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Warhammer Fantasy: Divided Loyalties - an Advisor's Quest

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Andres said:
Manling smiths typically use rivets and leather strapping in order to hold their suits of armour together as a coherent unit, welds being beyond the ability of most of them
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And also, because armour needs to move and you need to take it on and off and no one welds armour together! WTF 4e? Did the writers look up armour and find stuff about tank armour being welded and just run with it?
 
I am currently unable, a haven't been able for some time, to access either Divided Loyalties campaign roll history or @Boney 's personal roll history on Orokos. Is it just me or it's a known thing?
 
Aule said:
I am currently unable, a haven't been able for some time, to access either Divided Loyalties campaign roll history or Boney's personal roll history on Orokos. Is it just me or it's a known thing?
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It's been a thing for a while now. Boney's been avoiding the site when he's had to make public rolls.
 
DragonParadox said:
I don't think they do. Keep in mind this is Warhammer, it is not a nice place and mental health as much as any other aspect of public health is not going to somehow be up to modern standards. And there is no spell to fix this... well OK there may be but that is Gold Magic. I seem to recall that back when we were talking about Eike in the context of her faith Boney said that the matter of self-care was one which the Cult of Shayla has strong debates on. So they at least acknowledge it, but that is not the same as all of them being in agreement as to how it should be addressed.

At a guess what efforts are made have to do with cycling out people who are burning out. It probably helps that they have traveling priests, so when someone with a very stressful job looks like they can no longer do it their fellows can just go 'right you are off on the road'. The wiggle room in that stricture is 'what does it mean to say you?' So an individual Shaylan asking for leave or some anti-stress measures would be in trouble with the strictures, but their boss telling them to take a break is probably fine in most places. That does put a lot of pressure on those who work alone or in small groups though.
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K von Carstein said:
Even irl, these are very big problems among nurses and doctors. I doubt an organisation existing in the Warhammer world is much better at managing them.
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Warhammer is Warhammer but I am pretty sure that most of those humans leading stressful lives have coping mechanisms. Even if for many it is just far too much alcohol or being cruel to animals or beating effigy halflings with sticks or joining illegal cults.
What makes Shallyans special is that their strictures seem to forbid coping, let alone healthy coping. Real life humans are bad enough at it as is and real life employers are often terrible at making space for it and caring that it happens. In the past it was even worse. But here we literally have a religion that reinforces self-neglect, in tandem with all the mundane things not rooted in fantasy that already reinforce self-neglect more than enough.
 
Rafin said:
Warhammer is Warhammer but I am pretty sure that most of those humans leading stressful lives have coping mechanisms. Even if for many it is just far too much alcohol or being cruel to animals or beating effigy halflings with sticks or joining illegal cults.
What makes Shallyans special is that their strictures seem to forbid coping, let alone healthy coping. Real life humans are bad enough at it as is and real life employers are often terrible at making space for it and caring that it happens. In the past it was even worse. But here we literally have a religion that reinforces self-neglect, in tandem with all the mundane things not rooted in fantasy that already reinforce self-neglect more than enough.
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Religious mandates that call for self-sacrifice are hardly unknown in our world, it varies by religion of course, but when you come right down to it as with most such things it comes down to the wording and the theology that we cannot see in one phrase. As I said above, it could simply be that Shayllans have a responsibility to care for their fellow priests as much as for their other patients.
 
Just saying, while you aren't supposed to expend energy on your own happiness, there's nothing stopping your fellow Shallyans from expending energy on your happiness, or your energy on theirs.
 
Rafin said:
Warhammer is Warhammer but I am pretty sure that most of those humans leading stressful lives have coping mechanisms. Even if for many it is just far too much alcohol or being cruel to animals or beating effigy halflings with sticks or joining illegal cults.
What makes Shallyans special is that their strictures seem to forbid coping, let alone healthy coping. Real life humans are bad enough at it as is and real life employers are often terrible at making space for it and caring that it happens. In the past it was even worse. But here we literally have a religion that reinforces self-neglect, in tandem with all the mundane things not rooted in fantasy that already reinforce self-neglect more than enough.
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No, at most it forbids the concept of a coping strategy, a consciously chosen technique for coping more effectively. The human animal is robust and will probably persist even under the weight of a great deal of suffering. Insofar as any particular piece of cognitive self-maintenance is useful it's not because it's strictly necessary and no one could possibly do without, it's because "probably" and "persist" aren't really the words we'd want in that sentence about our lives.

Moreover, there are plenty of religions, both real and fictional, which place requirements on their followers that, if strictly followed, would prevent them from living reasonable ordinary lives. The general solution is that the religious community decides that those requirements aren't actually essential for every single follower, they're a special think for priests or cloistered monks or something and everyone else should just try their best or do it on holidays or whatever. (Or, you know, ignore it entirely.) The standard follower goes on following their watered down version, still thinking of themselves as good worshippers (albeit, not quite as good as the priests and monks) and being supported in that belief by their community because no one else wants to be committed to that sort of obligation either.
 
I mean, if people strictly followed the teachings in the bible, we would have no savings accounts, or extra coat.
But that would be silly.
So almost nobody does that.
Instead we, interpret, the teachings to fit us, so we can have a spare coat just in case, and save money for the future.
 
I would like to clarify because I made a mistake in the wording. The exact wording of the stricture is:

"Do not waste energy on your own pleasure."

So yeah, not exactly happiness. Similar but not exactly the same. I'm not sure how much this actually changes the discussion, but I felt it was worth pointing out because I was the one to post the stricture.
 
Now, anyone want to make bets on how many schisms have been had over the definitions of waste, your own, and pleasure?
Because i am seeing plenty of loopholes. :V
 
Codex said:
I would like to clarify because I made a mistake in the wording. The exact wording of the stricture is:

"Do not waste energy on your own pleasure."

So yeah, not exactly happiness. Similar but not exactly the same. I'm not sure how much this actually changes the discussion, but I felt it was worth pointing out because I was the one to post the stricture.
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Huh. If one wants, one could interpret that as meaning that they should act like lazy starfish in bed.
 
Rafin said:
Huh. If one wants, one could interpret that as meaning that they should act like lazy starfish in bed.
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Other Strictures deal with what you're supposed to do:

• Avoid killing. (All followers of Shallya take this stricture extremely seriously.)
• Never refuse healing to a supplicant genuinely in need.
• Never halt a soul when it is time for it to depart.
• Go about your life unarmed. A stout walking staff is all you'll ever need.
• Abhor the Fly Lord in all his forms.

Never refuse healing is actually a hot topic for Shallyans.
 
Pleasure does have slightly different connotations than happiness, even if they're denotationally synonyms. Happiness is more of a solid baseline thing where pleasure is more about seeking peaks. I don't think it matters that much in terms of outcome, but it might give lay Shallyans a bit of an easier time figuring out where to draw the lines and defending them from the more fundamentalist sorts.
 
Saidoro said:
Pleasure does have slightly different connotations than happiness, even if they're denotationally synonyms. Happiness is more of a solid baseline thing where pleasure is more about seeking peaks. I don't think it matters that much in terms of outcome, but it might give lay Shallyans a bit of an easier time figuring out where to draw the lines and defending them from the more fundamentalist sorts.
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It's still really dumb. An unhappy worker is a bad worker, and that's not even getting into recruitment issues.
 
There's also the thing about kids with Shallyan parents having a rougher time than those whose parents follow other faiths, since all the money past the bare minimum that would've gone towards nicer clothes and birthday treats and fun toys and whatnot get donated to charity.
 
StormySky said:
There's also the thing about kids with Shallyan parents having a rougher time than those whose parents follow other faiths, since all the money past the bare minimum that would've gone towards nicer clothes and birthday treats and fun toys and whatnot get donated to charity.
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You don't have to worry about that too much because it's explicitly mentioned that "Most Shallyan Priestesses are orphans raised in Shallyan orphanages, destined from birth for the job". The only initiates that get promoted to Priest are those who "show a lack of concern for their own comfort". No wonder Shallyans and the Light Order get along. They both haunt orphanages.
 
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Codex said:
You don't have to worry about that too much because it's explicitly mentioned that "Most Shallyan Priestesses are orphans raised in Shallyan orphanages, destined from birth for the job". The only initiates that get promoted to Priest are those who "show a lack of concern for their own comfort". No wonder Shallyans and the Light Order get along. They both haunt orphanages.
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I recall it also being mentioned that many among those Shallyan priestesses who do end up having children tend to be raising them among the orphans to avoid favoritism on their part.
 
One thing I am curious about is how the Shallyans deal with the situation where a healer fucked up and hurt or killed someone because they did not take proper care of themselves. I mean healing is a practical thing and it can be dangerous to hand out foxglove for someone's heart when you are working off three hours of sleep or similar. Nursing people though the night is nice and all but some things take a bit less more time and a bit of focus. On the other hand 'enough sleep' probably is not the sort of thing that anyone but an extremist would call pleasure so I do not think it comes up often.
 
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