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Warhammer Fantasy: Divided Loyalties - an Advisor's Quest

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I've noticed Mathilde has the tendency to encourage people to talk about their interests and just enjoy the outcome. For Panoramia, it just reminds me of this image:
 
Alliterate said:
Only thing better is 'Eight-Waystone font of Ghyran' nerd mode?
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Panoramia geeking out about something and Panoramia as a blazing pylon of magical power activate two entirely separate sets of neurons for Mathilde.

Codex said:
Either way, there's still room for omakes to have fun anyway.
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The part about the trees watching them during lunch did suggest the dialogue 'let's give them something to watch', but dendroexhibitionism is a bit saucier than I've been trending for DL.
 
Codex said:
I've noticed Mathilde has the tendency to encourage people to talk about their interests and just enjoy the outcome. For Panoramia, it just reminds me of this image:
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It's the best way to learn new and interesting things, both about them and in general. For the people she likes, that just makes good socializing. For the people she doesn't… Grey Wizard. Also lots of diplomacy and intrigue.
Boney said:
Panoramia geeking out about something and Panoramia as a blazing pylon of magical power activate two entirely separate sets of neurons for Mathilde.
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See, I read that as Panoramia nerding out about being a blazing pylon of magical power.
 
Boney said:
The part about the trees watching them during lunch did suggest the dialogue 'let's give them something to watch', but dendroexhibitionism is a bit saucier than I've been trending for DL.
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I'll keep that in mind for DL After Dark I suppose. I'm surprised Mathilde would even think of the suggestion. I suppose she's a bit braver than I anticipated.
 
Codex said:
I'll keep that in mind for DL After Dark I suppose. I'm surprised Mathilde would even think of the suggestion. I suppose she's a bit braver than I anticipated.
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Mathilde is fearless when she knows where she stands and when the stakes are high. Where she has trouble is when she's the one wrestling with ambiguities rather than wielding them, and when the stakes are solely personal. And when she's in an established relationship, the 'what are you into and what are you curious about getting into' conversation is a perfectly natural and normal one to have.
 
mastigos said:
The part that surprises me is that Mathilda didn't casually see that from the beginning. Both because of her advanced windsight, and because confusion is Ulgu
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The way plants experience emotion is completely different in every way to how animals do, right down to how that interacts with the Winds - that's why and how Dreaming Woods exist. Mathilde would be able to see the same things Panoramia is seeing, but she doesn't have the understanding to interpret it.
 
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Boney said:
The way plants experience emotion is completely different in every way to how animals do, right down to how that interacts with the Winds - that's why and how Dreaming Woods exist. Mathilde would be able to see the same things Panoramia is seeing, but she doesn't have the understanding to interpret it.
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Wow, you answered that in the like 10 seconds it took for me to delete my post after realizing something similar
 
pucflek said:
You literally put in the option to romance a cluster of man sized spiders and a Dragon. No excuses :V
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And I would have been just as tastefully PG with them if they had won.

mastigos said:
Wow, you answered that in the like 10 seconds it took for me to delete my post after realizing something similar
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I've got quote alerts on so you only have a few seconds before I tab back over and refresh the page. But it's a good question that raises a point that wouldn't be immediately obvious to a lot of people. The idea that plants can have emotions is an idea most people wouldn't have been exposed to (and they do - plants are capable of paratonic movements in response to external stimuli, which by definition means they have some form of emotions), and most people would think that magical trees would just magically have animal emotions instead of them just having deeper versions of plant emotions.
 
Boney said:
capable of paratonic movements in response to external stimuli, which by definition means they have some form of emotions
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I disagree here. By definition emotions are mental states, not just any reaction to external stimuli; else you would have to also say that your computer experiences emotions when you type a chapter and it reacts to pressed keys by adding new symbols. Common plants do not have minds, not even carnivorous plants. Granted, an oversoul of a magical forest would have a mind, but it's not quite the mind of a plant.

... Unless I misunderstood your point entirely.
 
Boney said:
Your work in the northern parts of the continent keeps you away from Karak Eight Peaks for the majority of your time, but you return there fairly regularly to consult your personal library, to make decisions regarding the construction of your much larger one, and, of course, to spend time with Panoramia.
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It's nice to have explicit confirmation in the update that Mathilde goes back to K8P regularly and that she spends time with Panoramia just as frequently. I know it was happening but it's nice to be reassured that everything's fine at home.
Boney said:
Now, with the Jade Order officially a party to the Waystone Project, there's no barrier save her busy schedule keeping her from visiting you in Laurelorn, with the side-benefit of it giving her the opportunity to explore the most magical and benign forest within the Empire's borders. So with a packed lunch and a satchel full of tools and sample containers the two of you set off into the forest to see how the long habitation of the Eonir has shaped it.
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Nothing quite like packing some testing equipment for your date in a magic forest. Mathilde and Panoramia might not have the most conventional of romances, but it's probably fairly tame when it comes to Wizards.

Also, is it just me or does Boney have a tendency to mention lunch in every date Mathilde goes on with Panoramia? I think they've gone eating in every single one of them. It's certainly realistic, but I find it somewhat amusing. I distinctly remember "enjoy lunch" being used several times so far. It's part of date formula by now. It makes me curious what they've packed for lunch. Does Mathilde ever try cooking something? Is Panoramia the one who cooks them? Do they order out? I'm curious.
Boney said:
"A forest is a forest, isn't it?" you ask of her as the two of you make your way into the trees.

She smiles at you, seeing right through your play of ignorance, but responds anyway.
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Ah, this is so sweet. Mathilde's playful phrase clearly meant to set Panoramia off on a rant. Pan seeing through it because that's what she does. Her smiling and acknowledging it but going ahead because she knows that's what Mathilde wants (and I'm sure she enjoys it). They're really good for each other.
Boney said:
At first glance it might be the same, but if you look close you start to see the small external changes that hint at how much has changed underneath. For instance, look at this." She walks over to a nearby tree with a large vine wrapped around the trunk. "A rooted scandent vine, possibly hemiparastic, possibly just a liana, there's debate about whether that's commensalist or even symbiotic. But look, the climbing pattern is unnaturally uniform. See there?" She points upwards into the canopy. "Though the trunk narrows higher up, the gap between the distance between bands remains the same."
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I forgot to quote the starting part, but I like the comparison between how Dwarfs turn mountains to Karaks and Elves turn forests into their realms. It's a nice contrast.

Then there's the technical talk. Lots of terms I have no knowledge of that makes me suspect that either Boney's done a frankly ludicrous amount of research or that he's somehow acquainted with Biology/ecology to a far greater degree than I anticipated. Google tells me Scandent means that something has the habit of climbing, so climbing vines. I'm assuming the next phrase is "Hemiparasitic", which means that it's a plant that acquires nutrients through parasitism. Lianas are woody climbing plants typically found in rainforests. Commensalist is a biology term meaning a relationship where one party benefits but the other does not benefit or suffer harm, kind of like a counterpoint to parasitic (one party benefits other is harmed) and symbiotic (both parties benefit).

Overall, all the technical terms basically combine to just say that this tree seems to have a particular inclination towards being climbable in a way that would hardly be possible through natural evolution, so it was clearly crafted for that purpose.
Boney said:
She gives the vine an experimental tug, then without hesitation she starts clambering upwards. You watch her progress until you're satisfied she's not going to slip and fall, and then use Smoke and Mirrors to appear on the branch she's heading towards.
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I'm going to make the obvious joke about "hating to see her leave, but loving to watch her go" in regards to one of the reasons Mathilde briefly stayed behind before teleporting.
Boney said:
"Do you have to do the smoke every time?" she observes wryly as she pulls herself up onto the branch.

"Actually, yes. The spell is actually simpler if broken into cantrips and interwoven with another piece of magic, so I use an Illusion of some smoke. It's the only spell powerful enough while also being benign and not dependent on specific circumstances."
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I like that this implies that Mathilde's standard teleport is always accompanied by smoke. But also, I find Mathilde's response amusing because technically she doesn't need to do the smoke everytime. She could always make some other minor illusion. She probably just likes adding the "Smoke" to "Smoke and Mirrors". You can't take the showman out of Mathilde.
Boney said:
"Ooh, commensalist magic. I wonder, does that indicate an inefficiency in the base design that the interweaving manages to bypass, or is it a cunning use of harmonious design? Anyway, the reason we're up here."
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Commensalist again. I like that Panoramia seems to be using biology terms to refer to even non-biological aspects, and Mathilde's use of the word "sessile" might be indicating that even Mathilde is picking it up through close proximity.

Also, this is interesting in that Panoramia is expressing interest in the structure of magical spells outside her order. We've never gotten much talk from her about magic itself, primarily Pan talks about plans and agriculture and similar things. She really needs to get to Magister at some point. I have a feeling she'd excel with the magic she gets dispensation to learn by that point.
Boney said:
She looks at where the vine finishes its climb by wrapping itself around a fork in the branches, creating an almost completely flat platform. She puts a foot onto it experimentally, then fully steps onto it. "It's a firing platform," she says. "Look, there's even less branches directly below here than on the other sides of the tree, and if you look there," she points, "you can see where the climbing vine has strangled out a branch that would have obstructed the view from here, but it worked around the ones on the other sides of the tree."
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It's interesting that the Eonir don't seem to have complete control over the tree itself, but they have control over the movement of the branching vine such that they can use it to choke out possible branches. I wonder if this is because they have more control over vines than trees or because they can manipulate the natural movements of the plants but can't alter the biological imperative to grow that trees so often have.

Anyways, it's some excellent and intriguing design, and I love the level of thought Boney puts into this and beyond in other sections to really show how the Forestborn and non-city inhabitants protect the forest. This place is excellent for guerilla tactics.
Boney said:
"So in the same way human tamed wolves into dogs, the Elves have tamed plants to do jobs for them?"

"We tamed plants too, you should see the wild ancestors of the plants we farm. But that's so much easier a job, just pick the largest seed or friendliest puppy to breed more of. To create something this specific must have taken either a much deeper understanding of selective breeding, or the use of magic to completely rebuild the organism for a specific purpose."
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I believe Broccoli is a purely human engineered plant? I haven't done a lot of research on the topic and I don't know if it's a thing in the current Warhammer period, but that's probably one of the biggest examples of "taming plants" that I personally know of.
Boney said:
"Cadaeth did imply that the lornalim weren't entirely natural. I'd figured that she meant that each plant was carefully sculpted as it grew for a specific purpose, but if they custom-make entire species for specific jobs..."
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I'm curious if Panoramia has met Cadaeth off screen or if Boney is saving that for a possible option later down the line. I wouldn't want to step on Boney's toes, but I'd be interested in writing it if Boney doesn't.

Either way, Panoramia probably knows about Cadaeth at least. I'm curious on what she thinks of her.
Boney said:
"Isn't that what their mythology says about them? That the Elves were custom-made as guardians of Ulthuan by Asuryan and Lileath?"

"It does contrast with what the Teutogens and Taleutens said, that they were the Chosen of Ulric and Taal respectively. That implies a selection from a pre-existing population, rather than them being made from scratch."
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It wouldn't be Mathilde if she didn't bring up her own personal theories and observations on particular topics that she's interested in, like the relationship between people and their gods that she's been delving into lately.
Boney said:
"Perhaps they inherited some of those techniques, and the Eonir have used them to shape the forest. A forest where no matter where you were, you could look around and find an easy climb to a concealed firing position with a great field of fire..." She looks down, and then kneels to inspect the underside of the platform. "With provisions too, judging by the fruit."

"Or a convenient source of poison for their arrows."

Panoramia withdraws her hand from where she'd been about to pluck one. "That would be a possibility too," she says, opening her satchel and fishing through it for gloves and a glass jar.
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Mildly comedic. Mathilde and Panoramia could form a comedy routine if they wanted. One where the "straight (wo)man" changes every skit (even though neither of them are straight! ba dum tsss :V ).

Anyways, it seems Panoramia can get distracted when she's excited, good to note. I'm sure Mathilde is familiar with that.
Boney said:
After Panoramia finishes collecting samples and observations from the vine, the two of you move on in your meander through the sculpted forest and come across several other oddities of interest. There is a tree that she theorizes accumulates trace minerals from the soil and concentrated them in nodules along its trunk, and in the hollows left by previously-extracted nodules spites have made their nests, and some glare menacingly out and chatter litanies of improbable threats.
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This is excellent worldbuilding to explain how the Eonir get their mineral deposits without having access to any mines or quarries that we know of. It also explains how some trees in Tor Lithanel seems to actual minerals inset onto them. Those trees are excellent for day to day life.

I suppose the job of Eonir "miners" is to extract the minerals from these nodules. Damn these trees are useful. Oh, and let's not forget the spites, because they don't seem likely to let you forget.
Boney said:
There are dense thickets of bushes with broad fronds that would provide excellent cover to the light-footed, and the habit the fronds have of folding in on themselves and revealing stems covered in long, hooked thorns mean that anyone with too heavy a tread will find no shelter among them.
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I suppose having identity verification on the plants would be difficult to improbable so they just went with the next best thing and have pressure plated plants. I note that this seems to be focused on light footed, so I assume Halflings could get through them. They're known for their light feet.
Boney said:
And the natural-looking paths through the trees that make wandering through Laurelorn so easy are fringed with coiled roots that, with some experimentation, Panoramia is able to provoke into uncoiling and choking a stretch of the path, turning it into an uneven and treacherous surface that would slow any march to a crawl.
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This sounds astoundingly useful for military endeavours. Damn could they choke supply lines and destroy enemy logistics with this. Wars are won based on movement, and this seems to turn the tides greatly in Laurelorn's favour.

I also note that Rite of Way can smooth those rough patches over probably, which hopefully never comes into relevance.
Boney said:
"There's an awareness to the trees," Panoramia says thoughtfully as the two of you enjoy your lunch in an excessively picturesque grove. "Which isn't unusual in itself, trees pay more attention than most people think, but it's usually only interoceptory unless something gets their attention. These trees are watching, and they're curious."
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My first thought in regards to the "excessively picturesque grove" was that this place was somehow specifically created as a dating spot and Mathilde researched it beforehand. If so, I'm not sure the trees would be all that surprised at people getting frisky :V

Also, another new word. Interoceptor. The definition I'm getting is pretty similar to proprioception as far as I understand it.
Boney said:
"The curiosity of a domesticated beast, or the curiosity of a confused sentry?"

"Good question." She mulls it over. "I don't think they're sentries, exactly. Their thoughts are too slow to make a decision quickly enough for that to be practical. But their attention being piqued would leave a trail in the wake of anyone with good Magesight and a familiarity with them."
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The trees are narcs. Good to know.
Boney said:
You run your eyes over the surrounding trees. "Firing platforms and metal farms and spite nests and caltrops and watchdogs, all in one. The entire forest has been sculpted into the ideal terrain for skirmish and attrition, a hundred miles of it in every direction around Tor Lithanel and the Wishing Woods and the Rainbow Falls."
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Laurelorn is certainly versatile. A veritable swiss army knife of a Forest.
Boney said:
"And then Nordland started peeling it away."

You nod grimly. "Schlaghugel is maybe sixty miles from Tor Lithanel, and their loggers would have been following the river upstream so it could carry the logs back to the village for processing. If they bypassed the hilly terrain immediately upriver of them, they could have been logging less than forty miles from Tor Lithanel's walls."
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Not exactly a great situation.
Boney said:
Panoramia grimaces. "That puts a new face on matters. I'd thought the matter was a match for the reputation of the Asrai, killing at the slightest provocation, over just a few felled trees and a few tiny villages on the wrong side of a river. But to lose half of their buffer zone..."

You nod. "And at a pace too slow for any one Nordlander to be meaningfully responsible. It's been eight hundred years of very slow encroachment."

She sighs. "What a mess."
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Tell me about it. It sure would be easy if things were simple, but they're really not. Let's just hope we can solve this problem... somehow.
Boney said:
The rest of the day passes similarly, and you find yourself quite happy to follow Panoramia and listen to her expound on a topic of such interest to her, both out of personal curiosity and out of enjoying listening to her speak with such passion and delight. By the time the sun starts to dip and the two of you return to the city her satchel is bulging with specimens, which gives you a perfect opportunity to introduce her to a laboratory filled with the finest Eonir artisanry that money can buy. Perhaps it hasn't been the most conventionally romantic day, but you wouldn't change anything about it.
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Mathilde is kind of like that rich boyfriend who shows off his sick new ride to his girlfriend in hopes of impressing her, except in this case it's showing off lab equipment. They're so quirky. I love it.

I might prefer the tarn date for fluffy feels, but I love this update nevertheless. It was comfy.
 
Aule said:
I disagree here. By definition emotions are mental states, not just any reaction to external stimuli; else you would have to also say that your computer experiences emotions when you type a chapter and it reacts to pressed keys by adding new symbols. Common plants do not have minds, not even carnivorous plants. Granted, an oversoul of a magical forest would have a mind, but it's not quite the mind of a plant.
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Using 'mind' here would rule out most invertebrates, who often don't have a single centralized brain that one could point to as the location of a 'mind'. Is it still an emotion if it's happening in an invertebrate's ganglion? If so, what meaningfully differentiates it from the same thing happening in a plant's bundle-sheath cells?

Codex said:
Also, is it just me or does Boney have a tendency to mention lunch in every date Mathilde goes on with Panoramia? I think they've gone eating in every single one of them. It's certainly realistic, but I find it somewhat amusing. I distinctly remember "enjoy lunch" being used several times so far. It's part of date formula by now. It makes me curious what they've packed for lunch. Does Mathilde ever try cooking something? Is Panoramia the one who cooks them? Do they order out? I'm curious.
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Karag Nar and the Eastern Valley have an extremely well-developed food culture, built around Halfling religious beliefs and farm-to-table practices, Dwarven cultural value of family meals and widespread availability of extremely good beers and ales, and Tilean coffee culture and spices. Because of this Mathilde and Panoramia treat meals as lynchpins of a proper day, rather than just putting enough kilojoules in the body to keep it running.

Codex said:
I believe Broccoli is a purely human engineered plant? I haven't done a lot of research on the topic and I don't know if it's a thing in the current Warhammer period, but that's probably one of the biggest examples of "taming plants" that I personally know of.
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Practically every cultivated plant is dramatically different to the wild varieties. Wild tomatoes look like cherries, wild corn looks like wheat, wild wheat looks like grass. It's mindboggling that ancient humans managed to completely transform these plants, and a humbling reminder that the people of the past were just as smart as anyone today, and lacked only in accumulated knowledge.

Codex said:
I'm curious if Panoramia has met Cadaeth off screen or if Boney is saving that for a possible option later down the line. I wouldn't want to step on Boney's toes, but I'd be interested in writing it if Boney doesn't.
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Feel free. I considered the possibility, but what I ended up writing didn't go that way.

Codex said:
Also, another new word. Interoceptor. The definition I'm getting is pretty similar to proprioception as far as I understand it.
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Interoceptive senses are the senses that focus on what's going on within the body instead of outside of it, and proprioception is one of those senses.
 
Codex said:
This is excellent worldbuilding to explain how the Eonir get their mineral deposits without having access to any mines or quarries that we know of. It also explains how some trees in Tor Lithanel seems to actual minerals inset onto them. Those trees are excellent for day to day life.
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I love that its not even that magical. I think there are some plants (or were it fungi?) that do similar stuff.
Codex said:
My first thought in regards to the "excessively picturesque grove" was that this place was somehow specifically created as a dating spot and Mathilde researched it beforehand. If so, I'm not sure the trees would be all that surprised at people getting frisky
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Another reason to be disappointed in no Treemen in Laurelorn. You can just see one reshaping the forest paths for young couples smh :V
 
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Codex said:
I suppose having identity verification on the plants would be difficult to improbable so they just went with the next best thing and have pressure plated plants. I note that this seems to be focused on light footed, so I assume Halflings could get through them. They're known for their light feet.
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I don't imagine most halflings have the moxie to intrude upon a wood-elven forest.

If they did, they would, yes, probably be able to bypass one of the security measures.

The other umpteen security measures, by contrast... oof!

Which is why the halflings never try this and find out.
 
You know it is interesting that when speaking of magical bio-sculpting Mathilde and Pan first thought of elf legends and not the more common (though generally far less benign) fact of magical mutation. Given how malleable life is to magic I imagine that with enough time and a fine enough control of magic one could develop those skills from scratch. After all that is the very definition humans do when they turn a mastery into a spell. My guess as to why they did not go there is that Mathilde and Pan both think of the elves as 'the magical theory people' who need some kind off preexisting template to work off of, but of course the thing is you do not need to do the experiments in magical mutation on your soul in order to be inspired from nature and the elves have had a long time observing this stuff.
 
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