they would have had, even with the Ban on the Old World, would have had a plethora of options, there are after all humans everywhere.
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For the first: There is no amount of money to buy that.

For the second:
Capturing a priests friends certainly gets him praying.

The resulting intervention will be unfriendly and rather fatal though.
 
Derpmind said:
What Archmage would swallow their pride for such a study?
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Most of them. I mean it's not like it would be any sort of admission that humans are as good as elves or anything. An arch mage might study how Salamanders spit fire as an arcane curiosity too, but just because they have organs an elf does not to do that does not mean they are in some way superior.
 
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Mopman43 said:
There's humans everywhere, but being fully accurate, the only place we know that has humans doing the whole "priests casting spells with their gods" thing is the Old World. And Nehekhara, maybe, though they've also been dead for 3,500 years.

That's probably more from lack of sources than anything else, but all the same. As one example, I don't think we even know what deities are worshipped in Araby, let alone if they have priests casting spells like the Old World does.

If Boney is using the new Cathay lore, then they would not be any help at all, given they don't seem to have any gods present.
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We know the god that Araby worshipped in older editions. The One. I made my opinion on that clear before I think, and it changed in newer editions anyway. Still don't know what they worship. If they're following history, probably natural phenomenon like the sun, moon, wind, storms etc.
 
LightLan said:
For the first: There is no amount of money to buy that.

For the second:
Capturing a priests friends certainly gets him praying.

The resulting intervention will be unfriendly and rather fatal though.
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All archmages are battle mages, not all priests are. For that matter just kidnap a priestess of Shaylla, they have no offensive magic, unless you happen to be a servant of Nurgle.

This is getting way too much into the weeds at this point. I think I have made my position clear, i do not wan to belabor the hypotheticals.
 
Note that in that quote by Teclis makes sense if he thinks that the gods are the Winds of the Aethyr, just as the Winds of Magic are the Winds of the Material World. Note he says the Aethyr's Winds, which the plain reading of means the winds inside the Aethyr.

That lines up with other descriptions as gods as vortices or currents within the Aethyr.

This is not Teclis saying that divine magic uses the Winds of Magic. If he was saying that, he'd have said Winds of Magic not the Aethyr's Winds, as the Winds of Magic are not in the Arthyr. They're the reaction between the material of the Aethyr and the material world.

What Teclis is disputing is that the gods consciously shape the miracles their priests perform, he's saying that priests take their gods' energy and shape it themselves based on their expectations of what their god would do.
 
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DragonParadox said:
All archmages are battle mages, not all priests are. For that matter just kidnap a priestess of Shaylla, they have no offensive magic, unless you happen to be a servant of Nurgle.

This is getting way too much into the weeds at this point. I think I have made my position clear, i do not wan to belabor the hypotheticals.
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I don't think they're talking about the Priest's power. If an Archmage is starting to do something like that, then it seems like a God might feel the need to do some smiting.
 
Codex said:
I don't think they're talking about the Priest's power. If an Archmage is starting to do something like that, then it seems like a God might feel the need to do some smiting.
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Shaylla would not though, she is a pacifist fundamentally, she would just grant the healing spell or whatever, give the elf their answers and move on. More broadly though I do not think it is easy for a god to do that sort of direct intervention and I question if this would be worth it. When bestmen/greenskins vanish whole villages you do not hear about the hammer of Sigmar personally crushing the interlopers.
 
DragonParadox said:
Shaylla would not though, she is a pacifist fundamentally, she would just grant the healing spell or whatever, give the elf their answers and move on. More broadly though I do not think it is easy for a god to do that sort of direct intervention and I question if this would be worth it. When bestmen/greenskins vanish whole villages you do not hear about the hammer of Sigmar personally crushing the interlopers.
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No god is a pacifist, and Shallya doesn't have to follow her own rules:
Boney said:
There are no pacifist Gods. Ranald frowns on unnecessary violence. Shallya says not to kill except in self-defence. Neither argue that society as a whole should foreswear violence, and both will absolutely kill someone who foreswear their vows badly enough.
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Boney said:
Shallya is not bound by the tenets of the Cult of Shallya.
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Shallya can and almost certainly killed someone before.
 
Codex said:
"These 'miracles' that your Human priests believe to be demonstrations of the direct intervention of Gods are just spells of another kind. Aethyrically sensitive priests channel quite unwittingly elements of the Aethyr's Winds through convoluted rituals and great faith, and then shape it with their conscious and subconscious expectations. Just as the Gods themselves are created and shaped by mortal endeavours and expectations, so are their blessings." —ascribed to a lecture by Loremaster Teclis himself
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Maybe it's me who isn't very fast minded, but what is wrong in that lecture? The gods are in the Warp (where magic come from) and shaped by the mortals' thoughts. Not all priests can cast divine magic, why would it be so outlandish for that being linked to the ability to use magic at all?

Codex said:
I don't think they're talking about the Priest's power. If an Archmage is starting to do something like that, then it seems like a God might feel the need to do some smiting.
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Are the gods that interventionist?
 
Codex said:
No god is a pacifist, and Shallya doesn't have to follow her own rules:


Shallya can and almost certainly killed someone before.
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OK, but it's still not addressing his point. In 6000 years someone would have managed to get a priest to cast under observation, if it's through threat, friendship or money does not matter.
 
K von Carstein said:
Maybe it's me who isn't very fast minded, but what is wrong in that lecture? The gods are in the Warp (where magic come from) and shaped by the mortals' thoughts. Not all priests can cast divine magic, why would it be so outlandish for that being linked to the ability to use magic at all?


Are the gods that interventionist?
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Maybe you should ask Boney then, who has made it a point over the last thousands of pages that what Teclis was saying doesn't explain how it works and everyone in the Colleges knows that.

And the gods are that interventionist when it suits them. If an Archmage started poking at them and their nature, they might feel the need to do something themselves. Boney has made it clear that the gods don't hesitate to smite when needed.
 
DragonParadox said:
To be entirely fair it is probably closer to 4000 years. It took a while for humans to be noticed by dwarfs and elves.
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4000 years ago they left the Old World and got embroiled in war with the Druchii. It was only around Bel Khordaris' reign that they actually settled down and weren't assaulted every friday. That was around 2500 years ago.
 
Codex said:
4000 years ago they left the Old World and got embroiled in war with the Druchii. It was only around Bel Khordaris' reign that they actually settled down and weren't assaulted every friday. That was around 2500 years ago.
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The old world does not hold the entirety of humanity, I think the exceptionalism of Old World humans seems to me to be more an artifact of where the narrative focus was than anything of the setting proper.
 
Codex said:
And the gods are that interventionist when it suits them. If an Archmage started poking at them and their nature, they might feel the need to do something themselves. Boney has made it clear that the gods don't hesitate to smite when needed.
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Just to clarify some things, gods can't smite themselves, they need a medium (priest) to do through, right? And priests can have mistcasts and their spells dispelled like any other magic user? Right? So at some point if would work.
 
Tobtorp said:
Just to clarify some things, gods can't smite themselves, they need a medium (priest) to do through, right? And priests can have mistcasts and their spells dispelled like any other magic user? Right? So at some point if would work.
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We have seen gods act directly in the quest like that time Stormfells killed Wolf the Priest. I question of the gods would go on killing spree of Asur mages trying to do basic research an not beastmen, greenskins etc...
 
Tobtorp said:
Just to clarify some things, gods can't smite themselves, they need a medium (priest) to do through, right? And priests can have mistcasts and their spells dispelled like any other magic user? Right? So at some point if would work.
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Feel free to peruse Boney's use of the word smite when attached to gods and how often he brings priests into the equation:
Boney said:
Sometimes godly artefacts have punishment for misuse built in. Sometimes they don't, and the God does the smiting directly. And sometimes divine displeasure takes the form of a very angry Throng lead by a very angry Runelord tearing down everything you've ever built.

In any case, it seems like a strange argument to get invested in. I haven't seen any indication that there's anything like a majority pushing for Mathilde to embrace the dark side of the Force.
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Boney said:
Hotly, but quietly debated. The Gods get tetchy if you suggest they don't have free will, and they tend to see smiting as a perfectly valid demonstration of how free their will is.
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Boney said:
Religious sophistry does not go super great in a setting where the Gods are willing and able to dole out corrective smitings.
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Codex said:
I know, but this is his city. It's the City of the White Wolf, on the mountain known as the Ulricsberg which Ulric is said to have smashed flat so that Mitgard, latter Middenheim could be built on it, and where his sacred flame and the center of his cult is. If any place was to consider its defences from a religous perspective, then it would be that city. The fact that they took the pragmatic view simply shows that Ulric prioritises survival, because otherwise, he would just show his displeasure. It's His city after all.
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Your forgetting that the Elector Counts and the Ar-Ulric have come in to conflict before and that for a good long time the Ar-Ulric was not even based in the city. The Counts of Middenland rule more then just followers of Ulric and they have the final say in how the city is run and if they want cannons on the Walls they will get cannons on to the Wall.
 
Stewart9 said:
Your forgetting that the Elector Counts and the Ar-Ulric have come in to conflict before and that for a good long time the Ar-Ulric was not even based in the city. The Counts of Middenland rule more then just followers of Ulric and they have the final say in how the city is run and if they want cannons on the Walls they will get cannons on to the Wall.
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The Cult of Ulric and the Duke of Middenheim have had arguments. Those arguments were political, not theological. Even when the Cult wasn't in there, the city was still Ulrican and the Duke was still Ulrican and the Flame remained in there and Ulric could have burnt the entire city down if he wanted to by making the fire hot enough. The city has been under Ulrican influence for a thousand years since 1547. Cannons didn't exist until around the 2000s IC in the Empire when gunpowder was first introduced.

There are dozens of reasons I could reach to to prove to you that Ulric not liking the way the city is run would get a response. If this doesn't suffice, then I'm too tired to continue.
 
Codex said:
The Cult of Ulric and the Duke of Middenheim have had arguments. Those arguments were political, not theological. Even when the Cult wasn't in there, the city was still Ulrican and the Duke was still Ulrican and the Flame remained in there and Ulric could have burnt the entire city down if he wanted to by making the fire hot enough. The city has been under Ulrican influence for a thousand years since 1547. Cannons didn't exist until around the 2000s IC in the Empire when gunpowder was first introduced.

There are dozens of reasons I could reach to to prove to you that Ulric not liking the way the city is run would get a response. If this doesn't suffice, then I'm too tired to continue.
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I not saying The White Wolf could not make his displeasure known if he was upset about something, I am simply saying that the Elector Counts have ways to justify using cannons in the city's defenses and one is that they are normally lay Followers of Ulric and thus them putting cannons on the walls is not something the At-Ulric or Ulric himself consider a problem. It's just like how some Taalites wear metal armor and don't get a smiting from the Lord of the Wilds. Those who dedicate themselves to one of the Gods as a Templar are expected to follow their rules to the letter unlike everyone else is what I am getting at.
 
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Codex said:
Then there are the new effects. Badwill, Bonesetter, Fetterfetch, Stout Spirit and Godspakt. I like them, and I especially like Gospakt. The only weird thing to me is that a lot of the "moving through the Hedge" stuff isn't a thing for some reason. Part the Branches, Ousting, Sightstep, Myrkride and Hedgewalk aren't there. Feels like the spirit walking part just doesn't exist, they only interact with spirits like the Hag Witches do.
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I feel like part of that is that 4ed is really doubling down on something that WFRP was always a bit better at than most other RPGs.

that all their Careers play a community role or niche. (or are a social nuisance or result of community in the case of witches, charlatans, flaggerents, beggers etc.)

if you fill a npc village with a roll of a dice, you will 9/10 have a functioning community that have the skill sets to survive on its own or through trade and services.

that is actually an impressive thing.

but that does mean that between the Hedgewises 'Moving through the Hedge stuff' and their 'spiritualist stuff', the spiritualist stuff plays more into their community niche as 'the cheaper but less accepted weird stuff solvers' in the game.

and so is the thing 4ed is more interested in.

edit: yes, im trying to move topics.
 
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