Would I be correct in assuming we can pick up texts for our library on Lustria and the Southlands, and that they would be potentially useful for studying the rubbings?
Warhammer Fantasy: Divided Loyalties - an Advisor's Quest
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Would I be correct in assuming we can pick up texts for our library on Lustria and the Southlands, and that they would be potentially useful for studying the rubbings?
Potentially, but Old World sources on Lustria and Southlands are largely dominated by the likes of 'here's how much gold we found in that temple, and how many of our men we lost getting it back to the ship'. Serious study is rather lacking in the sources available to Mathilde.
Fair enough, I suspected that there might not be much academia on the subject yet.
I just noticed we have Bretonnian books on Ranald in our library, which is very relevant to my interests.
@Boney, what are Bretonnian attitudes on Ranald? I assume they are negative since He is proscribed and all but are there facets of Ranald that Bretonnians find particularly distasteful/relatively tolerable? And is there any mention of Ranald's ascension myth in Mathilde's Bretonnian books?
@Boney, what are Bretonnian attitudes on Ranald? I assume they are negative since He is proscribed and all but are there facets of Ranald that Bretonnians find particularly distasteful/relatively tolerable? And is there any mention of Ranald's ascension myth in Mathilde's Bretonnian books?
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Protector is specifically about freedom from oppression, not standard protection. Canonical Bretonnia hates Ranald because they brutally slaughter peasant uprisings, which they apparently do with some frequency. Obviously, we already went through this before, and Boney isn't going with the brutally draconic Bretonnia of canon.
That's part of the reason I'm asking those questions, and why I think getting books on Bretonnia is important to properly talk about the possibility of The Lady being Ranald's daughter. There's a lot of information about canon Bretonnia, but little on quest-canon Bretonnia.
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That is something so unlikely that trying to deep delve in to it will just cause confuison and go off topic. You might just as well consider Ancient Widow as Ranalds daughter while you are at it.
It was a joke option when this started and it is still a joke.
Well, I could respond but I have ~3000 words written on the subject and waiting for the right moment to be posted, so put a pin in that for now.
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As i said.
Knights and the Lady are handling that.
The amount of cynicism and air quotes involved in that sentence is dependent on what version of Bretonnia you are operating in.
I'm disinclined to believe that the Lady and Ranald are related. For a start, the two are well known to be hostile to each other, and the painting Ranald modified shows him with his daughters as a close family unit. Now, Ranald could be twisting the truth here a little, but he's presented himself as a familyman—literally Ranald the God of Fathers. If he was hostile to his own daughter, I don't think he'd even mention her to us, let alone give us an artefact that lets her know we're a trustworthy person.
And before anyone brings up Verena, she and Ranald are rivals within the Classical pantheon, but allies outside of it. There are plenty of occasions for the Goddess of Justice and the God of Revolutions to be grudging allies. The Lady, as the Goddess of Chivalry, cares not for justice or revolutions—she embraces honour and nobility, not laws and working class solidarity.
And before anyone brings up Verena, she and Ranald are rivals within the Classical pantheon, but allies outside of it. There are plenty of occasions for the Goddess of Justice and the God of Revolutions to be grudging allies. The Lady, as the Goddess of Chivalry, cares not for justice or revolutions—she embraces honour and nobility, not laws and working class solidarity.
True, and this is in my opinion the strongest point against that theory. But please, don't make me say more. The time is not yet right.
...Though I will say this, because this came up before: on the subject Ranald being 'the God of Fathers', it's not clear that the coin tells us that. In its description on Mathilde's character sheet it says:
it's not entirely clear that the Father is a fifth face of Ranald as such. It says it represents His relationship with His daughters, but it stops short of outright saying that being a father is a facet of Ranald in the same way as the other four. We certainly have no indication that anyone worships Him as such, or that Ranald ever uses His divine power in support of fatherhood (unless there's a God of fathers somewhere that's actually Ranald in a trench coat).
A connection is that a side of a coin is called a face. The coin is pretty symbolic so while it's not solid it has a ground to stand on.
Also for someone don't know about warhammer so can someone remind me, Ranald's partner here is Shallaya right, the fertility goddess? Would bedding a motherly goddess have grounds for adopting a father aspect?
So here's my thinking—gods are (metaphorically) like gasses, they expand to fill all the available space. And by space, I mean "divine domains". If a potential domain exists, a god will slip into that domain. If multiple gods try to fill the same domain, that leads to conflict.
Now, in the Old World, there is no god of Fatherhood. Morr and Taal are fathers, and Rhya is a goddess of motherhood, but there isn't a specific god of being a father.
And I think Ranald is trying to claim that conceptual space.
Having his own kids, creating a relevant divine artefact, even Mandred—it's all potentially steps in a long plan to establish himself as the God of Fatherhood.
We very nearly saw Ranald take over another unused domain earlier in the Quest—the domain of Magic. That is not held by any human god, and the influx of power from Mork could have helped Ranald claim it. It didn't, in the end—the dice rolled differently—but it's evidence that Ranald can take over new domains for himself. And being the God of Fatherhood is a powerful thing in the Empire.
Edit:
Shallya is a goddess of Mercy and Healing, and tends to have a lot of "purity" symbolism that a mother/fertility goddess wouldn't have. She's sometimes associated with the Elven Isha, however, who is a fertility goddess. Isha is sometimes associated with Rhya for the same reason, but Deathfang claims they are different people, so who knows?
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Shallya is not exactly a fertility Goddess. She has childbirth as part of her domain, but it's not her main thing, that's Rhya. Unless she's secretly Isha, in which case she is definitely a fertility Goddess.
It sounds like you're saying that Ranald recently became a father, but we have no reason to believe that - I'll argue that it's clearly not the case, or else the search for the daughters would be all but impossible. Regarding Mandred, claiming the presumptuous heir to the Empire isn't really a fatherly thing just because said heir is currently a baby, it's a power play. As for creating a relevant divine artefact - are you saying that Ranald was always going to give us a fifth face? I'm pretty sure Ranald has been a father for a while now, and the coin is just him telling Mathilde about it.
"Recently" on a divine timescale is centuries on a human timescale. I'm not suggesting he fathered the daughters a few years ago.
I don't think we have any strong indication that this is what's going on, but I guess it's possible. Though it'll be bad news for Mathilde, who is devoted to all four facets of Ranald but is going to have some trouble with the fifth.
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It's odd. Childbirth is consistently mentioned as part of Shallya's domains right after healing and mercy in a few sources (Tome of Salvation and the Core 2E book for example), but Rhya is also often mentioned as assisting in childbirth, with a major role of several Rhyan factions in the Cult being to support mothers in childbirth and child rearing. It's not explicitly part of her domain like it is for Shallya, but it is a natural extension of Rhya's domains.
It has happened before where major gods of the Empire cross into each other's domains, the prime example being Myrmidia, Ulric and Sigmar focusing on different aspects of War, but the Cults of Rhya and Shallya being what they are, there is practically no friction at all despite that. The Cults of the gods of war could learn a thing or two from them.
Maybe Shallya is more towards getting the baby and mother through it healthy in her roll as healer while ryha comes from the side of the mother giving birth. But that's just my 2 cents.
Maybe it's because childbirth is a source of great pain, and Shallya is about assisting those who are in pain?
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That would be my take.
Childbirth is not safe, people can die of it, today, in modern hospitals.
Somewhere like the Empire, i can easily see why goddess of healing would have childbirth, or more accurately, safe childbirth, as part of their domain.
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Does Bretonnia even believe in the faces or is that an Empire thing? I know in Marienburg he's the Trader which isn't one of the four faces at all unless you start bending things in knots.
Not that I think the Lady theory holds water, but if he was hostile to his own daughter, then perhaps he had three daughters but was only showing two.
Ranald is the Trader because in a medieval outlook all merchants are a sort of thief, or a liar if one is being generous. If it did not come out of the ground it's not real value is the motto of the age