Warhammer Fantasy: Divided Loyalties - an Advisor's Quest
- Thread starter Boney
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- Fantasy Users' Choice!
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- warhammer warhammer fantasy fantasy be gay do crimes (gay) female protagonist pansexual protagonist ck2 quest divided loyalties mountain vietnam ranald is real this is a dwarf quest (dwarfs) this is maybe an elf quest this is not a vampire quest this is not an empire quest try it and find out open voting
Voted best in category in the Users' Choice awards.
Droman
𐤊𐤍𐤏𐤍
The only way to resolve this is to ask if Boney feels that we are asking too many questions.
- Location
- Aotearoa
Could also just resolve to ask fewer questions.
- Location
- Greece
BagFullOfLizards
Some bag, mostly lizards
- Location
- A bag
I can't help but imagine things might have gone better for the elves if they'd had any presence in The Land Of Chill.They killed the Phoenix King, levelled every elven city on the continent that hadn't declared independence, and took the Phoenix Crown of Aenerion as a trophy. And while the war had been happening, the Elves also got evicted from Araby by its human population. The War of Vengeance ended the Elven Empire, reducing what had been a worldwide colonial empire to a very small handful of surviving outposts. Here's the 'before' shot:
(If you know the canonical maps well, the longer you look at this the more bizarre errors you find, but they can be written off as an in-character errors by someone who only cared about ancient Elven ruins. 'What shape is Araby again? Pointy, right? Pointy and just about touching Estalia? I probably don't need to double-check that.')
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Mopman43
Mountain-Hermit of Nitpeak
- Location
- Vermont
I don't know, maybe it actually sucks away your chill.I can't help but imagine things might have gone better for the elves if they'd had any presence in The Land Of Chill.
Because that's where the Dark Elves live right now, and if there's any group of people who haven't even become acquainted with the concept of chill...
- Location
- Australia
Tome of Salvation? I thought the Eonir didn't exist until 4e?
they existed in the same way Cathay and Estalia did.
Mopman43
Mountain-Hermit of Nitpeak
- Location
- Vermont
Laurelorn got a couple bits in 2nd edition. A couple mentions in Sigmar's Heirs, for example.
- Pronouns
- She/Her
They weren't called Eonir or so explicitly unconnected to the Asrai. All the wood elves had one name even as they where disunited.
Edit: Laurelorn Evles themselves have been a thing for as long as the Athel Loren Asrai have been being mentioned in the 4th edition army book.
Edit: Laurelorn Evles themselves have been a thing for as long as the Athel Loren Asrai have been being mentioned in the 4th edition army book.
- Location
- Chicago
- Pronouns
- She/They
Well, no. If the chopping never happened, the nobles don't get involved. And the actual destruction of pseudo-waystones is the chopping, not the threatened wars.
We aren't going to see different results if the nobles change- they are trapped in the same incentives to defend they people and get rich, and peasants will still be chopping. We will see different results if the peasants change: trees stop getting chopped down, nobles have no excuses for war.
Nobles are not very important to the actual problems here.
Sorry, who is the "we" that was planning to use EIC for scribes? I remember it getting mentioned, not getting very much traction, and then the elf trade option picking up a lot of support.
Wrong. The chopping can be stopped at any moment by elven troops and magics, if the wars weren't the consequence of stopping it. What cannot be stopped is people's fundamental desire to supplement their income if they think the law will be on their side. So long as it is legal to chop wood there, wood will be chopped, that is why it needs to be banned and strongly enforced.
The idea that you can just bribe the peasants into stopping collectively is ridiculous because fundamentally nothing you give them can adequately compensate them for losing the ability to just add to their income whenever they please. Especially not once we consider the silver that is there to be found, practically free treasure for any individual willing to just take it, fully secure that there will be no repercussions.
This needs to be stopped by force, and could be stopped by force easily if Nordland's armies would stop fighting over it. A few hundred elven rangers with magical assistance could easily patrol the entire border and kill an obscene number of idiots with wood axes so long as there's no organized attacks to worry about.
You also completely misunderstand the nobles if you think protecting their people's right to steal from the neighbors's lands would remain a primary incentive in the face of substantial trade profits. The nobles love property rights as a concept, the only reason they don't enforce the elves' rights is because there's literally nothing in it for them.
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- Location
- Europa, Jupiter Orbit
Is this your Quest canon across the board? I.e do the other three major cultures each potentially have gods in their Mandala (or even their inner circle) that aren't found at all in the Mandala of the others? Or minor (maybe never to be named) gods that are implied to exist and matter but that aren't worth mentioning?
It does make sense though. Humans have myriads of minor gods and the Dwarven Clans all have their own long lists of Anchestors that they worship. No idea why I thought all Elves would have exactly 22 just because the Wiki makes it seem that way at a glance.
Now I'm suddenly curious how the worship of Isha, Lileath and Asuryan looks among the Dark Elves.
Interesting list. Definitely didn't expect Mathlann over Kurnous, especially since they seem to have ceded a lot of the coast to Nordland for a long time while also having tamed their one river through spirit control.
I bet it would be fun to compare and contrast the inner eight list with the three canon ones. Your Laurelorn shares Asuryan, Vaul, Isha and Hoeth with Ulthuan, Hekarti, Atharti and Morai-Heg with the Naggarothi state religion, and only Isha and Hekarti with their Wood Elf "cousins".
What might it say about them that they revere Loec, Lileath and Kurnous less than the Asur and the Asrai. And they don't even have a replacement like the Druuchi have in Anath Raema.
Or that Atharti is a minor deity for the Asur and the Asrai, when the Eonir manage to elevate her without (apparently) partying like Druuchi.
Or that both the Eonir and the Druuchi equally revere Morai-Heg, goddess of fate and death.
Other things that I found surprising are:
- How the Asrai seem to worship the surviving Ellinilli more than the Druuchi.
- How the Druuchi get away with not considering Mathlann one of their major gods, despite of how seabound they are and how he is a Cytharai.
- How the Druuchi worship the Cadai Ladrielle more than anyone else.
- How the Asur seem to not value Eldrazor very highly despite him being the most "acceptable" war god. No one seems to regard him very highly in fact. Especially if one takes the canon numbered lists next to the Mandalas as meaningful instead of just seeing three unitary categories.
- How Ellinill is the only god other than Eldrazor (the poor sod) and Nethu (the mama's boy) that makes it into nobody's inner circle. If Chaos weren't a thing then he would apparently be the great enemy. I'm curious when his reign of destruction alongside his children is supposed to have happened. And what his relationship with/opinion of Chaos is.
Huh. What have they been doing all this time?
Two more questions on this:
The Wiki says that Ereth Kial "stole" the souls of dead Elves specifically from Asuryan. And the Wiki also doesn't mention anything about Morai-Heg as the actual keeper of the dead, just as the one who foretells and maybe even decides everyone's death. What's your take on that?
Under the "gods are aspects of each Elf's soul and worshipped by embracing that aspect" model, what does Ereth Kial represent?
It got a decent amount of traction days ago (before the latest chapter I think), when trade with Laurelorn wasn't even that big of a subject. Bit you're right. With the thread's average attention span acting like "we" planned anything might end up being a bit disingenuous.
So to rephrase and remind people: There was a discussion about where to procure scribes from. The main options mentioned were "get them from a Human cult (like Scriptisi or Verena)", "open a school in K8P" and "hire a bunch through the EIC. Option A was disliked by some due to the ceding of influence and potentially disagreeable dogma. Option B was controversial, some loving the idea and some hating it. Option C got the most vocal approval. Even some fans of option B liked doing both and doing C first, due to the expected time needed before B has any results. I agree with that and would start this whole thing sooner rather than later, especially now that we have all of those Halfling genealogies that are in need of being copied over on the KAU Library's dime while we simultaneously also want to get access to whatever Karak Vlag has.
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Mopman43
Mountain-Hermit of Nitpeak
- Location
- Vermont
In this case I think it's because (almost) all the political power of Laurelorn is in the capital and Great Houses, who wouldn't really have anything to do with a god of the wilds.
Laurelorn elves are mentioned briefly in the character creation chapter of WFRP 2nd edition:
As you can see this is slightly different from their modern/DL interpretation. It's implied that there are Elven villages all over the empire, and that elves, despite their isolation, have the ability to spy on the comings and goings of the empire. In the sample adventure in the back the players run into a kithband hunting beastmen, although in my opinion this encounter doesn't make much sense from a narrative point of view, as it exists solely to introduce new players to social encounters against someone who is unfriendly, but not hostile.
Codex
Fantasy Addict
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Most of their lore was constructed in 4th Edition, but they were a footnote in 2E as a way to get Wood Elves into campaigns in the RPG without having to use Athel Loren. Page 81 of Tome of Salvation 2E has a list of minor gods and Sarriel is a God of Dreams worshipped in Laurelorn Forest. Sarriel was apparently made for some sort of 1E adventure module, was grandfathered in into 2E as a minor footnote, then expanded again in 4th Edition when the Eonir were developed.
There are canonical 'minor' Elven Gods that aren't found in any of the canonical mandalas, and the Asrai one has the Treeman Elders as a spot on the inner ring, with that spot having been freed up by having Kurnous and Isha sharing the center.
Being nobles.
The canonical fate of Elves is to get eaten by Slaanesh because that was imported from 40k with zero actual justification for it. My take is that that's incredibly stupid.
Envy and self-preservation.
Codex
Fantasy Addict
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I believe the justification is that Elves feel things intensely, and their strong emotions are what attracts Slaanesh, who finds it exquisite to feast on their souls. I also think it's stupid and almost certainly a certain someone's pet project and obsession with a specific concept, so I'm not justifying it, but I do believe that's the stated reason at least.
I thought about mentioning that, but though that might cover motivation, it doesn't explain why Slaanesh is able to unilaterally call dibs on the souls of an entire race or depict the massive existential horror that should be the result of that happening. In 40k, Slaanesh has dibs on Eldar souls because the Eldar gave birth to them, and the Eldar go to great lengths to try to avoid this fate, either covering literally everything in soul stones or seek immortality by sacrificing the souls of others. That all makes reasonable sense and is internally consistent. In Fantasy, there's no reason at all given for it and the High Elves react to it by... shrugging and accepting an eternal limbo trapped in a Waystone, which now somehow have that capability? And the Dark Elves react by doing literally nothing and just accept it? It's not just a pointless copy-paste from 40k, it's a half-assed one.
- Location
- Chicago
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- She/They
Well, no. You are basically saying that you can stop poachers with enough threats. And historically, that's never worked. Elven troops and magic can't be everywhere all the time, so unless you give the people actually doing the chopping an incentive not to, besides "don't get caught", they will continue to do so.
Much like preserving elephants or other endangered animals, you need the locals on side with you or else you are playing wack-a-mole trying to stop it.
And the way you get them onside is by making it clear that leaving the stuff alone makes them richer than destroying it. We do that with tourism in our world, there needs to be an equivalent in Mallus or else this will continue as a problem.
The nobles might decide that it's better to trade than chop. However, none of that money is going to make it outside the nobles; the peasants are going to be worse off for having their Lord bought off. So their personal incentives have shifted *in favor* of more destruction.
You would need the human Lords to actively start harming their people enough to repress thier harvesting so the elves don't stop trade, and that sounds like rebellion bait: "the Lords and the elves are corruptly colluding to steal our livelihood and leave us with nothing" wouldn't even be wrong.
So I don't think you can or will see the human nobles come down hard enough to stop illegal logging. So trade is fundementally unstable here: the people whose behavior changing is key to the whole thing are the only ones made worse off by it continuing.
Or the spiders! Don't forget hiring the spiders!
Peasant rebellions are not generally that easy to start. You need something like starvation or religious unrest to spark it. I imagine it would be even harder to do in WF because any rebelling peasant is going to know there are beastment and greenskins in the woods who want to kill them as soon as they are out from under the protection of their lords and weak from potentially killing said lord. The peasants may well resent the elves and the nobles for colluding... but they would have to be really really suffering to even contemplate rebellion.
- Location
- Earth
I believe the unemployed commonfolk causing issues right now isn't the peasant lumberjacks (those moved to Ulrikadrin), but the people in Salzenmund and other nearby places who were depending on them for supplies. The coastal shipbuilders are still doing fine, because they use a different supply of wood, but we really need the people of Salzenmund to find something else for their livelihoods so they stop putting pressure on the Elector Count.
Mopman43
Mountain-Hermit of Nitpeak
- Location
- Vermont
Sure, but the issue is peasants clear-cutting forests and digging up lornalim trees for mining operations. That's a lot easier to stop if there aren't are higher-ups organizing it.
You can't make mine-and-dash. Not unless they were Dwarfs, anyway.
Except that, according to Boney, it's working just fine on the Middenland border, and that Cadaeth is personally managing to wreck every peasant trying to into the restoration area of the forests on the Nordland border. So without the threat of Imperial Armies marching on them, they very much can protect their forests.
Also, logging does not equal poaching. A single peasant can go shoot a deer and carry it back by his lonesome quite easily in a single day. Chopping down an old growth tree by yourself and hauling it is nigh impossible with the tools available to your average peasant. They need a number of burly lads whacking that tree, and it is not very subtle. Now, in our world people can still get away with that because the woods don't have all that many people in them to notice anything illegal and transport has grown increasingly easy. But this isn't our world. This is Warhammer, and the trees have eyes. Spites can report loggers' presence quite quickly, the trees themselves can try to kill you, and things are generally a lot more hostile even before the elves get involved.
Will the increased danger and response stop everyone? No. Will it stop full-on clear-cutting and establishment of entirely new villages in Laurelorn territory? Yes.
Codex
Fantasy Addict
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It was phrased as a hypothetical. We don't actually know if people have been attempting to breach the percieved barrier and getting destroyed by Cadaeth. It's possible I suppose, but it takes a monumental level of stupidity to do so.