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Warhammer Fantasy: Divided Loyalties - an Advisor's Quest

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Nurgle said:
We may have to learn it for the waystone project, yeah that is the justification will use. We have talked about learning it and the dawi equivalent.
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Nerdasaurus Rex said:
Polyglot + magical languages = ULTIMATE POWER
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I know y'all are just goofing, but because I am an old man with no sense of fun, I wish to point out:
Boney said:
What makes Mathilde better at magic is her deepening her relationship with and understanding of Ulgu. Anoqeyan might have words for concepts that Reikspiel and Praestantia don't, but that only makes communicating about magic easier, not using it.
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So even if the Eonir do have Anoqeyan traditions and we can learn it from them, we should not expect that it will enhance Mathilde's abilities in the realm of magical practice rather than simple magical scholarship.

(Though if it turns out that Anoqeyan is on offer, I'd be up for learning it at some future time so we can have it in our back pocket when we go to Ulthuan, just in case the opportunity to learn from anyone at the White Tower comes up, or in case we can steal their books.)
Boney said:
The question to ask is 'how much of a factor is random chance in the action, and could one or two discrete tweaks of random chance meaningfully alter the outcome', and that's a matter to be debated among the thread rather than outright asked of the QM.
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I've been chewing on this statement, and I am unsure how to think about it. "Random chance," in our universe, doesn't seem to really exist except at the quantum level: everything above that seems to be the deterministic results of mechanistic processes, though many of them are so complex that we approximate them as random rather than attempting to model all the components and their interactions. This is probably not what Ranald cares about, so we're going to set it aside for the moment.

What have we seen the Gambler (or its precursor, Ranald's Blessing) do? When Mathilde uses it on stuff she herself is doing seems often the most straightforward, and also the easiest to explain how Ranald involves himself: when faced with multiple reasonable courses of action, the one she ends up picking happens to work out more often than it "should." I am thinking here of times she used it while delving into skaven territory, for example, or on personal projects. Other times, it manifests as Ranald interfering externally in some way to save her from negative consequences (like when Ranald's Blessing protected her from Wisdom's Asp back in Stirland by having a cat's claws startle her out of mirror-range). So that seems easy enough.

The weird stuff is when she uses it on things that influence other people's actions: to what degree can we call that tweaks of random chance? Well, for the menhir of "make a dragon", it "just so happened" that the Ambers happened across a menhir that had been aligned with Ghur but not yet contaminated by Dhar. Ranald was probably not influencing the thoughts of the Ambers to steer them towards better outcomes, but he might have caused circumstances to align so that the Beastmen happened to drop clues or animals happened to draw Amber attention in the right direction at the right time for Mathilde's goals. Similarly, when Mathilde used it on Grey College scheduling and ended up being cleared for Battle Magic, the Gambler did two things: it helped Mathilde learn Smoke & Mirrors (which falls under the internal action discussed in the last paragraph), but it also applied to the Consideration of Suitability check earlier, and for the life of me I don't see how. What random chance would apply to whether the Greys think she's ready for Battle Magic or not, without outright affecting the past or manipulating their minds?

To be clear, I don't expect Boney to answer how this works; though obviously I'd be excited to learn more about the metaphysics, it's possible that I am overthinking things. Mostly I am just trying to start discussion about the question that Boney posed to the thread: how much of a factor is random chance in things (specifically in this case the Lay the foundations), and to what degree can discrete tweaks of it further Mathilde's goals? But, of course, to answer that we need to compare it to how random chance has been tweaked in Mathilde's favor in the past, and it's there that I confess myself kind of stumped. Hopefully someone else has got clearer insight than I do.
 
So pretty early to be worrying about this I know, but I'm conflicted on what our next library acquisition option should be.

I'm quite concerned with getting bibliothecography books. Narratively they'll substantially aid Mathilde's organisation of her library, which'll become very important when she transplants the enormity that is the Black Library to Kron-Azril-Ungol. Mechanically it'll help her write the book on library science but that won't be for a while and the narrative aid is a bunch more important.

Bibliothecography books aren't secular. They're Verena/Hoeth books, and I suspect Quinsberry/Valaya books too. We'll get Quinsberry from the Genealogical Library so no worries there, but the rest we'll have to acquire ourselves. We might buy Verena and Valaya books ourselves depending on our staffing decision this turn. Hoeth is the tricky one.

I'm imagining it'll come down to two library acquisition choices. First one is we focus on the waystone project and so go for a Colleges acquisition: Forest Spirits and Liminal Realms because of the contributors, Apparitions because of AV and apparition-binding, and then a fourth choice that can be whatever. Ghyran perhaps for the Nut and Panoramia's benefit, Rituals in case it helps with the project, or Leylines if that category exists and isn't covered by Waystones and Henges. (As an aside, gotta ask Boney on Tuesday if Henges should be tucked into Liminal Realms. Woops that's hedge, not henge.) The other acquisition choice is an Eonir acquisition: Hoeth and then a second one, maybe Linguistics for Old One/Anoqeyan/Arcane Khazalid/Belthani/Eike purposes, maybe Forest Spirits for the contributors.

Hoeth is 250 gc alone. Assuming Valaya indeed has library science secrets and we hire neither Valayans nor Verenans, the full cost of the books would be 550 gc. Taking the 250 off would be great for our finances, but it also means we wouldn't have the Colleges books available next turn. I lean more in favour of spending the money for Hoeth because that's my default stance and because there may be a small windfall from Drakenhof loot, but I don't think voters would find that attractive.

EDIT: This isn't even accounting for if there are Imperial books on Valaya. They worship the dwarf gods in Wissenland. Grungni's most popular with his own human temple there, but the other gods get worship too.
 
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But I tell you I can't wait till the canal's done. If I remember right, that's when the EIC will switch from reinvesting most of its profits into itself to paying out more of them to its shareholders.
 
If the canal opening coincides with the silk manufacturing, then we're probably going to need to have another chat with the bursar again.

Don't worry, I'm sure that we can convince her that being one of the wealthiest silk merchants in the Empire is of "direct and practical use to our cause"our cause of being able to buy lots of books.
 
Andres said:
So pretty early to be worrying about this I know, but I'm conflicted on what our next library acquisition option should be.

I'm quite concerned with getting bibliothecography books. Narratively they'll substantially aid Mathilde's organisation of her library, which'll become very important when she transplants the enormity that is the Black Library to Kron-Azril-Ungol. Mechanically it'll help her write the book on library science but that won't be for a while and the narrative aid is a bunch more important.

Bibliothecography books aren't secular. They're Verena/Hoeth books, and I suspect Quinsberry/Valaya books too. We'll get Quinsberry from the Genealogical Library so no worries there, but the rest we'll have to acquire ourselves. We might buy Verena and Valaya books ourselves depending on our staffing decision this turn. Hoeth is the tricky one.

I'm imagining it'll come down to two library acquisition choices. First one is we focus on the waystone project and so go for a Colleges acquisition: Forest Spirits and Liminal Realms because of the contributors, Apparitions because of AV and apparition-binding, and then a fourth choice that can be whatever. Ghyran perhaps for the Nut and Panoramia's benefit, Rituals in case it helps with the project, or Leylines if that category exists and isn't covered by Waystones and Henges. (As an aside, gotta ask Boney on Tuesday if Henges should be tucked into Liminal Realms.) The other acquisition choice is an Eonir acquisition: Hoeth and then a second one, maybe Linguistics for Old One/Anoqeyan/Arcane Khazalid/Belthani/Eike purposes, maybe Forest Spirits for the project.

Hoeth is 250 gc alone. Assuming Valaya indeed has library science secrets and we hire neither Valayans nor Verenans, the full cost of the books would be 550 gc. Taking the 250 off would be great for our finances, but it also means we wouldn't have the Colleges books available next turn. I lean more in favour of spending the money for Hoeth because that's my default stance and because there may be a small windfall from Drakenhof loot, but I don't think voters would find that attractive.

EDIT: This isn't even accounting for if there are Imperial books on Valaya. They worship the dwarf gods in Wissenland. Grungni's most popular with his own human temple there, but the other gods get worship too.
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Valaya books we already have up to obscure and we might keep accumulating them passively through backfills and such, but I doubt Valaya has much on library sciene. Dwarves aren't big believers in books - for the most part, the proper place to store knowledge is in Dawi brains - so I don't think we need to worry about those.

Verena and Hoeth books are confrimed by Boney to have library sciene, but since we can't get Verena books to more than Extensive that's 350gc - not too bad for an out of pocket expense. Colleges of Magic saves us ~1000gc depending on topics but more importantly it saves us 16 College Favour, so it seems like a no brainer to me.

As for the topics for our upcoming Colleges of Magic purchase, I liked the list of topics that were brought up last turn: Apparitions, Power Stones, Forest Spirits, Liminal Realms, and Aethyr all seem like pretty reasonable topics. Power stones will either be a shoe-in or an easy pass depending on how our research on AV goes this turn, and books on the Aethyr seem like a sort of generic topic that might get pushed out in favour of more specific topics that pretain to our current ambitions but I think they're a good idea to get at some point. I imagine a lot would depend on what happens when we lay the foundations, as we might realize that some topics that we previously failed to consider are relevant to the project.
 
[X] Plan Disregard WEBMAT, Acquire AP (Fatherless)

Finally caught up with the thread!
I've read a lot of very annoying arguments to get here, but despite it all I was not convinced to vote for the Father. And honestly, the longer this "Ranald's daughters" plotline gets talked about, the less I am convinced that I want to investigate it. It'd be nice to know who they are, but it still seems less interesting, less fun and less important than most of the alternatives.
 
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picklepikkl said:
I've been chewing on this statement, and I am unsure how to think about it. "Random chance," in our universe, doesn't seem to really exist except at the quantum level: everything above that seems to be the deterministic results of mechanistic processes, though many of them are so complex that we approximate them as random rather than attempting to model all the components and their interactions. This is probably not what Ranald cares about, so we're going to set it aside for the moment.

What have we seen the Gambler (or its precursor, Ranald's Blessing) do? When Mathilde uses it on stuff she herself is doing seems often the most straightforward, and also the easiest to explain how Ranald involves himself: when faced with multiple reasonable courses of action, the one she ends up picking happens to work out more often than it "should." I am thinking here of times she used it while delving into skaven territory, for example, or on personal projects. Other times, it manifests as Ranald interfering externally in some way to save her from negative consequences (like when Ranald's Blessing protected her from Wisdom's Asp back in Stirland by having a cat's claws startle her out of mirror-range). So that seems easy enough.

The weird stuff is when she uses it on things that influence other people's actions: to what degree can we call that tweaks of random chance? Well, for the menhir of "make a dragon", it "just so happened" that the Ambers happened across a menhir that had been aligned with Ghur but not yet contaminated by Dhar. Ranald was probably not influencing the thoughts of the Ambers to steer them towards better outcomes, but he might have caused circumstances to align so that the Beastmen happened to drop clues or animals happened to draw Amber attention in the right direction at the right time for Mathilde's goals. Similarly, when Mathilde used it on Grey College scheduling and ended up being cleared for Battle Magic, the Gambler did two things: it helped Mathilde learn Smoke & Mirrors (which falls under the internal action discussed in the last paragraph), but it also applied to the Consideration of Suitability check earlier, and for the life of me I don't see how. What random chance would apply to whether the Greys think she's ready for Battle Magic or not, without outright affecting the past or manipulating their minds?

To be clear, I don't expect Boney to answer how this works; though obviously I'd be excited to learn more about the metaphysics, it's possible that I am overthinking things. Mostly I am just trying to start discussion about the question that Boney posed to the thread: how much of a factor is random chance in things (specifically in this case the Lay the foundations), and to what degree can discrete tweaks of it further Mathilde's goals? But, of course, to answer that we need to compare it to how random chance has been tweaked in Mathilde's favor in the past, and it's there that I confess myself kind of stumped. Hopefully someone else has got clearer insight than I do.
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I think it's feasible for random chance to influence the consideration of Mathilde's stability. Random Chance could have possible led the people evaluating Mathilde to be the ones who were more favorably inclined to her, say because they heard a story of Mathilde doing good things. It could also have possibly affected the information they had access to, with things that might indicate her as being unsuitable just not reaching the people doing the evaluation, or just buried under so many things that it just seems irrelevant. The order of what you read does affect how you see them. Go backwards from this update and what Mathilde did as a journeywomanling seems more jovial and easier to dismiss as irrelevant. The mood of the person doing the evaluation could have been influenced as well. Being on a particularly good or bad day could have change their propensity towards the evaluation. So on and so forth.

Now, how would random chance possibly affect laying the foundations? Good events might be just as simple as people being on a good day and more amenable to concessions. Or just being reminded of some event in the distant past to bring into the right or better mindset for cooperation. I suspect the main impact might be smoothing away diplomatic gaffes that might add friction as we start.
 
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I was thinking about what @mathymancer said about the Seed and Panoramia, how no one made the case for it so why not do it myself. Here are the reasons why I think we should not just do it, but do it soon:
  1. It allows us to help get Panoramia out of a rut, right now she is just making time. don't get me wrong I do not think her work with the halflings is entirely useless but it is a far cry from the revolutionary work she did in the early days, work she is not even taking credit for. This would be like after Dum Mathilde took a sabatical and spent all her days doing hold defense enhancing. The sooner she is back to putting her imagination and drive to their full use the better.
  2. We can interact with Panoramia in a research action and not just social actions. As well written as those are if Pan only interacts with Mathilde that way, without moving things forward, showing her power and drive she is in danger of becoming the Love Interest TM only relevant to the narrative because Mathilde is in love with her and I think she deserves better than that.
  3. If the Seed is indeed from the Oak of Ages than it is an anti-Chaos talisman which could be immediately useful to the project and it would be quite the feather in our cap to be able to put that on the table during the foundation action. Also there is the liminal aspects part of things, what role does the Oak of Ages and its roots have in the flow of magic in the world?
  4. Last but not least the potential of giant army killing squirrels. Who doesn't love giant army killing squirrels? :V
 
DragonParadox said:
It allows us to help get Panoramia out of a rut, right now she is just making time. don't get me wrong I do not think her work with the halflings is entirely useless but it is a far cry from the revolutionary work she did in the early days, work she is not even taking credit for. This would be like after Dum Mathilde took a sabatical and spent all her days doing hold defense enhancing. The sooner she is back to putting her imagination and drive to their full use the better.
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Unless I'm wrong, now is when she's doing the revolutionary work in her opinion.

She sees the caldera as a greenhouse for her to experiment in to her heart's desire. That was her main thrust when she was presenting her work to Paranoth, that it was a tabula rasa to do what she wanted with, though he only saw it as proof-of-concept for restoring lands drained by Greenskins occupation.
 
Mopman43 said:
Unless I'm wrong, now is when she's doing the revolutionary work in her opinion.

She sees the caldera as a greenhouse for her to experiment in to her heart's desire. That was her main thrust when she was presenting her work to Paranoth, that it was a tabula rasa to do what she wanted with, though he only saw it as proof-of-concept for restoring lands drained by Greenskins occupation.
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I am pretty sure she is not, she already did the revolutionary part and is now advancing the progress. as @Boney put it every year of her work is as a decade of halfling labor alone, but the halfling labor alone will carry it. The hard part is done, the concept implemented.
 
Mopman43 said:
Unless I'm wrong, now is when she's doing the revolutionary work in her opinion.

She sees the caldera as a greenhouse for her to experiment in to her heart's desire. That was her main thrust when she was presenting her work to Paranoth, that it was a tabula rasa to do what she wanted with, though he only saw it as proof-of-concept for restoring lands drained by Greenskins occupation.
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Is it? I want to make sure, because she seems to be looking for something else to do. She's clearly at the tail end of her project. If she was brimming with ideas for what to do with this greenhouse she's created, then I don't think she would be pursuing other projects. It looks like she's in the finishing stages, not in the beginning stages of something more.
 
Codex said:
Is it? I want to make sure, because she seems to be looking for something else to do. She's clearly at the tail end of her project. If she was brimming with ideas for what to do with this greenhouse she's created, then I don't think she would be pursuing other projects. It looks like she's in the finishing stages, not in the beginning stages of something more.
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I could certainly be wrong, but it certainly seems like she had bigger plans for it.

Boney said:
Panoramia frowns. "I had intended this to be a testbed for agrology, not a proof of concept against greenskin spores."
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Boney said:
She particularly seems torn between preening at attention from such a high level and offended that the high-minded blue sky research she intended is being ignored.

"Don't take it personally," you say soothingly to her the evening after Paranoth's departure, sitting close together in front of the fire. "Long-term investment needs to take a back seat to the immediate realities. That's the entire history of the Karaz Ankor too, and it's not like the Dwarves don't value ambitious projects."

She sighs. "I suppose, but it's still frustrating. It's... it's like I'm building a great cathedral, but everyone's paying attention to the way I poured the concrete for the foundations."
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Just frustrated that there doesn't seem to be support coming from the wider Jade Order for it (and the fact that if she doesn't become a Magister soon and confront her mother, she'll be making a political statement regardless of if she wants to)
 
DragonParadox said:
I was thinking about what @mathymancer said about the Seed and Panoramia, how no one made the case for it so why not do it myself. Here are the reasons why I think we should not just do it, but do it soon:
  1. It allows us to help get Panoramia out of a rut, right now she is just making time. don't get me wrong I do not think her work with the halflings is entirely useless but it is a far cry from the revolutionary work she did in the early days, work she is not even taking credit for. This would be like after Dum Mathilde took a sabatical and spent all her days doing hold defense enhancing. The sooner she is back to putting her imagination and drive to their full use the better.
  2. We can interact with Panoramia in a research action and not just social actions. As well written as those are if Pan only interacts with Mathilde that way, without moving things forward, showing her power and drive she is in danger of becoming the Love Interest TM only relevant to the narrative because Mathilde is in love with her and I think she deserves better than that.
  3. If the Seed is indeed from the Oak of Ages than it is an anti-Chaos talisman which could be immediately useful to the project and it would be quite the feather in our cap to be able to put that on the table during the foundation action. Also there is the liminal aspects part of things, what role does the Oak of Ages and its roots have in the flow of magic in the world?
  4. Last but not least the potential of giant army killing squirrels. Who doesn't love giant army killing squirrels? :V
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Alternatively, we could roast it. My reasoning is that we will need something to do with all the salt from this vote. :V
 
This is what Panoramia said:
Boney said:
"No way for you to have. I wanted to visit the 'green slate' myself at some point, and the Order happened to reach me with news that the Lady Magister was trying to get in touch while I was passing through Barak Varr. Any word I sent would have travelled alongside me. Seeing all this for myself, I can see why you've been calling the Valley that. Elevated, isolated, sheltered, well-drained of rain and Winds, and with thousands of years of Dwarven records saying that only greenskins have lived here. This was a rare opportunity, and you took it."

"Thank you, Magister Patriarch."

"How is the local water table? I haven't seen any wells, just those artificial rivers."

"It's fairly deep down, but not inaccessible. I've tested it and it appears wholesome, but the Dwarves don't want to rely on it, instead putting their trust in the spring-fed tarn halfway up Karagril."

"How usable are your results so far?"

"Not widely, I'm afraid. I've been relying on the density of skilled farmers here. Even if I can refine the techniques, it would still be far more labour-intensive than assarting the equivalent acreage out of the forests."

"Not everywhere. There are valleys in the southern Grey Mountains that might be reclaimed from the local greenskin tribes if there was a way to turn them into farmable land. And there's the mountains near Pugno in Tilea, the northern bank of the Lynsk upstream of Erengrad, a lot of Bretonnia, of course... you just focus on streamlining what you've done into something that can be taught to the average Journeyman, as once you do there'll be a lot of good that can be done with them."

Panoramia frowns. "I had intended this to be a testbed for agrology, not a proof of concept against greenskin spores."
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To be frank, I'm a bit confused. You could interpret this as Panoramia setting up K8P for experimentation, but the way I initially interpreted it was that she wanted to create a system whereby she could create an environment viable for agrology regardless of location, and she seems somewhat disappointed that it didn't turn out like she wanted. I don't see much room for experimentation in K8P anyway. The entirety of the fields are being used to supply the population, which will only increase in the future. I don't think there's enough space for Panoramia to do much stuff that doesn't directly contribute to feeding K8P.
 
Mopman43 said:
I could certainly be wrong, but it certainly seems like she had bigger plans for it.




Just frustrated that there doesn't seem to be support coming from the wider Jade Order for it (and the fact that if she doesn't become a Magister soon and confront her mother, she'll be making a political statement regardless of if she wants to)
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Here is the quote and reply about her spinning her wheels I was talking about:
DragonParadox said:
@Boney if it is not too much trouble and you have considered it, how is Panoramia doing for a new project? I seem to recall that a year and a half ago she was already starting to get to the end of one phase of the work in K8P. Is she just making time until her magisterial trials go through with the intent to continue the more abstract parts of it later? Or is she looking to change things up?Or has she just not decided what she will do with herself?

Part of me wonders if she would like to move into Laurelorn since she likes the forest so much, but I am not sure if the elves are fine with non-Project mages. In any case she seems to like the forest a lot and I imagine there is a lot to learn from it as a Jade, things the elves would not really consider secrets, but which could be rather impressive back home... then again maybe I am projecting a bit it is clear Pan is not in it for the headpats. :V
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Boney said:
It's a decision that's very easy for her to put off. Though the parts that she is absolutely vital for are done, every year she gives the Eastern Valley is worth a decade of mundane cultivation. And there is a non-zero chance of the Waystone Project resulting in a need for an experienced magical terraformer, and it's possible that Panoramia isn't even the only Jade Wizard keeping an eye on anything coming out of Tor Lithanel for their future job prospects.
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For referance I was talking about how she was thinking about dwarf nutrition after Vlag. That looked like she was after a new project.
 
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