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Warhammer Fantasy: Divided Loyalties - an Advisor's Quest

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Boney said:
Altdorf culture is to be performatively unimpressed with any use of magic
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Well, that's just waiting for someone to open a theatre where you go to show how very unimpressed you are. You spend most of the time secretly watching if others are impressed, and trying not to let others know that your not watching the stage, because that would be taken as not being able to stay unimpressed. The whole thing is quite popular with the well-to-do, because it involves being watched by a whole hall full of well-to-dos, and then gossiping over everyone who wasn't sufficiently unimpressed.

That feels like a very Prattchetian idea.
 
Boney said:
Though come to think of it there might be an underground counterculture scene for the appreciation of magical arts forming in major cities as the next step forward from Wizard Chic.
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Honestly would love to see this. Now we just need a ring leader hat and a tame manticore to pull out of it.
 
StormySky said:
I hope this doesn't lead to an explosion of Magickers.
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It is a concern. Ideally Magisters would like people to stop fearing them, but still maintain a healthy fear of any other form of magic. But most people don't know enough about magic to draw the correct distinctions. It would be a difficult balance to maintain, and arguably it would be better overall to err on the side of Magisters continuing to be alienated.
 
Boney said:
It is a concern. Ideally Magisters would like people to stop fearing them, but still maintain a healthy fear of any other form of magic. But most people don't know enough about magic to draw the correct distinctions. It would be a difficult balance to maintain, and arguably it would be better overall to err on the side of Magisters continuing to be alienated.
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Yeah, due to human nature I imagine that it would swing back and forth over time. Where they grow significantly more accepted until someone does something terribly dumb and it reverts back a bit.
 
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Boney said:
It is a concern. Ideally Magisters would like people to stop fearing them, but still maintain a healthy fear of any other form of magic. But most people don't know enough about magic to draw the correct distinctions. It would be a difficult balance to maintain, and arguably it would be better overall to err on the side of Magisters continuing to be alienated.
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Maybe once propaganda can be more easily widespread that balance will become easier? I think I remember something about the Printing Press having been invented recently in quest, and how you had to put the kibosh on Mathilde magically knowing to invest in it?
 
Ericwinter said:
Maybe once propaganda can be more easily widespread that balance will become easier? I think I remember something about the Printing Press having been invented recently in quest, and how you had to put the kibosh on Mathilde magically knowing to invest in it?
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It's movable type that will really make that explode, and that (and the resultant consequences of those who control the spread of news also having significant exposure to molten lead and antimony) is still a couple of decades or so off.

(It's hard to say what combination of influences and events led to the historical creation of movable type, because Johannes Gutenburg had a strange and poorly-attested youth as a displaced son of nobility and along the way he acquired an oddly wide range of metalsmithing, engraving, and jewelling skills. Then he disappeared almost entirely from history for about a decade before reappearing with the One Weird Trick that rewrote history.)
 
Boney said:
It's movable type that will really make that explode, and that (and the resultant consequences of those who control the spread of news also having significant exposure to molten lead and antimony) is still a couple of decades or so off.

(It's hard to say what combination of influences and events led to the historical creation of movable type, because Johannes Gutenburg had a strange and poorly-attested youth as a displaced son of nobility and along the way he acquired an oddly wide range of metalsmithing, engraving, and jewelling skills. Then he disappeared almost entirely from history for about a decade before reappearing with the One Weird Trick that rewrote history.)
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You know, there's this one fluffy, largely slice of life light novel series that goes into that, and what Johannes Gutenburg did on his own, she needed to get like, five fucking people together to match. And that was knowing exactly what she wanted to have made.

He was just one of those crazy, once per era confluences of Stuff to rewrite the course of history.
 
Boney said:
Though come to think of it there might be an underground counterculture scene for the appreciation of magical arts forming in major cities as the next step forward from Wizard Chic.
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4e has something like that in Middenheim. Not wholly compatible because of the different history and attitudes of Middenheim in DL, but still a fun thing to note. WFRP 4e: Middenheim - City of the White Wolf, page 140:
Volans's Oath
Middenheim has always been a haven for practitioners of magic, and long before Wizards were licensed to practise their arts throughout the Empire, there were institutions of magical learning in the city. There are many Wizards in Middenheim who complain that had the rest of the Empire heeded their example sooner, rather than subjecting Wizards to persecution, the might of Human wizardry might conceivably match that of the Elves.

The Volans's Oath of Devotion Society, known as Volans's Oath for short, is unusual in that it is open about being a secret society. It is named after Volans, an early supporter of Teclis's efforts to codify the practice of magic in the Empire, and the first Supreme Patriarch of the Colleges of Magic.

The group holds regular meetings in the Split Veil tavern in Neumarkt, and many of its members are honoured patrons of Middenheim's Guild of Wizards. The members of the society are an eccentric bunch, for whilst they do not practise magic, they are fans of wizardry. Their meetings usually consist of getting drunk and recounting anecdotes of how magic has contributed to Imperial successes on the battlefield and in glorious civic works. In order to join the society, a prospective member must demonstrate serious commitment to becoming knowledgeable about Wizards, and loyalty to the cause.
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Boney said:
It's movable type that will really make that explode, and that (and the resultant consequences of those who control the spread of news also having significant exposure to molten lead and antimony) is still a couple of decades or so off.

(It's hard to say what combination of influences and events led to the historical creation of movable type, because Johannes Gutenburg had a strange and poorly-attested youth as a displaced son of nobility and along the way he acquired an oddly wide range of metalsmithing, engraving, and jewelling skills. Then he disappeared almost entirely from history for about a decade before reappearing with the One Weird Trick that rewrote history.)
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So… in another forty turns or so? Cool, we just have to play the whole quest length over again and then some. :V

Sixty year old Mathilde would be absolutely terrifying.
 
Boney said:
(It's hard to say what combination of influences and events led to the historical creation of movable type, because Johannes Gutenburg had a strange and poorly-attested youth as a displaced son of nobility and along the way he acquired an oddly wide range of metalsmithing, engraving, and jewelling skills. Then he disappeared almost entirely from history for about a decade before reappearing with the One Weird Trick that rewrote history.)
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Hmm. So you're saying...

WEB-MAT: Magister Maximilian de Gaynesford, Gold Wizard
[ ] MAX: Learning: specify what and from who. You may pay for a trainer- Engraving
[ ] MAX: Learning: specify what and from who. You may pay for a trainer- Jewelsmithing

:V
 
Alliterate said:
Hmm. So you're saying...

WEB-MAT: Magister Maximilian de Gaynesford, Gold Wizard
[ ] MAX: Learning: specify what and from who. You may pay for a trainer- Engraving
[ ] MAX: Learning: specify what and from who. You may pay for a trainer- Jewelsmithing

:V
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I mean, isn't his whole thing permanent transmutation through crafting? And he's well used to the woes of handwriting…
 
Alectai said:
You know, there's this one fluffy, largely slice of life light novel series that goes into that, and what Johannes Gutenburg did on his own, she needed to get like, five fucking people together to match. And that was knowing exactly what she wanted to have made.

He was just one of those crazy, once per era confluences of Stuff to rewrite the course of history.
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Sometimes you just get that one Polymath in the right place at the right time to come up with the right idea.
But you need to start with a polymath first.
 
veekie said:
Sometimes you just get that one Polymath in the right place at the right time to come up with the right idea.
But you need to start with a polymath first.
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A lot of inventions are about interdisciplinary synergies, combining an aspect of one field with a component of another to create something neither could've achieved alone rather than just being really really good at one thing. I'm looking forward to WEB-MAT becoming a magical development hub for this kind of hub, assuming we can use the Waystone Project as an example of the power of information sharing.
 
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