Warhammer Fantasy: Divided Loyalties - an Advisor's Quest

[veekie]

We didn't get "caught up" as you say. We were the instrument of Mork exacting his divine justice. That is a little bit more than "caught up" in a ritual. That is a big deal. To be a hand of Mork is to act with the intentions of Mork. Mork does not have good intentions when it comes to the dwarfs. You say this is a setting with gods and magic and demons. How many times do people get possessed by those divine? People normally don't go around claiming to have been possessed. It just doesn't happen. Either it's true and we were a conduit for Mork or we are crazy. And if it is true that we were a conduit for Mork why couldn't Mork make us a conduit again? These are questions that completely change a relationship.

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This is a disingenous argument. People get used by gods for enacting their will all the time. You don't even need to worship them, thats just how gods work.
Worship just means it might actually happen with some consistency.

Take Mathilde's personal encounters:
-Back against the Singer King she was at the right place at the right time with the right kind of magic going on to hit undead with Holy Burning Shadows. Sigmar took a hand, even if not in a very big way.
-Against Stromfels, Ranald was deliberately invoked by his priests.
-By Mork against Only Gork, Mathilde just happened to be in the right place at the right time, doing an action he'd approve of, in a way he approves of.
-By Ranald when we asked him to "catch"

Every Dwarf retaking the hold in battle could with complete honesty say their gods were with them.
Its rare that it happens with so much POWER going on, but the fact of it happening is something that any high priest, including Kragg, is fairly familiar with the concept of happening.

Mathilde didn't know it could happen because the Colleges are theurgistically minimalist.

I would argue that destroying a fortress town and all its inhabitants to the last because you were shortchanged by two pennies in the payment for its construction, a fortress-town built for a noble of their greatest ally, probably helps in causing them to decline.

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This tale is always brought up as an example of dwarf grudges being unreasonable but its not necessarily so at all?
Because in this story what is likely to actually happen is:
-Payment was made.
-Dwarfs measured the payment, found themselves short some coin, which could be either deliberate, stolen by a subordinate or because the coins were debased/shaved.
-Dwarfs raise the matter in protest. Its Umgi, making a mistake while counting is expected.
-Protest is laughed off.
-Dwarfs attempt to claim the difference directly from the lord.
-Lord resists martially, calls the militia/army on them.
-Dwarfs fight, kill everyone still resisting, claim the difference from their corpses and count it satisfied

A digression from the current debate, but I am a bit sad that we are ignoring our journeymanlings except Panoramia.

I like dwarves as much as the next SV user, but I would still like to spread our social interactions a bit.

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I'm voting for the Amber mages because the Demigryphs are a big tactical change and I'd like to know how well they do so we can assign them intelligently.

I'm also voting for Johan so we can clear the air by getting to know him instead of just speculating all kinds of ill intent on his part.

And I'm voting for Maxmillian to know how he feels about the archers' performance, if they were spooked by battlemagic.

 

[WorldSlayer]

That is manifestly not true, humanity is doing much better than it did say two thousand years ago, it's progressing not declining, even the high elves who have to contend with similar low birth rates have modest gains under the current king.

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As an aside four and a half thousand years ago Nehekhara was pretty much at its height. So humanity isn't really doing better per se. It's more of an up and down thing.

OK I'll let you all go back to the argument now.

 

[butchock]

[] Join the hunting with Esbern and Seija
[] Join the hunting with Maximilian

- added these to my vote to talk to the two beast mages about the Spiders and making use of them

 

[Ganurath]

At least for Kragg himself, this is just giving him another, good target/reason to feed his hate, and that's direct word of QM, that his hate feeds his spells.

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No, that's Mathilde POV narration, and therefore conjecture on her part. I'll acknowledge that it isn't fanon, simply a failure to differentiate between in character narration and Word of QM. Mathilde isn't the sort to root her reasoning to reveal a secret in an uninformed hypothesis that might just be a poetic description of Kragg's motivating forces, though, so it still isn't a valid motivating factor for her to reveal the details to Kragg.

And for some reason, you never protested those.

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I didn't read them, since doing so wouldn't provide me any means by which to persuade anyone on the side I disagreed with to change sides. Expecting me to be upset about written fanon that I didn't read is like expecting me to be upset about a link to Rick Astley's Never Gonna Give You Up that I didn't click.

 

[Neshuakadal]

My point was that its not some bizarre never before seen thing. There is a frame of reference for it to be evaluated. We unknowingly stepped into a big divine ritual, I doubt this is the first time that has happened. Gods doing a thing is something that the locals just deal with, unwittingly ending up involved in a God doing a thing is to me at least, unlikely to be a massive dark secret unless the god is known to taint people.

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Oh, when in the recorded history of warhammer fantasy has an individual been proven to have been a conduit of a god? I know that in a future that never was an argument could be made that Karl Franz was a conduit for Sigmar at the battle of blackfire pass, but other than that do you know of other times when someone was a conduit for a god? I can't think of any other times expect for maybe a couple of myths of the elves during the first great chaos incursion. Even then those can't really be proven. I would be more than happy to hear more about this apparently semi common event.

Beside there is a difference of ending up involved in a god doing a thing and being the conduit for the god doing the thing. Lets look at Kragg the grim. Are the soldiers watching the lava bursting out of the ground involved with what he is doing? Yes they are. They are there trying to avoid being hit by lava. Are the soldiers being empowered by Kragg involved with what he is doing? Yes but it is a completely different level of involvement. They are the means by which Kragg is achieving his goal. That is completely different from simply being on the bleachers while a god is doing it's thing.

You discuss that there is frame of reference for something like this being evaluated. Yet you don't give a frame of reference that would be used. How many times has a dwarf been possessed by Mork in the past. Remember we are discussing this with dwarfs so we have to use the dwarf view point. How many times has a dwarf been possessed by their gods? You state that gods doing their things is just something that people deal with but you seem to fail to realize the magnitude of difference between being possessed by a god and surviving a natural storm that a god sent.

This is a disingenous argument. People get used by gods for enacting their will all the time. You don't even need to worship them, thats just how gods work.
Worship just means it might actually happen with some consistency.

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People being used by a god to enact their will is also very different from being possessed. When Wolf drew an arcane card from a deck right before we met him you could say Ranald was using him to achieve a purpose. Yet he was not an avatar of Ranald. He did not have a hole punched through his soul and was not puppeted around. When Kasmir got a crit and Sigmar magnified that blessing Kasmir was not an avatar of Sigmar. We got a hole punched through our soul by Mork and got turned into a puppet. Are you saying that something of that magnitude happens all the time? Are there a bunch of people with holes in their soul and experience being a puppet? Of losing all free will? If so then surely Mathilde would have heard about such things before.

I feel it is very disingenuous not to consider the magnitude of an event. A city being hit by a 1.1 earthquake is very different than a city being hit by an 7.9 earthquake. Just so a person simply being used by a god to achieve an event is very different from a god punching a hole in someone's soul and making them a puppet.

 

[random_npc]

This tale is always brought up as an example of dwarf grudges being unreasonable but its not necessarily so at all?
Because in this story what is likely to actually happen is:
-Payment was made.
-Dwarfs measured the payment, found themselves short some coin, which could be either deliberate, stolen by a subordinate or because the coins were debased/shaved.
-Dwarfs raise the matter in protest. Its Umgi, making a mistake while counting is expected.
-Protest is laughed off.
-Dwarfs attempt to claim the difference directly from the lord.
-Lord resists martially, calls the militia/army on them.
-Dwarfs fight, kill everyone still resisting, claim the difference from their corpses and count it satisfied

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I've seen two or three different versions of that tale, with varying amounts of reasonableness from the dwarves. Given the soft cannon where everything should be treated as somewhat unreliable, I suspect there is not a defnative canon for how it went down.

My headcanon on it is that its a famous story with lots of variations you'll hear in any town with a dwarf quarter, with the truth of the matter hopelessly lost to time. Since even the dwarves are not sure what incident its talking about since its mutated so much.

Oh, when in the recorded history of warhammer fantasy has an individual been proven to have been a conduit of a god?

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Every time a priest casts a spell. Gods getting handsy is not really uncommon, and while gork was fresher than normal, its not qualitatively that different than more common divine interventions.

 

[WorldSlayer]

Oh, when in the recorded history of warhammer fantasy has an individual been proven to have been a conduit of a god? I know that in a future that never was an argument could be made that Karl Franz was a conduit for Sigmar at the battle of blackfire pass, but other than that do you know of other times when someone was a conduit for a god?

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The Everqueen is a goodish example here. Better yet check out Ariel and Isha. There's also Orion from the Wood Elf faction.

Every time a priest casts a spell.

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This is pretty clearly asking for notable avatars.

 

[DragonParadox]

This tale is always brought up as an example of dwarf grudges being unreasonable but its not necessarily so at all?
Because in this story what is likely to actually happen is:
-Payment was made.
-Dwarfs measured the payment, found themselves short some coin, which could be either deliberate, stolen by a subordinate or because the coins were debased/shaved.
-Dwarfs raise the matter in protest. Its Umgi, making a mistake while counting is expected.
-Protest is laughed off.
-Dwarfs attempt to claim the difference directly from the lord.
-Lord resists martially, calls the militia/army on them.
-Dwarfs fight, kill everyone still resisting, claim the difference from their corpses and count it satisfied

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That does not actually make the dwarfs sound any less crazy by the standards of anyone not a dwarf, they skill killed and died for a handful of pennies.

 

[primemountain]

I didn't read them, since doing so wouldn't provide me any means by which to persuade anyone on the side I disagreed with to change sides. Expecting me to be upset about written fanon that I didn't read is like expecting me to be upset about a link to Rick Astley's Never Gonna Give You Up that I didn't click.

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See that. Now see this:

As a member of the Worm fandom, I'm more than a little hostile toward people trying to pass off fanon and/or their personal headcanon as the actual canon of the setting. As far as I can tell, this is what you're doing by claiming knowledge of the processes of runecraft, and that any argument you've made rooted on your unsupported (that is to say, uncited) assertions ought to be dismissed on the basis of an invalid premise.

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Notice the lack of generalization. So what we must conclude is that this:

As for the telling thing: It's telling that you did not protest them. The options left are that you did not protest them because they agree with your head-cannon, so you didn't notice they were head-cannon; or because they were aiding a side you support, namely slaying silent, so why would you speak out against your own side?

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Is true. Only even worse, you didn't even bother to subject your own side to the same "more than a little hostile toward people trying to pass off fanon and/or their personal headcanon as the actual canon of the setting" standard. Which makes the previous statement, a direct proven,half-truth.

It's not "I'm more than a little hostile toward people trying to pass off fanon and/or their personal headcanon as the actual canon of the setting."

It's "I'm more than a little hostile toward people trying to pass off fanon and/or their personal headcanon as the actual canon of the setting, except when my side is doing it. Then I'll ignore it and won't even both to check because I care more about winning the argument, then how it's won."

You're ok with Headcannon, as long as your side is the one doing it. So much ok with them, that you didn't even bother checking what they were saying in their arguments. But you jumped down my throat right away, because it endangered what you really cared about here.

You care more about winning the argument, than the people doing the arguing or doing it right. This is not arguing in good faith, subjecting the two sides to differing standards.

I do believe that concludes this conversation. Have a nice day.

 

[Exmorri]

That does not actually make the dwarfs sound any less crazy by the standards of anyone not a dwarf, they skill killed and died for a handful of pennies.

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Please don't paint everyone you disagree with as crazy. Please don't talk like you are Speaker for Humanity. The dwarves may have escalated faster and more harshly than humans, but there's only a difference of degree between that and some IRL human legal systems that will absolutely escalate to deadly violence over pennies.

 

[Andmeuths]

Given how @BoneyM reminds us that he pays attention to the arguments in this thread, I have a sinking feeling that whichever option (Disclosure or SIlence) wins, the QM is going to roll several dices in the backstage to determine how many of the fears expressed in this thread actually come true. Hopefully not with a 1D6 again.

 

[DragonParadox]

Please don't paint everyone you disagree with as crazy. Please don't talk like you are Speaker for Humanity. The dwarves may have escalated faster and more harshly than humans, but there's only a difference of degree between that and some IRL human legal systems that will absolutely escalate to deadly violence over pennies.

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I'm not painting everyone who disagrees with me as crazy, I'm painting darkly humorous warhammer lore as crazy, as I think the designers intended. Dark comedy that shades into tragedy is the heart of Warhammer whatever its form.

 

[Neshuakadal]

I've seen two or three different versions of that tale, with varying amounts of reasonableness from the dwarves. Given the soft cannon where everything should be treated as somewhat unreliable, I suspect there is not a defnative canon for how it went down.

My headcanon on it is that its a famous story with lots of variations you'll hear in any town with a dwarf quarter, with the truth of the matter hopelessly lost to time. Since even the dwarves are not sure what incident its talking about.




Every time a priest casts a spell.

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They aren't a avatar when that happens. Do try and keep your examples to roughly the same magnitude of what Mathilde went through. A priest doesn't get his soul blown open every time he casts a spell.

I don't even agree with you that priests are acting as conduits for their gods. But that gets into a bunch of IRL theology and I am not well versed at all in the theology of warhammer fantasy.

It really looks like you went and deiced to pick an example that was the most harmless and least threatening example and completely ignore the actually magnitude of the event which had happened. If this event is one the same level as a priest casting a spell then there would be no need to bring it up with Belegar. Because such events happen all the time and who would care. We don't go to Belegar every time we cast a spell. If the event that Mathilde went through was of the level of a priest casting a spell this vote wouldn't happen.

 

[EVA-Saiyajin]

Goodnight y'all. Despite this kerfuffle, my love of this quest has not diminished in the slightest.

 

[mc2rpg]

[X] Tell Belegar and Kragg.

[X] Join the hunting with Esbern and Seija
[X] Join the hunting with Maximilian
[X] 'Make sure the ale hasn't gone bad' with Johann

[X] Gambling
[X] Hold a Ranaldan religious service
[X] Valayan religious service

[X] Yes to Shenanigans

 

[Alectai]

Agreed, it's just the consequences of two contentuous votes over the same topic in quick succession fraying everyone's nerves I think.

I'll be happy when this is resolved and I can know to stop feeling in utter terror.

 

[Gul Damar]

[X] Tell Belegar and Kragg.

[X] Help move the Karag Nar hoard

Indifferent to anything else. The hoard needs to be moved before something bad happens and tears the Expedition apart.

 

[Travler66]

[X] Remain silent.

[X] Join the hunting with Maximilian

[X] Join the hunting with Ruprecht Wulfhart
[X] 'Make sure the ale hasn't gone bad' with Skaroki

[X] Telling war stories
[X] Gambling
[X] Help move the Karag Nar hoard

[X] Yes to Shenanigans

 

[primemountain]

Agreed, it's just the consequences of two contentuous votes over the same topic in quick succession fraying everyone's nerves I think.

I'll be happy when this is resolved and I can know to stop feeling in utter terror.

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Holy shit alec! I mean now I just feel bad. You must be really invested to feel terror over this. And here I am just kind of enjoying myself reading a nice quest. Had no idea you were so into it. Take a walk, drink some milk. Relax man. Whatever happens, we'll deal with it. Tiny but fierce, eh?

 

[dacsan]

[X] Tell Belegar and Kragg.

[X] Join the hunting with Esbern and Seija
[X] Join the hunting with Maximilian
[X] 'Make sure the ale hasn't gone bad' with Johann

[X] Gambling
[X] Hold a Ranaldan religious service
[X] Valayan religious service

[X] Yes to Shenanigans

 

[Alectai]

Holy shit alec! I mean now I just feel bad. You must be really invested to feel terror over this. And here I am just kind of enjoying myself reading a nice quest. Had no idea you were so into it. Take a walk, drink some milk. Relax man. Whatever happens, we'll deal with it. Tiny but fierce, eh?

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I have been following this quest from the second update, Mathilde has largely been generated from a character design I presented that the initial crew agreed on.

So yeah, I would say I'm into it, yes. So when I see a lot of people looking at the big picture and forgetting that the little picture is still very much in flux and we haven't even dealt with the Today Problems, I start screaming a bit internally.

Because you can't start addressing the big picture until the little picture is in order, introducing more chaos into it without purpose is madness

 

[veekie]

They aren't a avatar when that happens. Do try and keep your examples to roughly the same magnitude of what Mathilde went through. A priest doesn't get his soul blown open every time he casts a spell.

I don't even agree with you that priests are acting as conduits for their gods. But that gets into a bunch of IRL theology and I am not well versed at all in the theology of warhammer fantasy.

It really looks like you went and deiced to pick an example that was the most harmless and least threatening example and completely ignore the actually magnitude of the event which had happened. If this event is one the same level as a priest casting a spell then there would be no need to bring it up with Belegar. Because such events happen all the time and who would care. We don't go to Belegar every time we cast a spell. If the event that Mathilde went through was of the level of a priest casting a spell this vote wouldn't happen.

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Harping on Avatars don't really help.
Its a matter of DEGREE, not nature.

Mathilde is still doing what she set out to do, and the divine synchronization fell off dramatically as soon as what she wanted to do and what the god wanted to do was no longer in sync.

This is not unique to wizards. If an adventurer was there being Cunningly Brutal Mork would happily jack them to do it. If an Orc that's not heretical was there? Fuck, Mork would probably outright promote them to Warboss and let em have at it.


Hell, its the basic principle of people finding Chaos in moments of extreme emotion. If you're enough like their domain, in that moment they can reach out and touch you.

 

[veekie]

Holy shit alec! I mean now I just feel bad. You must be really invested to feel terror over this. And here I am just kind of enjoying myself reading a nice quest. Had no idea you were so into it. Take a walk, drink some milk. Relax man. Whatever happens, we'll deal with it. Tiny but fierce, eh?

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Don't worry too much. Alectai gets VERY invested to his credit. He's also right often enough to give some credit when he's not completely freaking out. And even when he's freaking the points are usually solid, just...blown out of proportion.

The extended debate probably has him strung out like piano wire. And we're all going ting ting ting on it

 

[Neshuakadal]

Harping on Avatars don't really help.
Its a matter of DEGREE, not nature.

Mathilde is still doing what she set out to do, and the divine synchronization fell off dramatically as soon as what she wanted to do and what the god wanted to do was no longer in sync.

This is not unique to wizards. If an adventurer was there being Cunningly Brutal Mork would happily jack them to do it. If an Orc that's not heretical was there? Fuck, Mork would probably outright promote them to Warboss and let em have at it.


Hell, its the basic principle of people finding Chaos in moments of extreme emotion. If you're enough like their domain, in that moment they can reach out and touch you.

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Well I disagree with you on the topic of degree and nature. To me an avatar happens when a specific degree of divine intervention is reached. It's nature is completely different than almost anything else.

However lets move on from that. If it is a matter of degrees you wish to discuss lets talk about degrees. If the event that Mathilde went through was the same degree as a priest casting a spell, as random_npc has implied, then why is there a vote? Something so mundane and common would never be breached with King Belegar. He is far too busy to deal with each spell a priest casts.

 

[veekie]

Well I disagree with you on the topic of degree and nature. To me an avatar happens when a specific degree of divine intervention is reached. It's nature is completely different than almost anything else.

However lets move on from that. If it is a matter of degrees you wish to discuss lets talk about degrees. If the event that Mathilde went through was the same degree as a priest casting a spell, as random_npc has implied, then why is there a vote? Something so mundane and common would never be breached with King Belegar. He is far too busy to deal with each spell a priest casts.

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Because of the degree if what happened, because she would prefer a priest's input on what the shit happened and Kragg is THE expert as far as judging is concerned.

Basically its outside her expertise as a lay worshipper, which is why getting a priest's advice in confidence is useful for understanding how it might happen.