maybe as a comprise we could drop the lay foundation action this turn and just have it be a father finding turn and do the lay foundation action next turn with gambler on it? I know boney said we got to get a move on but I think waiting one turn won't suddenly have the projects go up in flames or have all the human backers leave the project cause we delayed one turn beyond that maybe but not one turn
Warhammer Fantasy: Divided Loyalties - an Advisor's Quest
- Thread starter Boney
- Start date
- Fantasy Users' Choice!
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- Tags
- 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.
- Location
- New Brunswick, NJ
- Pronouns
- He/Him/His
I apologize if it sounded like I was saying "adjacent to it" -- this is not what I meant. I was phoneposting and have giant clumsy fingers which make that a huge chore (to give a sense of what I mean, I thought the original XBox controller was a perfect and totally appropriate size, which I gather is a minority view), so I tend to be much briefer and less explanatory of my thought process than is my usual wont.
The specific argument I mean is that even if it isn't leading where the characters expect IC, it is leading somewhere worthwhile for the quest. As such, I want to tug on the strings Boney provides to see where they lead, which is one of the reason I tend to be dismissive of player-originated write-in lines of research. Boney has provided the string of "Hedgewise" and the string of "Father" and I am extremely confident that tugging on them both will result in something narratively satisfying, even if it's not "the Hedgewise are privy to a unique insight that we can get nowhere else" (which, for the record, is not what I expect at all). That is the point I was trying to make to Alratan earlier, and I accept responsibility for communicating it badly.
No, this is absolutely going to end in disaster if we try it.
Burned_Cookie
Very tired girl.
- Location
- Plato´s cave.
- Pronouns
- She/Her/It/Its
I'm not the biggest fan but
[X] Plan Disregard WEBMAT, Acquire AP
seems to still cover most of my needs outside of book mining. If we absolutely must recruit more, then I want to at least get to mark some potential people of the Daughter Suspect List.
[X] Plan: No Recruitment
[X] Plan Disregard WEBMAT, Acquire AP
seems to still cover most of my needs outside of book mining. If we absolutely must recruit more, then I want to at least get to mark some potential people of the Daughter Suspect List.
[X] Plan: No Recruitment
Okay that's a much narrower and more reasonable claim then I was reading you as making. So fair enough on that. I still don't completely agree, as I think the Haletha daughter theory is only around 60-80% likely personally so I could still see it being a complete dead end.
I will say even if it turns out to be true, the narrative hints about it are much stronger than any narrative hints that connect that issue to the waystones, to the point I don't really see the two plot-lines as particularly connected at all. And as such I don't find it a compelling case for getting it done this turn.
I would be unsurprised if, for example, that successfully recruiting the Hedgewise opened up options for other projects. For example, one day we might want to investigate Liminal Realms or mess around with spirits. Bringing the Hedgewise in and allowing them to learn what lots of other traditions know about Waystones might make some of the Hedgewise owe us enough to share secrets about the former that we'd find it very hard to learn otherwise.
If that happens though, they're probably still a net loss to the Waystone Project, as free riders who take their secrets and contribute nothing are likely to annoy the participants who are actually giving their valuable knowledge, and might actually deter them from being as open as they would be. There could well be some forms of actual scarcity or danger to sharing their secrets, and the more people who know them the worse the cost and risks are. Adding extra participants may not be a free option for the project, if they turn our not to have anything to add. It may have a real cost.
Narratively satisfying is also very much in the eye of the behaviour. For example I found the Daughter reveal the exact opposite, even though many people loved it.
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- Location
- Norway
So the reason I'm not voting for the father is not because I'm excited about the ghyran nut, but rather because involving the hedgewise sounds like a potential political headache. All the other traditions gathered so far has some degree of "approved by a government" going for them, but the hedgewise are explicitly renegade magic user acting in breach of the articles.
Unsurprisingly wizards can twist themselves into that not being a issue, and I trust Mathilde to do so, but I don't know about the other wizards we have onboard.
And that's not taking into account someone else making a issue of it. Mathilde has been relatively shielded from college and imperial politics so far on account of staying in K8P, but she has been going swimming with sharks lately, and I wouldn't be surprised to see Alric, or someone connected to Nordland, or someone who wants to get one over on the empress take a shot at Mathilde. Not to mention any of the chaos gods orchestrating something considering she has pissed off each of them bar Nurgle.
I don't think it would be political suicide to involve the hedgewise, but it just seems like a hassle I would rather avoid.
Unsurprisingly wizards can twist themselves into that not being a issue, and I trust Mathilde to do so, but I don't know about the other wizards we have onboard.
And that's not taking into account someone else making a issue of it. Mathilde has been relatively shielded from college and imperial politics so far on account of staying in K8P, but she has been going swimming with sharks lately, and I wouldn't be surprised to see Alric, or someone connected to Nordland, or someone who wants to get one over on the empress take a shot at Mathilde. Not to mention any of the chaos gods orchestrating something considering she has pissed off each of them bar Nurgle.
I don't think it would be political suicide to involve the hedgewise, but it just seems like a hassle I would rather avoid.
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Codex
Fantasy Addict
- Pronouns
- She/Her
What do you mean by other wizards we have onboard? Either we have explicit mention by Boney that other Wizards can easily ignore the Article about illegal non Chaos/Necro mages when there's still Chaos in the world, or you're talking about non-Collegiate Wizards, who don't give a single fuck about Wizards that are considered illegal by the Empire's rules. You think Thorek, Hatalath, Niedzwenka and Zlata actually care about the Articles of Imperial Magic? When we're in Laurelorn of all places?
- Location
- New Brunswick, NJ
- Pronouns
- He/Him/His
I mean, there was no option there that didn't destroy at least one line of investigation. Truth winning destroys the line of investigation we get from Faith -- we would not have learned about Ranald's daughters and become privy to whatever we'll learn from that. Faith winning destroys the line of investigation we get from Truth -- we won't be fingerprinting gods to learn the secrets they have chosen to hide from mortals about their natures. And the third option destroyed both lines. It wasn't a question of "give up on something or try for everything," it was a question of what to give up. "Mutually exclusive options that close off the roads not taken forever" have happened before in this quest and will happen again.
[X] Plan Disregard WEBMAT, Acquire AP
My suspicion (which could well be wrong) is that putting off using the Father here will end up putting it off indefinitely. I suspect that once the foundations are laid, there will be several Waystones projects where the Gambler would be helpful and the projects will be seen as critical. I don't anticipate that that argument is going to lose force just because it's a different critical thing (in fact, I suspect that some of the projects will be more critical than Foundations). I just hope that I'm wrong if it happens, because I really want to explore the Father.
My suspicion (which could well be wrong) is that putting off using the Father here will end up putting it off indefinitely. I suspect that once the foundations are laid, there will be several Waystones projects where the Gambler would be helpful and the projects will be seen as critical. I don't anticipate that that argument is going to lose force just because it's a different critical thing (in fact, I suspect that some of the projects will be more critical than Foundations). I just hope that I'm wrong if it happens, because I really want to explore the Father.
- Location
- Norway
I understood the quote from Boney to mean that wizards could twist themselves to not have an issue with it, not a guarantee that these wizards wouldn't. I don't expect non-imperials to care.
Burned_Cookie
Very tired girl.
- Location
- Plato´s cave.
- Pronouns
- She/Her/It/Its
Egrimm at least doesn't seem the type to be bothered with a little… reinterpreting of the Articles.
No clue about the others.
- Location
- Earth
We didn't know what Faith would actually do back then, and while it fits the thematics of that choice, for all we know there'd be nothing beyond headpats. The resulting investigative options are still way more limited and less interesting IMO. We'd only be theoretically able to know for sure about all the names and guises of two particular gods, as opposed to all of them.
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SuperSonicSound
Shadowmancer of the Shadow Cabal
Yes, obviously.
- Location
- Norway
Maybe. It's the road not traveled and all that.
Though it seemed more geared towards figuring out how gods work rather than who they are.
Codex
Fantasy Addict
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Two gods who we have a connection to, as opposed to an impersonal scientific investigation of gods we only care about for academic reasons. Ranald's daughters are valuable to Ranald, they mean something to him, and Ranald likes Mathilde. He showed her a secret few others know, and it's a fascinating narrative for some people to pursue that.
Some people don't care about Ranald or his narrative, but I do. His relationship with Mathilde is one of my favorite parts of this quest.
You're within your rights to view it as less interesting in your opinion, but to others it is very much an interesting prospect.
If we used Truth to learn to do divine DNA tests after starting with fingerprints we could well have become privy to the secret about Ranald's daughters, just by our own efforts, not his.
And that would probably have been a pretty likely discovery in retrospect. He could have just told us one fraction of what we would have eventually learned anyway if we'd not made the sacrifice.
It was described as divine fingerprinting or photography, IIRC. It was all about identifying gods so we would know if one god was another god in a false moustache, or similar.
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- Location
- Earth
Not really? We have a connection to Ranald, He has a connection to His daughters, but this is the first time Mathilde even learned of their existence, so why would we have a connection to them other than by proxy?
Assuming that the children of gods have a signature that shows they are a mixture of their parents, yes. That seems likely, but unproven (and now unprovable, even if we do identify them both). Though, assuming Haletha is one, I don't think we'd have been looking at her signature any time soon. I wouldn't have thought she would be high up the list to try looking at.
Of course, not having any idea that there were any daughters, it's interesting to think how things would have gone by stumbling on to this, particularly if the Lady is one and she were to be the goddess looked at, and finding a mixture of Ranald and Shalya in her signature.
- Location
- New Brunswick, NJ
- Pronouns
- He/Him/His
Yeah: Boney has been very clear multiple times, in both OOC posts and IC voting options presented to us, that "abstract factual understanding" and "mystical direct experience" are two valid ways of apprehending truth, especially for things like "magic" and "the divine." The Divine AV vote brought that into stark contrast.
There's an obvious difference between finding your friend's hidden family members by secretly DNA testing people on the one hand and being told about them on the other. One is more likely to tell you about what makes them up at a fundamental level, and one is more likely to get you invited to hang out. I'm bummed about not learning about what makes them up on a fundamental level (I voted for both Theologian and Mystic after Karag Dum, after all), but I am excited to get to know them as people.
Codex
Fantasy Addict
- Pronouns
- She/Her
If my friend told me he had two daughters he wanted to show me I'd be delighted. I'm surprised I have to explain human connection.
Ranald is not a human though and for all Mathilde calls him that the power differential makes the claim of 'friendship' at least a little shaky. Not saying you are objectively wrong to think of him like that, just pointing out that others, particularly among those who votes Truth may not see him like that.
SuperSonicSound
Shadowmancer of the Shadow Cabal
I don't think that's on the cards. Mathilde has never been treated as a equal by Ranald and we're not going to learn about the gods in that fashion.
- Location
- Norway
If we are relitigating the validity of choosing faith I'll just say that I don't really care about the opportunity cost.
Even if we never bust out the father face of the coin, choosing faith over truth is an important characterization of Mathilde and cements her relationship with her god. There could be unlimited power behind the truth option and I would still vote faith, because scorning that relationship doesn't fit with my mental model of Mathilde.
Even if we never bust out the father face of the coin, choosing faith over truth is an important characterization of Mathilde and cements her relationship with her god. There could be unlimited power behind the truth option and I would still vote faith, because scorning that relationship doesn't fit with my mental model of Mathilde.