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Warhammer Fantasy: Divided Loyalties - an Advisor's Quest

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[x] [GREY] Scouting the forest with the krugs
[x] [GOLD] Standing ready to respond with the Tzar and Boyars
[x] [ICE] Guarding the forest rotas as they expand and fortify the path
 
Boney said:
In the Great War Against Chaos, the entire army of Kislev was wiped out, as was just about every defender of Praag. The defenders of Kislev City took ruinous casualties. The only Kislevites that got through it relatively untouched were the ones that, when Chaos came knocking, did not join the army, did not defend the city in the path of Chaos, and did not defend the capital of Kislev - instead, they defended the city furthest away from Asavar Kul's invasion path with easy escape routes into Ostland or the Sea of Claws. Pretty much every patriot, every true believer, anyone with courage and conviction in Kislev placed themselves in the path of Chaos and most of them died as a result, and in the aftermath the cowards greatly outnumbered the lucky. A lot of Kislevites blame the downturn in just about every Kislevite institution since then as much on the lack of character of those who survived as they do on the damage done by the Great War, and this lack of trust in the leadership of Kislevite institutions is what allowed the Gods of the Empire to get a foothold in Kislev.




In the aftermath of the Great War that Kislev is still languishing in, there is no more Fire Spire magic, and no Dazh or Tor or Ursun Priests that are seen as brave and trustworthy. Only the Ice Witches were left relatively intact in population and reputation by the Great War, because the Ice Witches rallied to Kislev City instead of Praag because of their long-standing and well-known hostility towards the Fire Spire.
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This is the tragedy of Kislev, kinda in the same boat as the Dwarfs. The war was won, and Chaos sent running back to the Wastes, but Kislev haven't recover from the war, as well as most of it magical traditions and institutions either destroyed, or broken, or distrusted with only the Ice Witches really around and the growth of the Gods of the Empire. Never mind all the real and faithful Kislevites almost all died fighting Chaos, leave...not so much in their places.
 
It kind of makes sense that Hag Witches are the other surviving magical tradition since per Boney, they almost all have their power bound to the spirits to a particular locale. Only the most powerful even could go to reinforce Praag; most of them had to stay protecting whatever community they were at in order to do any good at all.
 
Historyman14 said:
Never mind all the real and faithful Kislevites almost all died fighting Chaos, leave...not so much in their places.
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You know, a few rounds of this explains really well why the norscan would start worshiping chaos: most of the ones who wouldn't died every few years and everyone else got exhausted trying to hide and thrive at the same time.
 
Alratan said:
If the Colleges can make enchantments that produce mono-Wind environments, I wonder how they do it.

I'd assumed this was the domain of high magic or runecraft, because mono-Wind environments must be the result of enchantments that effect multiple Winds of Magic at the same time - at least seven if not eight.

If obsidian is a magical insulator as is suggested in Realms of Sorcery, perhaps you could manage something with a sealed room lined with it and powerstones/batteries of the required Wind, along with a set of minor magic items of each of the undesired Winds that consumes any of them that comes in through the air vents or when the door is open.
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The Winds repel each other, so if you get enough of one in one place it keeps the others out.

Tasoli said:
That sounds interesting. Can you share a list of the books you have if that is okay with you? I might take a look a them myself.
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They're almost all from charity secondhand stores and events, so it's a bit of an eclectic collection.

Ancient Rites and Ceremonies
Arthurian Myth and Legend
Becoming Like God: Kabbalah and our Ultimate Destiny
Bhagavad Gita
Bloodline of the Holy Grail
The Book of the Sacred Magic of Abramelin the Mage
Bones of the Master
A Brief History of Secret Societies
Celtic Mythology
The Dead Sea Scrolls
The Dhammapada
The Egyptian Book of the Dead
Everyman and Medieval Miracle Plays
God I Am
The Gnostic Gospels
The Gospel of Judas
Great Disciples of the Buddha
The Greater Key of Solomon
The Lesser Key of Solomon
The Perfect Heresy
Sacred Journeys
The Secret History of the World
Strong's Concordance
The Ten Thousand Year Calendar
The Upanishads
The Tibetan Book of the Dead
Visions of Nostradamus and Other Prophets
The Way to Eternity
The World's Religions

There's also a bunch of books I'm not sure whether they best fit on the 'religion' shelf, or are more history or psychology or philosophy. Like, Faust? Nietzsche? The Screwtape Letters? Brothers Grimm? Books on psychology and ethics by the Dalai Lama? Freemasons? The lines can get very blurred. I've also got a handful of issues of 'Magus', an Australian magazine from the 80s for practitioners of the 'western magical tradition'. Plus there's a crate of books that's still stranded from a move I made just before the pandemic started, but I don't even remember what was in there at this point.

DragonParadox said:
Also semi-random question since we were talking about the Fire Spire earlier @Boney assuming we get permission from the Kislevites would going treasure hunting in the Fire Spire be the sort of thing we could do with just one action or is it more like the vacation to Ulthuan were it would take several months?

I ask because it occurred to me that for all the traditions we are trying to slowly get on board there is one class of magicians whose secrets we can get by other means, the already dead. We do not know what the Fire Spire mages might have known or not but there might be hints of it left behind and we do have the equipment to walk into corrupted areas without suffering from passive taint, though of course there are likely gribbles to deal with also so I do not expect it to be easy.... but then few things that are rewarding are.
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It would only take an action to check it out, but if there's anything left to loot after almost two centuries in a major city with its fair share of adventurers and mercenaries and criminals and cultists, then whatever's guarding it is probably not the sort of thing you want to blithely wander into.
 
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According to Realm of the Ice Queen, "none who enter its [the Fire Spire's] haunted chambers return" which tells me:

A. The loot's still in there
B. Something is mercing the people who go in
C. We should try anyway because we're good at not getting merced
 
If what is killing people is magic base we have a advantage in that we can just buy Valya runes from dwarfs. I am also up for looting a magic tower because of books and money. But I want significant minions to carry loot because I hate leaving stuff behind.
 
Voikirium said:
According to Realm of the Ice Queen, "none who enter its [the Fire Spire's] haunted chambers return" which tells me:

A. The loot's still in there
B. Something is mercing the people who go in
C. We should try anyway because we're good at not getting merced
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Boney's read RotIQ same as you or me.

If he says don't take it lightly, I think we should take that to heart.
 
Nurgle said:
Dawm it Boney is giving me more books to read in real life. I have only read like a third of the list he has.
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Some of them I keep more as reference materials than because they're good reads in themself, but one book in this sphere that would get my recommendation is 'Emotional Awareness', a transcription of conversations between the Dalai Lama and the psychology professor Paul Ekman.
 
Voikirium said:
According to Realm of the Ice Queen, "none who enter its [the Fire Spire's] haunted chambers return" which tells me:

A. The loot's still in there
B. Something is mercing the people who go in
C. We should try anyway because we're good at not getting merced
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I think it's impotant to note that that Mathilde didn't get merced by virtue of stacking the deck in her favor and choosing her battles. She was almost murdered by a room full of Orc boys anyway.

Wandering into the magic death tower is gonna need some significant prepwork before we even think about trying it. More work than getting permission and vague Valaya runes at any rate.
 
Undead-Spaceman said:
I think it's impotant to note that that Mathilde didn't get merced by virtue of stacking the deck in her favor and choosing her battles. She was almost murdered by a room full of Orc boys anyway.

Wandering into the magic death tower is gonna need some significant prepwork before we even think about trying it. More work than getting permission and vague Valaya runes at any rate.
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I think praying to randal in preparation to a guest would be a good idea. I feel he would love Mathilde doing a heist. It also hopefully be a good opportunity to meet more Randalites.
 
Undead-Spaceman said:
I think it's impotant to note that that Mathilde didn't get merced by virtue of stacking the deck in her favor and choosing her battles. She was almost murdered by a room full of Orc boys anyway.

Wandering into the magic death tower is gonna need some significant prepwork before we even think about trying it. More work than getting permission and vague Valaya runes at any rate.
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Oh yeah, no, to be clear, I'm not talking wandering in on a hunch for funsies.

More "if we have a little bit of free time or an excuse it could be a good, feasible use of time after a whole bunch of preparation and planning."
 
Undead-Spaceman said:
I think it's impotant to note that that Mathilde didn't get merced by virtue of stacking the deck in her favor and choosing her battles. She was almost murdered by a room full of Orc boys anyway.

Wandering into the magic death tower is gonna need some significant prepwork before we even think about trying it. More work than getting permission and vague Valaya runes at any rate.
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I feel like step one would be to ask the ice witches if we can turn off the waystone flow to Pragg for a bit before we go in hopes of depowering the defences first. (well... hopefully that's whats happening...)

actually, scratch that, step one would be getting enough Witch favour that they aren't going to just say fuck off if we ask to mess with their waystones or the spire.
 
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Jyn Ryvia said:
I feel like step one would be to ask the ice witches if we can turn off the waystone flow to Pragg for a bit before we go in hopes of depowering the defences first. (well... hopefully that's whats happening...)

actually, scratch that, step one would be getting enough Witch favour that they aren't going to just say fuck off if we ask to mess with their waystones or the spire.
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If all the magic in Kislev is going towards the Fire Spire, then what the fuck were they doing in there, and what the fuck is it powering? At that point you'd have to wonder why they weren't turning that massive amount of power towards actually fighting the Chaos horde attacking Pragg.

Like, the top two floors of the tower don't exist anymore, I'm not betting at all on any overall structure of the tower being intact.

Personally, I find it way more likely that the magic is going towards something to do with the Ancient Widow or Ice Magic than that the mages of the Fire Spire, who have zero known accomplishments in canon, were secretly the greatest human masters at Waystones. And that all the traditionalist Ice Witches are just continuing to go along with directing all power to a now-destroyed and corrupted institution that they hated to begin with.
 
Mopman43 said:
Personally, I find it way more likely that the magic is going towards something to do with the Ancient Widow or Ice Magic than that the mages of the Fire Spire, who have zero known accomplishments in canon, were secretly the greatest human masters at Waystones.
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The reason they have zero known accomplishments in canon is because they literally only exist as a footnote/lore tidbit/plot hook in Realm of the Ice Queen. They don't appear in literally any other source. The impression I got, however, is that Boney likes that piece of lore and does want to give it more prominence. He's already mentioned it more often than canonical sources do.
 
Do gyrocopters burn fuel to fly, or they are powered solely by runes? If it's the first, what is the fuel?
 
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