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Warhammer Fantasy: Divided Loyalties - an Advisor's Quest

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Zero Gravitas said:
Mathilde is important enough and busy enough that having a wizard flying her around is a good investment. She's saved tens of thousands of dwarfs; directed entire armies and changed the course of battles; regularly deals with rulers and currently heads the most ambitious research project in the Old World.

Yeah, having magical staff on hand - and not the blunt oblong object popular with wizards but junior wizards supporting Mathilde's work - is entirely justified.
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There's also the thought that Adela is an engineer—which might be useful if and when we have to build Waystones wholesale—and has benefitted from being in an organization with Mathilde before. Just being around gives her a better chance of getting her name on a paper with one of the various Lord Magisters.
silentorphan said:
Zagreb is the capital of Croatia; I sort of hope that people would recognize it. :V
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Dude, I can barely find Germany on a map, and thought that the state of Washington was south of Oregon for several years… while living in the latter state. Even if that wasn't an auto-corrupt, I still wouldn't have any idea what the capital of Croatia is.
Codex said:
It's won many awards, including GDC Game of the Year Awards, Hugo Awards, BAFTA awards and more. It's got a very thriving tumblr fandom that I think Boney is partly referencing (they're the ones most invested in said himbo after all), and it's overall a bloody good game. Of course it's well known. You should check it out.
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I might. Rogue-likes just usually aren't my type of game. I tend more towards TBS and open world RPGs.
 
Would any of the information we've acquired about waystones so far have included a map of the locations of major waystones?
If not we should probably get someone on that, to figure out the dead zones if nothing else. Johann has a directional mage sense and can run at faster than human speeds for long periods of time.
It might even turn up some waystones that have stopped working that we can pull apart and see how they tick.
 
Vokivas said:
Maybe Apollo? He makes sense as himbo, and I'm assuming that a 'twunk' is like a hunky twink. So maybe that fits as well. I don't know about him being bisexual, but I'd believe it. That said, I can only think of him being in God of War when it comes to video game appearances.
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Sometimes the mlm (Men loving Men, not Multi Level Marketing or Marxist-Leninist-Maoist) community like to use terms for body types. Twink refers to skinny/slim and hairless. Bear refers to big (usually chubby) and hairy, and hunk refers to muscular and hairless. Twunk is in between Hunk and Twink and is mostly a newer term that Tumblr likes to overuse, but at least in Zagreus' case it's pretty accurate. He is also bisexual in Hades as you can get a romance option with either Megaera or Thanatos.
 
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ChronOblivion said:
All that was said was that the Ambers knew the locations of the Empire Waystones, and that we probably didn't have much need for that information (which honestly is probably going to be correct for a while). I did not catch any implication that they were the Empire experts on the matter, and Mathilde clearly didn't either. She immediately went "oh cool, Max just ruled out six of those Orders so we only have to dig into two of them". If we really went to the Ambers, I kinda expect a repeat of Paranoth's "I don't think we have much to really add to this, but you can do me a favor if you really want someone".
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Boney said:
"Jade secrets?" you guess, to a silence that speaks volumes. "And if there were, you wouldn't be able to confirm or deny their existence?"

"And I wouldn't be able to confirm or deny if I was able to confirm or deny," she says with a forced laugh.

"I won't put you on the spot. If I try to bring the Jades aboard, it'll be through official channels. I've got a feeling that if I dig deep enough I'll find pieces in all of the precursors to the Colleges."

"I know the Shamans know more than they let on," she says thoughtfully.

"Hinting that you know more than you let on is the favourite pastime of the Colleges," you say with a smile.
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Panoramia told us that Ambers know more than they let on.

Honestly, I'm surprised that ambers even have a library.
 
Vokivas said:
Maybe Apollo? He makes sense as himbo, and I'm assuming that a 'twunk' is like a hunky twink. So maybe that fits as well. I don't know about him being bisexual, but I'd believe it. That said, I can only think of him being in God of War when it comes to video game appearances.
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If I remember correctly, Apollo is bisexual and has had several male partners in his mythology. He's also a bit of a disaster, with most of his love interests dying from various things (up to and including "being turned into a plant").
 
Vokivas said:
Maybe Apollo? He makes sense as himbo, and I'm assuming that a 'twunk' is like a hunky twink. So maybe that fits as well. I don't know about him being bisexual, but I'd believe it. That said, I can only think of him being in God of War when it comes to video game appearances.
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In the mythology he had both male and female lovers, so he's definitely bisexual. Zeus too, btw.
 
Vokivas said:
That said while I kinda felt dismissive at people actually worshipping Hecate, I guess I can see it.
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I used to be the same, but after a while I started to feel it was a kind of victim-blaming. Of course neopagan beliefs are inconsistent and underdeveloped and often wildly divergent from their sources, those faiths were violently suppressed for centuries.

Codex said:
He is also bisexual in Hades as you can get a romance option with either Megaera or Thanatos.
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Or both. The game seems to be deliberately incorporating the Greek philosophy of love, with Megaera representing eros, Thanatos agape, and Dusa philia, and all three can be pursued at once and they're all okay with that.
 
Boney said:
A Dwarf that was a professional warrior would rise in stature, a Dwarf that wasn't would likely receive some sort of reward from the holder of the Grudges. Which category Mathilde fits into is a matter of perspective.
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Given the lack of material rewards from Karak Kadrin after Mathilde introduced critical staff cuts to the Necromancy College, I suspect that the Dwarven perspective is that she's a warrior.
 
Ganurath said:
Given the lack of material rewards from Karak Kadrin after Mathilde introduced critical staff cuts to the Necromancy College, I suspect that the Dwarven perspective is that she's a warrior.
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I think what Boney is specifying there is "professional warrior". Some Dwarfs would likely view her as a Loremaster because that's the position that she distinguished herself in as advisor to Belegar. Most Dwarfs are warriors to one degree or another, being a professional warrior is different.
 
Ganurath said:
Given the lack of material rewards from Karak Kadrin after Mathilde introduced critical staff cuts to the Necromancy College, I suspect that the Dwarven perspective is that she's a warrior.
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That… was long before we were a dwarf, and still when basically everything we did was rewarded with Dwarf Favor.

Mathilde as she is now fits into a lot of roles very easily. She's a Thane, a Loremaster, a War Councillor, a Court Wizard—which sort of but not really translates to rune smith—a Ranger of sorts, and a diplomat of varying stripes as well. She even has feats of engineering under her belt.

Given her sheer reputation for all sorts of different things, it's probably going to be a headache and a half how to treat her.
 
Nonevah said:
To note re: 3, Arcane Marks do directly interfere with learning other magic; becoming attuned to a wind makes it impossible to wield other winds and makes it much harder to touch divine magic, and I have to imagine Ice Magic is somewhere on that spectrum.
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It makes it harder or impossible to use other magics without creating Dhar, but it doesn't actually stop you.

pucflek said:
We do, actually. We know Sigmar and Ancestor Gods could be spoken to :V. The fealty itself could also have been sworn more metaphysically too. It did not have to be from face to face, we know that Ranald communicates with his mortal followers easily.

But honestly, if there is anyone who actually knows why dragons have separate breeds, its going to be a dragon.

Draugnir and the Caledor dragons for those sworn to High Elf pantheon, Radixashen and Forest dragons are tied to Isha, and the rest decided to bend itself to Winds. Which, by the way, weird. Deathfang doesn't seem to hold the same vitriol for Forest dragons that he does for the Wind ones, despite the fact it alters them pretty significantly. If he did, he would have found some way to insert some snide remark the way he did when we mentioned Cython.
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I know you're joking, but whether Sigmar the man directly became Sigmar the god is something the Colleges aren't sure on IIRC. Like, there's a theory that the god was just created by the worship, and the man never actually transcended.

Also, whether Deathfang knows these things or is passing on stories hasn't been established, so he might not know. Plus, it's worth pointintg out the story wasn't about the creation of dragon types (and indeed, Forest Dragons might just be Ghyran Wind Dragons), it was about the ancient leaders of the dragons as a species, and where they went. Deathfang expressed no disappointment in any of them, presumably either because he felt their actions were justified, or because his respect for them exceeds his dissapointment in their actions. Or because he doesn't know if the leaders became Wind Dragons and is waiting for that before judging them (even if those who followed them did, there's no guarantee that decision was from those leaders, instead of being taken at a later point).

soulcake said:
Zagreus from Hades

EDIT:
I HAVE SHAMED MY ANCESTORS.
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I thought slow but correct was the Dwarfen way?
 
Ganurath said:
Given the lack of material rewards from Karak Kadrin after Mathilde introduced critical staff cuts to the Necromancy College, I suspect that the Dwarven perspective is that she's a warrior.
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She was acting on behalf of Belegar, as part of his council, so rewards would've gone to him. He would then have decided if extra rewards for her were in order.
 
deathofrats0808 said:
It makes it harder or impossible to use other magics without creating Dhar, but it doesn't actually stop you.


I know you're joking, but whether Sigmar the man directly became Sigmar the god is something the Colleges aren't sure on IIRC. Like, there's a theory that the god was just created by the worship, and the man never actually transcended.

Also, whether Deathfang knows these things or is passing on stories hasn't been established, so he might not know. Plus, it's worth pointintg out the story wasn't about the creation of dragon types (and indeed, Forest Dragons might just be Ghyran Wind Dragons), it was about the ancient leaders of the dragons as a species, and where they went. Deathfang expressed no disappointment in any of them, presumably either because he felt their actions were justified, or because his respect for them exceeds his dissapointment in their actions. Or because he doesn't know if the leaders became Wind Dragons and is waiting for that before judging them (even if those who followed them did, there's no guarantee that decision was from those leaders, instead of being taken at a later point).


I thought slow but correct was the Dwarfen way?
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Sigmar (the god) might also just be Sotek in a wig, who's pretending to be an ascended version of Sigmar (the man). Or maybe it's the other way around?

Also, dwarves are not slow, they are unhasty. There's a difference.
 
Max's investigation of the Amber Colleges library failed to turn up useful Waystone info, which means nothing because I'm not sure the Amber College even has a library.

Paranoth and Panoramia have both mentioned that they think the Shamans of the Amber Order know a lot about Waystones, and our own encounter with an Amber Lord Magister showed they have a lot of knowledge about herdstones, which they described as, well...

Boney said:
"You know what Herdstones are?" Lord Magister Luuk says after you enter the tower, not looking up from the battered kettle he was patiently watching.

"Gathering points for the Beastmen," you say. They'd come up a time or two in Regimand's travels.

"They're also the complete opposite of Waystones, which scares the shit out of anyone with sense."
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At minimum they seem to have a map of the various Waystones active across the Empire, which is useful in and of itself - it lets us see if there are any discernible patterns in their placement, and gives us a bunch of candidates for possible testing.
 
To say Greek-Roman gods were frequently reimagined throughout the existence of Hellenistic religions would be somewhat of an understatement. The current depiction of the pantheon as some sort of a monolithic entity answerable to Zeus and mostly living on the Olympus is, like, not even the modern interpretation, more like the surviving version of the evolving beliefs, welded together by the Roman attempts to formalize the worship in order to properly use Hellenism as both a state religion and unifying influence on the, well, Hellenistic world, and the later borrowing from Christianity during the revivalist periods.

I'd even go as far as saying that Christianity is much more accidentally syncretic than you would think from history books, because the Church canon version of Christianity existed and was practiced majorly in churches and major cities, while more rural areas adopted more paganistic rituals, in some places as late as the early nineteenth century. Well, there's also the question of which Christianity we are talking about, and it's not like Bible was shy about borrowing things from Hellenism, either.

Anyways, back to Hellenism. Apollo, for example, is predominantly a regional Greek god of prophecy, light, sun, music, medicine and whatever, mostly prophecy… You would think. Apollo is mostly a blending of several gods, as far back as 2000 and as early as 500 BCE. Helios, Aplu, Shiva, and fuck knows who else, who then disseminated through the Greek ecumene under different names, mostly variations of Apollo, granted.

Translating this from theophilosophy into actual metaphysics is a nightmare. Like, what do you do? Figure there's a god who has a multiple personality disorder or several gods combining together Voltron-style or a combination of the two? As far as we've seen in Boney's Warhammer version of religion, gods are essentially in the same position of being supplanted by the newer versions of themselves and sometimes random concepts appearing out of nowhere or invented by worshippers.

Sigmar indicates gods can be wished into existence.
Elven gods indicate that magic was inside you all along, lol, while human gods by and large actively present themselves as real entities able to affect the world and discourage fucking with them.
Myrmidia proves that a god can descend onto this sinful Warhammer-verse as their own avatar while also remaining, you know, a god.
Mathilde's own experience points to the nature of gods as being infinitely more complex souls the size of countries.

I think, the gods might be implicitly acting together to confuse and obscure the matter from the mortal eyes. Firstly, to acquire more worship, not strictly limited by species and borders. Secondly, to prevent the more enterprising ones from figuring out their secrets. How to become a god? How to kill one? There's at least one psycho (un)alive who actually made real tangible progress in both questions, and I don't even blame the gods for not wanting the second coming of Nagash. One is more than enough.
 
You know, I wonder if Mathilde is ever going to get a nickname in Kislev for the stuff we've done with them. I don't really expect one right now, we've barely interacted with them outside this and the goblet thing, but if we do end up pushing back the Za even a little, or do more for Ranald's reputation by chance? It could happen. We've apparently got a bit of a reputation in the Ice Witches already.

Honestly, I just want a nickname from every faction we run across. My favorite characters are always those with a bunch of fancy titles they actually earned.
 
Redshirt Army said:
Max's investigation of the Amber Colleges library failed to turn up useful Waystone info, which means nothing because I'm not sure the Amber College even has a library.

Paranoth and Panoramia have both mentioned that they think the Shamans of the Amber Order know a lot about Waystones, and our own encounter with an Amber Lord Magister showed they have a lot of knowledge about herdstones, which they described as, well...



At minimum they seem to have a map of the various Waystones active across the Empire, which is useful in and of itself - it lets us see if there are any discernible patterns in their placement, and gives us a bunch of candidates for possible testing.
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So I think bringing the ambers on is likely a good idea, however I don't think we'll need them next turn, or even before we lay the foundations. The info they're likely to bring will be useful later on in our research process. We'd likely be better off trying to bring in a group like the cult of Taal anyway, because they almost certainly have that knowledge due to their oath of wandering, and we should probably have some cult involved in this project, just in case divine magic turns out to be useful.
Also, their records are probably a lot better than that of the ambers, and their traditions less influenced by Teclis.
 
BeepSmile said:
This is how much I think it is worth you checking it out: (If you use steam) I think you should buy it, and bother to set a 1hr45min alarm so you can get a refund if you feel it's not for you.
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To be fair, I should probably clarify. I don't play games much at all. More often I just watch play through a on youtube, because I'm both too cheap—read: poor—and too lazy to actually play things myself, alongside not having a particularly good computer, or even a functional one lately. But a few of my subscriptions have taken shots at the game I think, so I can check that out at… some point. One of the next few times I get bored, probably.

Thank you for the recommendation.
 
Ericwinter said:
To be fair, I should probably clarify. I don't play games much at all. More often I just watch play through a on youtube, because I'm both too cheap—read: poor—and too lazy to actually play things myself, alongside not having a particularly good computer, or even a functional one lately. But a few of my subscriptions have taken shots at the game I think, so I can check that out at… some point. One of the next few times I get bored, probably.

Thank you for the recommendation.
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Honestly, it's the same thing for me. I'm having a blast with Elden Ring and I'm not even playing the game myself. Best game ever, says woman who's never played Elden Ring and just obsessively watches playthroughs.
 
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