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Warhammer Fantasy: Divided Loyalties - an Advisor's Quest

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Jyn Ryvia said:
A reminder that early 20s Journeyman Mathy was a significantly nastier piece of work than 40-year-old Lord Mathy. she somehow de-hardened with time and trama.

by the end of that she was just pulling the wings off of insects just to see how they reacted. current Mathy would probably still do this if she had to, but only what she had to and feel bad about it.
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I can guess at a few reasons for that:

1) Stirland/Sylvania has this really nasty Shyish/Dhar aura which influences people—I'm sure Mathilde has actually commentated on it having affected her behaviour in the past on a few occasions.
2) Wolf is a good boy, and as an extension of Mathilde's soul, means that on some level she too is a good boy. Girl. Wizard. You know what I mean.
3) Her relationship with Pan. Pan is kind, and caring, and Mathilde works hard to be deserving of that kindness.
4) Adapting to Dwarven standards of skullduggery means that she's had fewer opportunities to be vicious.
 
Jyn Ryvia said:
A reminder that early 20s Journeyman Mathy was a significantly nastier piece of work than 40-year-old Lord Mathy. she somehow de-hardened with time and trama.
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Was she? She just never had any reason to go bonkers on captive enemies in the same way.

If Mathilde approached that situation as she is now, the only reason she wouldn't use the same trick wouldn't be moral, but one of effectiveness, as she is now lot better at what she does.
 
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At the time, she also had less tools to use, so she had to be creative with what she had.

Now she has more tools, more money, more skill, more knowledge, more connections...
Makes a lot of things easier.

A noble might think he'd fool a grey journeywoman, and get one over them.
When a lady magister comes knocking, you do what she says, while trying not to shit yourself.
 
Anton grins. "So, I spoke to the Massifs. They say they're never going to give up their Chartered Free Town status because it'd undercut their trade relationships with Wissenland and they've got a point. So I spoke to Petra. Petra says she won't be pushed out of Flensburg because the county can't be run out of Lochen or Ramsau, and frankly, she's right, they're tiny. So I looked at a map for a while, then I went and spoke to Artur, who's absolutely thrilled about the Stirlandian League being kicked apart by the way, and I talk to him about Wolfsbach. Now, Artur likes Wolfsbach, because it's almost as big as Franzen these days, but he's still dreaming of the River Lammer trade, so I say to him, if Nussbach was transferred from the County of Worden to the County of Franzen, would he be okay with Wolfsbach being transferred from the County of Franzen to the County of Flensburg? And he says, only if we also allow his traders free passage through the County of Purgg and docking rights at Pramet. So then I go to Petra and say, hey, you can't run the county out of Lochen or Ramsau, but could you run it out of Wolfsbach? And she looks at a map, and she says, only if my traders get docking rights at Pramet, because now she's thinking about trade from Averland going up the River Teichd to Talabecland too. And I almost say yes, but then I think that wouldn't be nice, so I tell her that Artur's planning something similar, and she looks at the map some more, and then she gets on a horse and heads to Franzen, and she and Artur talk for like three weeks and then her daughter is betrothed to his third son and they're talking about something they're calling the Western Stirland Riverine Trading Company, so if you just..." he rummages around in his satchel and pulls out a sheaf of documents, "if you sign all of these, Flensburg will only be the Chartered Free Town of Flensburg and the County of Flensburg will now be the County of Wolfsbach, and you won't control Nussbach any more, but I spoke to the local representative of the Emperor's tax collectors and they spoke to the Emperor and they've agreed that they're willing to grant taxation rights back to Stirland as long as Stirland pays half of all collected taxes from Flensburg to the Emperor, and taxing Flensburg is worth more to us than taxing Nussbach, I checked with Wilhelmina."
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the birth of the meme.

or at least the moment the thread really became aware that Anton might have been rolling waaaaaayyyyyy to many Crits in the background.
 
Nerdasaurus Rex said:
The part of divine magic research we locked away was using it to identify and expose the Gods, and besides, Teclisian magic fails to explain lots of things outside of Divine Magic; Qhaysh, Elementalism, Damsels, the Waaagh, and Yin-Yang, just to name a few of the top of my head. We can still develop a non-teclisian understanding without touching divine spellcasting.
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Er.... this is getting a bit silly. The high elf magic system does not fail to explain High Elf magic.
 
Jyn Ryvia said:
A reminder that early 20s Journeyman Mathy was a significantly nastier piece of work than 40-year-old Lord Mathy. she somehow de-hardened with time and trama.

by the end of that she was just pulling the wings off of insects just to see how they reacted. current Mathy would probably still do this if she had to, but only what she had to and feel bad about it.
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I mean, we gaslit a prisoner of war to the point where if their god realizes what they did, he's going to invent an entirely new tier of eternal torture with which to subject him.

We graduated from playing with the minds of traitors to playing with minds to make people turn traitor. And if we'd taken Aldrich Ames alive just now, we wouldn't have played nice. Mindholing the Oompaloompa family and then approaching them openly with information we had pried from their living brains was explicitly on the table.


We aren't any softer, we just have AP Hell and potential failure consciousness constraining how long and how many risks we feel we can take at any given decision point.
 
DragonParadox said:
Even so I'm pretty sure it does explain it. The explanation is not one the colleges want to hear but 'High Magic is beyond the senses and capacity for understanding of humans' is an explanation of sorts
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What about Elementalism then? Both humans and elves have elementalists, so it's clearly not beyond humans, but all Teclis did with that was to redirect some of them to the Bright College. I think it should be clear that Teclisian theory isn't standard high elven theory, it's a hastily truncated version of it blended together with various existing human magical traditions that went on to become its own thing.
 
The thing i miss most from the early quest is the comments boney made when rolling.

the greatest being the written shout of [Greatsword!] when we roll hot with the Flamberge.

but it just isnt the same now that we are actually good with swording, instead of just very enthusiastic.
 
ReImagined said:
What about Elementalism then? Both humans and elves have elementalists, so it's clearly not beyond humans, but all Teclis did with that was to redirect some of them to the Bright College.
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My current suspicion is that Elementalism is two-wind magic, combining Fire from Aqshy and Ghyran (destruction vs rebirth), Wind from Ghur and Azyr (freedom vs cyclical patterns), Water from Hysh and Ulgu (clarity vs obfuscation) and Earth from Chamon and Shyish (bounty of earth vs compost), so Teclis saw them doing higher tier stuff without understanding the basics and told them to stop, because using the combination without proper balance leads more often to accidents, as evidenced by elementalists being more unstable than wind wizards. Not informing his students about this is both tactically sound in the sense of not letting the humans grow too strong when the war is over and educational in the sense that many would blow themselves up (instead of being good little soldiers) if they thought elementalism is a ticket to Qhaysh.

It's possible that in stable forms, the four elements can't be easily investigated in terms of winds because the components are too well balanced, so the benefit of this theory is that it's easily verifiable by checking if a fire elemental is pure Aqshy, then letting Golden Hounds chomp it and investigating what's left.
 
In regards to it being impossible to cast High Magic. Theoretically, it's not an impossibility. It's just so unbelievably unlikely and has such a low probability that you could go millenia without finding one human with High Magic. There is a legend about a human who learnt High Magic though, from Spires of Altdorf 2E Page 59:

"Master Wilhelm is a legendary figure, reputedly a powerful Human wizard who mastered High Magic before the time of Magnus the Pious, even before the time of Sigmar according to some stories. He is supposed to have crafted many powerful magic items, including a full deck of 78 cards, each of which has a different power. In her adventures, Gabrielle has found two cards, each enchanted, both in the same style. She believes that she may have found two cards from Master Wilhelm's deck and would like to get more."

The Gabrielle here is a Gabrielle Marsner from the Amethyst College. She's probably not even in the College by this point cus she's young. Likes to act mysterious because it makes her feel cool. The Cards she has from William's deck are kind of like Ranald's Coin in effect.

The Two of Swords makes it so a single person refuses to acknowledge a single fact. You could literally wave that fact right in front of them and they would refuse to acknowledge it. It can only affect a single person in regards to a single fact, but you can switch it as many times as you want with no limits.

The Five of Wands gives the user a +10% bonus to any opposed skill test at the cost of a -5% penalty on their next unopposed skill test.

Of course, the legend could be a farce and the guy just made a 78 tarot card deck with powerful enchanted items as a single wind wizard. Who knows. Just throwing it out there.
 
Codex said:
In regards to it being impossible to cast High Magic. Theoretically, it's not an impossibility. It's just so unbelievably unlikely and has such a low probability that you could go millenia without finding one human with High Magic. There is a legend about a human who learnt High Magic though, from Spires of Altdorf 2E Page 59:

"Master Wilhelm is a legendary figure, reputedly a powerful Human wizard who mastered High Magic before the time of Magnus the Pious, even before the time of Sigmar according to some stories. He is supposed to have crafted many powerful magic items, including a full deck of 78 cards, each of which has a different power. In her adventures, Gabrielle has found two cards, each enchanted, both in the same style. She believes that she may have found two cards from Master Wilhelm's deck and would like to get more."

The Gabrielle here is a Gabrielle Marsner from the Amethyst College. She's probably not even in the College by this point cus she's young. Likes to act mysterious because it makes her feel cool. The Cards she has from William's deck are kind of like Ranald's Coin in effect.

The Two of Swords makes it so a single person refuses to acknowledge a single fact. You could literally wave that fact right in front of them and they would refuse to acknowledge it. It can only affect a single person in regards to a single fact, but you can switch it as many times as you want with no limits.

The Five of Wands gives the user a +10% bonus to any opposed skill test at the cost of a -5% penalty on their next unopposed skill test.

Of course, the legend could be a farce and the guy just made a 78 tarot card deck with powerful enchanted items as a single wind wizard. Who knows. Just throwing it out there.
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Then there's Fozzrik...
 
Redshirt Army said:
Then there's Fozzrik...
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As I mentioned before, Fozzrik is like that guy in the Spiderman comics who could have cured cancer but decided he wanted to make people into dinosaurs. He had absolutely immense talent and power and could do things that are still considered impossible far ahead of his time, but he decided to use them on... buildings.
 
Codex said:
In regards to it being impossible to cast High Magic. Theoretically, it's not an impossibility. It's just so unbelievably unlikely and has such a low probability that you could go millenia without finding one human with High Magic.
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The way I figure it, it's like:

You need a once-in-a-lifetime (or several dozen lifetimes, more likely) genius, someone on par with Volans.

They need to master all the Winds, one-by-one, never making any serious mistake or they'll get an Arcane Mark and lock themselves in. This also means that they can't really go into combat, or even leave the grounds of the Colleges, because of the risk.

Finally, after, at minimum, many decades, you have a human that has mastered all 8 Winds, and can, theoretically, start to learn High Magic... except they don't have any teacher and again, a single Arcane Mark and the entire effort was pointless.


It's just not worth it. Maybe such a wizard would be worth multiple high-ranking Magisters or Lord Magisters of a single Wind, but not that worth it. Especially given that they'd never be able to teach it unless they find another multi-generational talent.
 
So I had a quick question for the thread, didn't at one point we collate a bunch of Abelhelm's notes into a book on dealing with the Undead, Vampires, and Necromancers? I want to say we did that, but I can't find and was wondering if someone could help me find it?

Edit: Nevermind, I found it by complete coincidence.
 
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Zedman7054 said:
So I had a quick question for the thread, didn't at one point we collate a bunch of Abelhelm's notes into a book on dealing with the Undead, Vampires, and Necromancers? I want to say we did that, but I can't find and was wondering if someone could help me find it?

Edit: Nevermind, I found it by complete coincidence.
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Boney said:
[Maximilian's Homework: Learning, 69+17+10(Patient)=96.]

Over tea and biscuits, Maximilian presents his work not just to you, but to his peers as well. A Full and Accurate Census of All Varieties of Undead within the Hunter's Hills, 2476 may not be snappily titled, but a cartload of reports has been distilled down to a single volume of easily-accessible data. He's even gone to the trouble of including a detailed map of the Hills and breaking it down into subregions, and you raise an eyebrow at what becomes immediately obvious that was previously entirely obscured - the ghoul concentration around what was the Blasphemy of Blood, the scattering of the Singing King's forces after he was dispatched, the clumping of wandering wights around the Tomb Complex, the way the more actively malevolent undead were drawn to the roads and towns. You've no doubt that this will grab the attention of more than a few of the Amethyst Order, and you give Maximilian your heartfelt congratulations, and make a mental note to be sure Roswita receives a copy.

[A Full and Accurate Census of All Varieties of Undead within the Hunter's Hills, 2476. Subject: Uncommon, +0. Insight: Confirming, +1. Delivery: Competent, +0. Thorough, +1. Varied, +1. Familiar, -1. Tactically Relevant, +1. Total: +3.]
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Boney said:
Roswita runs her hands over the title of the book. It's well-made, too - the Colleges have a standing agreement with the Printers Guild and after the first time they cut corners and a Bright Wizard showed up at their door with a crumbling dissertation and a bad attitude, they learned to give it their best. Her father's name is embossed between yours and Maximilian's.
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Edit: Darn, a few minutes too late.
 
So I might have come across something interesting that might be another reason Azyr is Stone in Cathay:

"The Chinese character 玉 (yù) is used to denote the several types of stone known in English as "jade" (e.g. 玉器, jadewares), such as jadeite (硬玉, 'hard jade', another name for 翡翠) and nephrite (軟玉, 'soft jade'). But because of the value added culturally to jades throughout Chinese history, the word has also come to refer more generally to precious or ornamental stones, and is very common in more symbolic usage as in phrases like 拋磚引玉/抛砖引玉 (lit. "casting a brick (i.e. the speaker's own words) to draw a jade (i.e. pearls of wisdom from the other party)"), 玉容 (a beautiful face; "jade countenance"), and 玉立 (slim and graceful; "jade standing upright"). The character has a similar range of meanings when appearing as a radical as parts of other characters."

Jade holds great historical importance to China, and it seems to carry over to Cathay because there is a line in the game that says "Jade, the Birthstone of the Celestial Dragon Emperor", which I believe is why the Jade Warriors over there refer to Jade. There are lots of references to the elements of Earth there. The Peasant warriors are "Warriors of Wind and Field", referring to Ghur and Azyr, the Jade Warriors are "Warriors of Jade and Steel" referring to Azyr and Chamon, and the Harmony of Yin and Yang is referred to as "The Harmony of Stone and Steel", which refers to Azyr and Chamon. It could also be a representation of Yang and Yin respectively, because the Winds referred to there are attracted to Yin and Yang.

A few other notes. The "High Magic" that Cathay uses is called "Feng Shi", and it's said that it's split into the branches of Yin and Yang. Apparently, the process of combining winds together is "High Magic", but they clearly delineate it into categories instead of puttiing it into one catchall like the Elves, and obviously it does different things. No mentions of Qhaysh for obvious reasons.

Also, on something relevant to Mathilde's interests, but clearly not something that she'd know. The Great Celestial Wu Xing Compass is a Cathay only Waystone. It receives signals from across the nation from observatories that boost its power and the Celestial Dragon empowers it and uses it to control and direct the Winds in Cathay, which he most uses to enhcance the Great Bastion, bolst the Lake/River holding the maybe corpse of his offspring that actually revitalises the citizens of Cathay (reminder that Shyish in Cathay is Spirit, not Death, and Ghyran being more Stormy, Shyish actually takes on the nurturing aspects of Ghyran whereas Ghyran takes on a more unassailable tone).

There are minaturised Wu Xing Compasses that Astromancers ride into battle which explicitly draw in or repel the Winds of Magic too. There is a Technology in the game that says there are magnets inside actually. Don't know if they're part of the process, but using magnets to attract or repel the winds is a funny thought.

Just to clairfy. This is OoC information. Please don't make a big deal out of it and ask for us to go to Cathay.
 
Zedman7054 said:
Thank you very much for it anyway. I swear we still used a bunch of his notes for something, but I guess not.
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If it helps, a full list of Mathilde's publications can be found in the character sheet under 'academic achievements' in a spoiler. The only other time Abelhelm's name pops up in there is Roswita's The Neglected Front:Economic Warfare against the Vampiric Bloodlines.

Of course, the most useful and thorough book in Mathilde's possession against the Undead, Vampires, and Necromancers is the Liber Mortis :p
 
ReImagined said:
If it helps, a full list of Mathilde's publications can be found in the character sheet under 'academic achievements' in a spoiler. The only other time Abelhelm's name pops up in there is Roswita's The Neglected Front:Economic Warfare against the Vampiric Bloodlines.

Of course, the most useful and thorough book in Mathilde's possession against the Undead, Vampires, and Necromancers is the Liber Mortis :p
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It does actually. Thank you for that.
 
Zedman7054 said:
Thank you very much for it anyway. I swear we still used a bunch of his notes for something, but I guess not.
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I did some more rereading digging, and Van Hal did write a paper himself, which Mathilde helped with:
Boney said:
Van Hal, however, is in his element, filling page after page of notes with something like excitement. At one point, he explains to you that this is an entirely new manifestation of the Necromancer's art. Though it seems to be based on something known to the Empire's scholars as Hellish Vigour, it had been modified to affect a living person. And after the effect had run its course, it resulted in an entirely new type of undead - something that resembled a zombie, but without any decomposition as the dark energy burned off flesh before rot could set in.

When finished, he enlists your help in turning his notes into a formal paper on the phenomenon, and it is sent off to Altdorf to be contained within the Vaults of the Temple of Sigmar, where it can be added to the collective knowledge of the Witch Hunters.

[AUTOPSY, Req 60, Learning, 35+13=48. Nothing new learned.]
[OVERWORK FAILURE, Roll, 96. Severe (and gross) consequences avoided.]
[VAN HAL'S AUTOPSY, Req 60, Learning, 49+16=65. He's written a paper on it.]
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I'm kind of curious now if Mathilde's listed as a co-author or contributor.
 
Boney said:
You also go through the rest of your messages from the EIC while you're at it, frowning at the increased volume of messages concerning some sort of trouble brewing in Ostermark while still maintaining the complete dearth of useful information. Everything else appears to be business as usual, with the output of the blackpowder factory in Wurtbad steadily increasing as the workers grow used to the process. There is, however, a build-up of activity in Sylvania, possibly hinting at a resumption of active warfare in the coming year after such a very long siege. An uptick in traffic through Barak Varr, apparently as a result of more infighting than usual among the pirates of Sartosa. And rumours of unrest between Marienburg and Couronne, possible a reignition of the eternal question of where, exactly, the border between Couronne and the Wasteland can be found.
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This could be nothing special, but because I'm my usual overthinking self and because I think Sartosa's pretty interesting, I've taken to some theorising about what's happening in Sartosa.

First thing that came to my mind was something about Jaego Roth or his father Indigio Roth, because they're some of the most notable canonical characters in Sartosa and Aranessa Saltspite has probably not even been born yet. Alas, I don't think that's the case. He's probably too young to cause trouble, and his dad was famous for travelling all over instead of vying for power. Then I remembered something.

It's around the canonical time that Borgio the Besieger starts dunking all the Tilean states in battle after battle, so maybe it's this event:

"Another apocryphal tale says that he was once taken prisoner by the Pirate Princess of Sartosa and escaped by diving into the sea from the dungeon tower, which was conveniently leaning over a high cliff and swam the Pirates' Current across to Tilea. Then he returned with a mercenary fleet, captured the princess and would not let her go until the pirates had paid him an enormous tribute gathered from their far-flung stashes of plunder. If this ever happened it must have been early in his career."

Maybe Sartosa is in chaos because the Princess that was keeping everyone in line was kidnapped and they're all fighting for power.

As a side note, Borgio is a funny character. Yes Dogs of War was very caricaturey, but he's such a metal and yet dumb character. One of his claims to fame was that he was hit by cannonball and survived, so he decided to take that cannonball and attached it to a shaft to make a mace that he's been using ever since. He died after defeating the majority of Tilean states through his wife Dolcaletta assassinating him while he was naked in the bathtub with a toasting fork.

Oh Warhammer.
 
Codex said:
As I mentioned before, Fozzrik is like that guy in the Spiderman comics who could have cured cancer but decided he wanted to make people into dinosaurs. He had absolutely immense talent and power and could do things that are still considered impossible far ahead of his time, but he decided to use them on... buildings.
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I think saying Fozzrik's flying fastness is a building is like saying Ghal Maraz is a hammer. Its true, technically, but doesn't really encapsulate its immensity :V
 
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