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Warhammer Fantasy: Divided Loyalties - an Advisor's Quest

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Boney said:
If Mathilde had prayed to Taal for help against the Cultist, then Taal's intervention would have been responding to her prayer and thanks would have been due. If Mathilde had been facing a foe that Taal had no strong opinions on, then Taal's intervention would have been solely to Mathilde's benefit and thanks would have been due. But Taal's intervention here was unasked for and to Taal's benefit, so no thanks are required. In this case, all Mathilde owed to Taal was doing her best to defeat Taal's enemy, which she did. She could give thanks anyway if Mathilde wanted to seek a deeper relationship with Taal, but she's already got a patron God.

The same would presumably apply to the other Gods who intervened, the identities of whom you are only assuming you know. There are other militant Gods with canine associations who might like to foil Slaanesh.
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is it possible or advisable to have multiple patron order gods?
 
Woltaire said:
is it possible or advisable to have multiple patron order gods?
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There's a few combinations that can work: Taal and Rhya, Hekarti and Atharti, Ishernos, the Kislevite pantheon, the Celestial Dragon Emperor and the Moon Empress. And, of course, Gork and Mork, and Chaos Undivided. But just mix and matching outside of those doesn't really work. For laypeople it's not really effective to try to emulate two completely different archetypes at once, and for those seeking priesthood it's explicitly one or the other and trying to double-dip is heretical.
 
The combination of Ranald and either Shallya and/or His children might work. Mathilde is not very Shallya though, I think.
 
Boney said:
I'm going to shut the door shut on any further requests along these lines. I'm not comfortable with the idea of building a database of reasons for people to want the quest to end.
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Preface: It's your right to request this, and if this is a polite "stop asking", then please ignore the following.
But I'm gonna be honest, I really can't see any number of interesting answers make people want no more Divided Loyalties, especially since the answers would come eventually anyway. Like, I genuinely cannot imagine a single person would think "Man, I wish DL would end". Even with the promise of more BoneyQuest directly after the end, that end will never not have a melancholic note.
Boney said:
There's a few combinations that can work: Taal and Rhya, Hekarti and Atharti, Ishernos, the Kislevite pantheon, the Celestial Dragon Emperor and the Moon Empress. And, of course, Gork and Mork, and Chaos Undivided. But just mix and matching outside of those doesn't really work. For laypeople it's not really effective to try to emulate two completely different archetypes at once, and for those seeking priesthood it's explicitly one or the other and trying to double-dip is heretical.
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Shallya and Ranald?
 
Boney said:
There's a few combinations that can work: Taal and Rhya, Hekarti and Atharti, Ishernos, the Kislevite pantheon, the Celestial Dragon Emperor and the Moon Empress. And, of course, Gork and Mork, and Chaos Undivided. But just mix and matching outside of those doesn't really work. For laypeople it's not really effective to try to emulate two completely different archetypes at once, and for those seeking priesthood it's explicitly one or the other and trying to double-dip is heretical.
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Exception that proves the rule: Magnus The Pious.

If you get multiple incompatible gods to all back you at the same time you are a Big Deal for that alone.
 
Boney said:
There's a few combinations that can work: Taal and Rhya, Hekarti and Atharti, Ishernos, the Kislevite pantheon, the Celestial Dragon Emperor and the Moon Empress. And, of course, Gork and Mork, and Chaos Undivided. But just mix and matching outside of those doesn't really work. For laypeople it's not really effective to try to emulate two completely different archetypes at once, and for those seeking priesthood it's explicitly one or the other and trying to double-dip is heretical.
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When you say laypeople do you mean average person of empire(other than the exceptions above) or is it possible for exceptional people like Mathilde to have multiple patrons gods that are different archetypes?
 
Woltaire said:
When you say laypeople do you mean average person of empire(other than the exceptions above) or is it possible for exceptional people like Mathilde to have multiple patrons gods that are different archetypes?
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Problem is that we are so pro ranald that I'm wondering why we don't have a giant foam finger.

Edit: sorry, accidental quote...
 
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Boney said:
If Mathilde had prayed to Taal for help against the Cultist, then Taal's intervention would have been responding to her prayer and thanks would have been due. If Mathilde had been facing a foe that Taal had no strong opinions on, then Taal's intervention would have been solely to Mathilde's benefit and thanks would have been due. But Taal's intervention here was unasked for and to Taal's benefit, so no thanks are required. In this case, all Mathilde owed to Taal was doing her best to defeat Taal's enemy, which she did. She could give thanks anyway if Mathilde wanted to seek a deeper relationship with Taal, but she's already got a patron God.

The same would presumably apply to the other Gods who intervened, the identities of whom you are only assuming you know. There are other militant Gods with canine associations who might like to foil Slaanesh.
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To be fair, for many polytheistic societies it would be normal for someone who'd just accomplished something important to give thanks to multiple gods, just in case an unaccounted-for one had helped them, just to make sure they were square with any gods likely to be relevant and that none of them felt slighted.

But that doesn't mean that religion in the Warhammer Fantasy Empire works that way.
 
BurnNote said:
Preface: It's your right to request this, and if this is a polite "stop asking", then please ignore the following.
But I'm gonna be honest, I really can't see any number of interesting answers make people want no more Divided Loyalties, especially since the answers would come eventually anyway. Like, I genuinely cannot imagine a single person would think "Man, I wish DL would end". Even with the promise of more BoneyQuest directly after the end, that end will never not have a melancholic note.
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Some people are and have been only interested in a single aspect of this quest. And that's okay and I hold no ill will against those people, but I don't want those people to start openly wishing the quest would end so they could gain closure on the leftover questions from the part they did enjoy. I know most that might feel that way would be too polite to actually say it, but there are always going to be people in any group who can't or won't let politeness still their tongues.

Simon_Jester said:
To be fair, for many polytheistic societies it would be normal for someone who'd just accomplished something important to give thanks to multiple gods, just in case an unaccounted-for one had helped them, just to make sure they were square with any gods likely to be relevant and that none of them felt slighted.

But that doesn't mean that religion in the Warhammer Fantasy Empire works that way.
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The Gods in Warhammer tend to be rather less subtle than the ones that many polytheistic societies believed intervened on their behalfs. And hedging your bets by thanking Gods who might theoretically have intervened on your behalf is a dangerous line of thought to follow, because for pretty much any endeavour there's at least one of the Chaos Gods who might have had reason to back it. This would give a pretty good reason to be cautious about unknown intervention, in contrast to a lot of polytheistic society who reacted to exposure to new Gods by collecting them like pokemon - Rome especially was notorious for this, but for a while the Norse were making reversible amulets that was Thor's hammer on one side and a crucifix on the other.
 
Shard said:
The combination of Ranald and either Shallya and/or His children might work. Mathilde is not very Shallya though, I think.
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BurnNote said:
Shallya and Ranald?
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No. Are you protecting or are you healing? If you say "both in exactly equal proportions", you are actually betraying both, because instead of specializing in one and becoming as good at it as you can be, you're playing silly buggers and watering down the good you could be doing. The Gods are not autonomous favour-dispensing algorithms, they are extremely powerful thinking beings that can and will gently correct the misguided and smite the absolute shit out of sophists who think they've found One Weird Trick To Double Your Blessings, Priests Hate This.

Angelform said:
Exception that proves the rule: Magnus The Pious.

If you get multiple incompatible gods to all back you at the same time you are a Big Deal for that alone.
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Magnus was an extremely devout Sigmarite. The other Gods told their worshippers to stop trying to kill him and listen, because the alternative to uniting behind Magnus was the complete extinction of their worshippers. He was not a simultaneous worshipper of Sigmar, Taal, Ulric, and Manann.

Woltaire said:
is it possible for exceptional people like Mathilde to have multiple patrons gods that are different archetypes?
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No.
 
Let's see... According to the tried and tested statistics, it should take approximately fifteen more pages of pestering Boney before we run out of our new batch of Good Ideas™. I'll think about this and see if I can throw my own hat into the pile. It has been a while since we last discussed the subject of magic; specifically, the only good thing to come out of Nehekhara, besides Waifu.
 
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Boney said:
No. Are you protecting or are you healing? If you say "both in exactly equal proportions", you are actually betraying both, because instead of specializing in one and becoming as good at it as you can be, you're playing silly buggers and watering down the good you could be doing. The Gods are not autonomous favour-dispensing algorithms, they are extremely powerful thinking beings that can and will gently correct the misguided and smite the absolute shit out of sophists who think they've found One Weird Trick To Double Your Blessings, Priests Hate This.
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You're quite right. I think people are a bit slow to come around on this one because it's relatively easy to imagine, conceptually, a world in which there are multiple gods who will all reward you if you do well enough or are for some other reason greatly favored. The Greek pantheon would do this, sometimes, for instance.

Whereas the reality we've got in this setting is that any god will tend to expect their real worshippers to "give it their all," and expect a degree of mono-focused devotion that more or less precludes having more than occasional little sprinkles of acknowledgment for any of the others.

Though this is probably part of why we have endless rounds of trouble with (for example) asshole Sigmarites in the Empire who don't believe their other gods are, y'know, real or worthy of worship. Because when each god demands a high degree of mono-focus on their devotions, you get people who stop really even acknowledging the other gods, even on their own domain.

But this is me just rambling about the socio-theology of it all, not trying to come up with some clever way to double-dip blessings.
 
Lampshade said:
So, runesmith secrets, huh. For our next big Ranald reward, we could ask Him to forge adoption papers signed by Thungni.
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An excellent idea, but I don't think the Runesmiths would appreciate a Human Witch Dwarf Demigoddess Princess who is in a relationship with another woman and friends with the dirty knife-ears. Mostly because of the latter part. This, too, must be the doing of that perfidious Thorgrim. Since I will kill myself and then everyone else if we break up with Panoramia, that means we must assassinate Thorgrim.
 
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Boney said:
The Gods in Warhammer tend to be rather less subtle than the ones that many polytheistic societies believed intervened on their behalfs. And hedging your bets by thanking Gods who might theoretically have intervened on your behalf is a dangerous line of thought to follow, because for pretty much any endeavour there's at least one of the Chaos Gods who might have had reason to back it.
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Khorne doesn't want any punk-ass sorcerers for Everchosen. :V
 
Saidoro said:
I think the only one of those assumptions I actually made was 2, and even then not to the extent you're implying; I don't know that I'd expect every school to have a million spells for every imaginable task but the aqshy spellbook has like ten spells that can be summarized as "make a bunch of fire and put it over there where my enemy is", and while I'll admit this isn't a certainty, I don't really feel unsafe guessing the elves might have thirty of those and Teclis just picked the most consistently useful ones. 1 I explicitly disagreed with, listing a few different qualities that might be considered, and which different people would undoubtedly would weigh differently when evaluating spells. I'll grant I think that there will be some level of consensus between experts on which options are most useful in most cases given their balance of multiple desirable traits, but I don't expect it to be entirely objective or universal.

I'm honestly not even certain where you're getting the rest of those. Would you care to explain in more detail?
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Sure this is going to get spaghetti posty so I'm going to spoiler it all though.

Dark as Silver said:
  1. There is a single universal way to quantify how good a spell is.
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Really surprised that you think I need to make this more clear your entire post is about it.

Saidoro said:
As a consequence of that, the results of most human attempts at spellmaking aren't as good as the spells that Teclis taught even if they potentially are as good as the average elven spell in general.
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Saidoro said:
It could mean that there's a prevailing belief in the colleges that human made spells are less good in general and not worth the trouble to learn or make.
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I kinda get that you're talking about good as a abstraction of power, versatility and teachability. However that doesn't consider reliability, and if you added reliability to the list then I could another trait that you're missing, such as "Can I do this in a mundane way instead of relying on magic". You'll never come up a mix of every possible attribute so it will never be universal.
Secondly I think that a spell that creates a silent illusion and a spell that creates a fireball are not directly comparable so you wouldn't want to use the same definition of good for both. If I were to try and fix your definition, this means that one of your criteria 'versatility' is actually misleading as it's actually some average or sum of how good a spell is in every circumstance it can be applied. Instead power comes out of the definition altogether and instead becomes part of the situational judgement. You mentioned Asqy has like 10 different fire spells but you don't want to be standing next to a campfire you're trying to light if you only know the battlemagics.
Next, every wizard is going to have their own preferences in terms on what they like the balance to look like so it won't be universally agreed what is better than other spells. This can honestly go anyway and can even be systematic, e.g. Teclis needed to create the colleges and teach during war so he over valued teachability compared to the current era where you can have an uninterrupted apprenticeship. Or Teclis was a genius so he overestimated how teachable each spell was and the colleges would generally benefit by having reduced teachability. So even if we can quantify how 'good' a spell is, its still a personal judgement and subject to changing opinions and situations over time so its not universal.


Dark as Silver said:
  1. That the mages who are modifying spells are somehow unaware of the fact that previous mages where also doing this same thing. Or that they are incapable of critical thinking to observe these effects you are predicting.
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I could have probably ordered these points better as this follows better after assumptions of modifying. The issue that I am taking here is you are painting a picture of a future where the human mages are seemingly unaware that Teclis didn't teach them everything. Once they know that they can follow through with the same chain of logic that you have made and should come to the conclusion that the average elven spell is 'worse' than the average spell taught by Teclis and therefore although they don't know the difference it should make it apparent that human spell crafting is not as far behind as they might overwise appear.

Dark as Silver said:
  1. Its easier to modify a spell than create a new one and that modified spells retain the same level of 'good'. The only example I can think of for this modification is that LM who made MAP not wind specific, whereas we know Mathilde created 3 spells (2 of which where inspired by other spells)
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Perhaps you can clear this up however this:
Saidoro said:
It could mean that anyone going into spell creation with the plan of "I'll make an improved version of spell X by tweaking some of the details" quickly runs into the problem that all of the details have already been tweaked in very deliberate ways
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Seemed to imply that it would create a situation where all spells a Wizard knows are either Teclis taught or modified Teclisian spells. And that spell creation will become limited because the modified spells cannot be modified more.
If so the fact that modified spells are so apparently pervasive and that a mages first thought when it comes to making a new spell would be to modify one itself would be indicative that modifying spells is the best way to make spells.
I assumed because that was that it would preserve the level of 'good' but maybe you thought so for other reasons?

Dark as Silver said:
  1. That there is some inherent limit on how much a spells 'parameters' can be tweaked. And all spells can be tweaked within these parameters without reducing the level of 'good'.
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I'm less concerned about limits on modifying spells, I'm generally dubious that modification is at all a common strategy . However I probably wasn't giving you enough good faith here.

Dark as Silver said:
  1. That despite reaching a limit on how to modify spells it some still doesn't become more useful to make new spells.
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Saidoro said:
It could mean that anyone going into spell creation with the plan of "I'll make an improved version of spell X by tweaking some of the details" quickly runs into the problem that all of the details have already been tweaked in very deliberate ways
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Saidoro said:
It could mean that there's a prevailing belief in the colleges that human made spells are less good in general and not worth the trouble to learn or make. It could mean that people who try out spellmaking will tend to have their attempts seem clearly less useful than the spells around them, leading to discouragement from the process.
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Look people don't make spells for the hell of it. They do it because they have a problem that needs solving. This is part of the incomparability problem that I mentioned when dicussing the concept of a "good" spell.
If I need to do A, I do not care if another spell exists which is more powerful, more teachable and can do B and C. I would still value the creation of a new spell that does A even if it weaker, less teachable and less versatile because its the only way I can get A done.
This is why Ashqy has that wound searing healing spell even though there are better healing spells in other lores. Bright Wizards cannot access those, the shitty cauterisation spell is the only one they have so they give it value.

Even if I granted that modifying a spell generally gives better results, if it literally cannot make the spell you want, then you just make a new spell whole cloth and its immediately better at solving A than all the other spells that cannot solve A at all.

Dark as Silver said:
  1. That wizards interested in creating new spells are interested in reinventing the wheel rather than creating new spells for problems which Teclis didn't think he had the time to teach.
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This is a lot like the above except instead of discussing the utility of inventing new spells to solve new problems its about changing old spells to fix old problems.
It just doesn't seem to be something that wizards do often.

This bit is all supposition but honestly it might be something that Elves did more commonly than humans. As human mages develop personalised masteries it means that their spells are generally somewhat personalised, whereas Elves see a mastery as just incorrectly casting an already optimised spell so they have something of a greater demand for variations in spells to match a magicians personal preference and combat style.

Dark as Silver said:
  1. That somehow the Colleges are dwindling and there is a struggle to prevent spells from dwindling into existence, and that prioritising 'better' spells is somehow bad.
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What else am I supposed to read from this:

Saidoro said:
That could result in all sorts of downstream effects that cause the inherited spells from Teclis to have more prominence.
....
It could mean that when instructors are figuring out which spells they need to make sure to teach people to keep them in living memory and which to put on a scroll and shove into the back of the library they'll tend to choose the second for human spells much more often than elven ones.
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except that keeping spells in living memory is a genuine concern.
Further more, given your own assumptions that different spells can be strictly better than others, why would it be a problem?
Wow that messes with the numbering, hope its still readable.
 
I think we can generally expect that unless Archon the everchosen literally broke through the wall with the sword of "ending the world in 5 neat steps", that we're not gonna get multiple blessings.

Gods seems to just not like sharing followers, whener or not that is because of a practical reason or just personality, we don't quite know.

Like, if there is a crisis they will back up a person, Like Magnus the Pious or Mathilda just now, but it seems more like temporary buffs then more permament.

Maybe it's because a person can only channel so much if a God before they implode? Mathida does very much have a trait about channeling Gods, and would count as an exception l.

So it's hard to say, if Ulric would have blessed, say Alric in the fight against the former EC.
 
Alright. Waking up I see that this post has been put into Player-Created Informational Posts:
Codex said:
Governance of Laurelorn:
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So I've made a few updates. I plan to eventually make a comprehensive post about Laurelorn similarly to the one I made on K8P, but that'll take a while. For now, I've made a few edits:
Codex said:
House Malforric: Asuryan Isolationist. Wardens of the Sun. Lady Delynna is their Vicarius. They dominate the worship of Asuryan and therefore control the festival that determines the Champion.
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Made a note on Malforric's ability to control the Festival of Games.
Codex said:
House Fanpatar: Ladrielle worshippers. Wardens of Rain. In favor of contact after Boris proved himself to them. Galenstra is their Vicarius. Yveressian. Despite being in charge of the Ward of Rain, due to concerns about their position from political rivals, House Fanpatar only maintains a garrison in the Ward and their true home is in the City. Noble Houses cannot afford to have their position be questioned.
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Made a note on House Fanpatar's home and why Pass of Stone has been left as a ruin.
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House Tindomiel: Hekarti worshippers. Magic House, in favor of contact with the outside world and don't look down on humans. Sapherian. Unlike the Druchii, the Eonir don't look very positively on the use of Dark Magic and maintain a more balanced view on the worship of Hekarti, and they do not recommend appeasing both Hekarti and Atharti like the Sorceresses of Ghrond.
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Made a note on the differences between Druchii and Eonir views on Hekarti and Dark Magic.
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House Miriel: Vaul isolationists, house focus on artisanry and crafting. Interested in Dwarven artisanry. Hold dominance over the secrets of communication with the Priests of Vaul working to craft things under the Rainbow Falls, and as they are blind and deaf, this gives them a monopoly over their creations that solidifies their position. The House is led by Councillor Galrith.
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Updated with information on the specifics of Miriel and who leads them as well as their dominance over Vaul Priest Smiths.
Codex said:
Ward of Frost: Contains the ruins of Kor Immamor. Warden is a council of Forestborn and Forest spirits, including Vicerine Cadaeth of Oldenlitz. This state of affairs has occurred ever since the death of Lindalioc of House Elwynn and his relatives. This Ward holds a stronger connection between spirits and elves, as opposed to other sections of Laurelorn that maintain a divide. This has led to rumors of intermingling between spirits and elves, leading to the possibility of some sort of combination similarly to the Tree Kin of Athel Loren.
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Made a note on the relations between spirits and elves in the Ward of Frost.
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Ward of Rain: Contains the Pass of Stone and the Schadensumpf. Warden is Prince Galenstra of House Fanpatar. The Ward of Rain holds a positive relation with the village of Kammenudn in the Schadensumpf, as the villagers warn the Elves and leave offerings and erected shrines to the elves, and the elves reward them with "the occasional trinket from the city", which is undeniably a big deal to the humans.
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Made a note on the relations between Kammendun and the Ward of Rain.
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Arbiter Yadoh: Acts as an authority who maintains order and represents the Triumvirate when they're not present for Council meetings.
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Made a more professional description on Arbiter Yadoh and his job.
Codex said:
House Fanpatar and House Malforric hold either two votes in the council or a vote and a tiebreaker. House Malforric have the ability to rig the Festival of Games to assign their desired champion for another tiebreaker. The Major Houses dominate the worship of particular gods, and the most prominent gods in Laurelorn according to Boney are:

Patron Gods of Laurelorn: Asuryan, Isha, Vaul, Hoeth, Hekarti. The most prominent Gods of Laurelorn.

House Malforric dominate Asuryan. It has been stated by Boney that there isn't much benefit to be had from attempting to control Isha worship because the Queen effectively dominates it, but House Filuan are also Ishaites and they might support the Queen in her efforts. House Miriel dominate worship of Vaul. House Tindomiel dominate the worship of Hekarti. House Echtelion and Thyriolan share dominance over worship of Hoeth.

Currently uncovered gods for the ten remaining houses: Lileath, Morai-Heg, Kurnous, Khaine, Anath Raema, Nethu, Ereth Khial,, Drakira, Mathlann, Addaioth, Hukon, Estreuth, Ellinill, Loec and Eldrazor.
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A brief political analysis on the big hitters as well as the pantheon that's been covered and what is left empty for the moment. You can find who the most important political factors are from this section, at least the ones that have been revealed.

I think this should suffice for the moment. Tell me if I missed anything. The purpose of this is to be concise and hold little speculation, which is why I've added next to nothing from Archives of the Empire that hasn't been covered in quest and only focused on presenting either Mathilde's internal speculation or Boney's hints about the politics from in thread talk.
 
Boney said:
The Gods are not autonomous favour-dispensing algorithms, they are extremely powerful thinking beings that can and will gently correct the misguided and smite the absolute shit out of sophists who think they've found One Weird Trick To Double Your Blessings, Priests Hate This.
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Reminds me of this one quote about it being dangerous to be an atheist/falsely claiming to worship a god in a setting where the gods are very much
real and known to throw rocks through the windows of nonbelivers.
 
The fact that we don't really live in a culture dominated by polytheistic religions anymore means that we don't really have a good term for "I believe that god does exist, I just don't worship them."
Omnipotent deities are kinda an all or nothing deal.

Frankly only Hindi can save us now, they might have the a word for it.
 
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