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Warhammer Fantasy: Divided Loyalties - an Advisor's Quest

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Changing from no to yes for various reasons. First and foremost Boney's WoG convinced me that it is unlikely that Tindomiel will be able to smuggle backdoors to directly empower their goddess into the Waystones. Any potential empowerment will happen through the more intangible connection of dedicating a nation-spanning magic redirecting project to the goddess of magic. I am much more okay with that.
In any case I have to admit that my concerns, while concerning in the worst case, weren't built on the sturdiest foundations.
And lastly from an OOC perspective any repercussions this might have would lead to a) metaphysical impact that allows for new world-building while also not being actually dangerous to the world or empowering Chaos in any real way, and b) lead to more politicking both by Mathilde and on her periphery (though not as much as if we also had recruited a Hoeth House at the same time). Both of these are things I like.

[X] [HOUSE] Yes

[x] Plan how many people can actually read elf anyways?
-[x] [SCOPE] The Empire (+2)
-[x] [REP] Magical Theorist (-2)
-[x] [FORM] Dedication (0)

[x] Plan Middle Ground
-[x] [SCOPE] The Empire (+2)
-[x] [REP] Heir (-1)
-[x] [FORM] Discreet (-1)

[X] Plan: Local Security
-[x] [SCOPE] Northern Provinces (+1)
-[X] [FORM] Shrines (+1)
-[x] [REP] Magical Theorist (-2)

[X] [HEDGEWISE] Discreetly
[X] [HEDGEWISE] Secretly

Tobtorp said:
Hmmm, thinking about it. Plan "how many people can actually read elf anyway." Is pretty apt. How many people actually can read elf. We know that the grey's only learn it for Chipher and that the other orders wouldn't know it. Some Marienburger s would know it because elf and middenland is probably learning a bit but there can't be too many people that can read eltharin.
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I don't think the dedication will be in essay form. And Witch Hunters do need to know all the various symbols of deities in order to differentiate the legal from the illegal ones.

@Boney What, if anything, is Hekarti's current legal status in the Empire? Legalizing any currently illegal gods from the Eonir's inner Mandala circle might be a good idea for the Emperor and/or the EC of Middenland to have brought up by someone in the next Grand Conclave anyway.
 
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Rafin said:
What, if anything, is Hekarti's current legal status in the Empire? Legalizing any currently illegal gods from the Eonir's inner Mandala circle might be a good idea for the Emperor and/or the EC of Middenland to have brought up by someone in the next Grand Conclave anyway.
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Legalizing the Elf gods in their "unadulterated" form is bad for humans though.

Otoh... if a version of them could become legalized, it might be a net positive.

Unfortunately, Hekarti wouldn't gain much because her prime worshippers would be in bound for the colleges, a mostly secular institution.
 
Look if anyone asks who the statue is for, it's the Goddess of Juggling. Which given how magic works, isn't actually that far off as a metaphor.
 
Obviously the coin did activate and Isthien was trying to signal that he knows we worship Ranald by committing to a huge gamble that the project will be a complete success
:V
 
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IronFist said:
Legalizing the Elf gods in their "unadulterated" form is bad for humans though.

Otoh... if a version of them could become legalized, it might be a net positive.

Unfortunately, Hekarti wouldn't gain much because her prime worshippers would be in bound for the colleges, a mostly secular institution.
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Legalizing is not the same as popularizing or proselytizing. Right now any Eonir that prays to a decent chunk of their gods in public while in the Empire is commiting a crime.

Boney said:
Hekarti has no legal status in the Empire.
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Just to make sure, "legal status" is the same as illegal in the Empire, right? Or am I mistaken? I actually am not quite sure anymore because the Empire has so many minor and regional gods and more pop up from time to time (any time a new settlement finds a particularly weird looking rock inhabited by a not quite unfriendly spirit), so I don't know if said villagers have to, like, declare their newfound deity and have it checked out for potential daemonhood or something before legally being allowed to worship it. So maybe there's actually a list of illegal gods, not a list of legal gods, making Hekarti worship technically okay for now.

Also, if it's not too much work right now, do you have a list of Elf gods that are definitely legal and recognized in the Empire? I imagine Hoeth being one simply because of Teclis. Then there's the list of "these are the same gods anyway" which includes Morai-Heg (as Morr), maybe Kurnous (as Taal I think), Isha and/or Lileath and/or Ladrielle (as Rhya and/or Shallya whether accurate or not), and maybe even Loec (though Ranald is already iffy so excluding his guises is something the Conclave might have done).
 
Halétha isn't Hekarti. She's not a good fit for her and I can get into details if people really want to. No, obviously Hekarti is Luccina.

Lucan and Luccina are twin Gods and Luccina is known for being a powerful sorceress. According to myth, when they were young they were raised by a leopard with three tails and two heads - a hydra leopard, if you will. To this day there is rivalry between those who claim descent from Lucan and those that claim descent from Luccina, mirroring the rivalry between Hekarti and her twin. Of course not all of the details add up, the big one being that Lucan is said to have been a great warrior, which doesn't really make sense for a guise of Atharti, but humans are big dumb idiots - did you know they believe there's something called divine magic which is somehow different from real magic? - so it shouldn't be a surprise they got some of the details wrong.
 
Tasoli said:
Okay so like who the fuck is Hekarti in human lands then. Shit.
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My impression is that the versatility of the offer comes from the nature of elven gods as ways of thinking i.e. they would look at a foreign pantheon as a set of stickers, pick all of them that include "magic is awesome" in some way, slap them on the waystone and call it a win for Hekarti, though not as much of a win as their personalized "magic is awesome and here's why" sticker.
 
Rafin said:
Legalizing is not the same as popularizing or proselytizing. Right now any Eonir that prays to a decent chunk of their gods in public while in the Empire is commiting a crime.


Just to make sure, "legal status" is the same as illegal in the Empire, right? Or am I mistaken? I actually am not quite sure anymore because the Empire has so many minor and regional gods and more pop up from time to time (any time a new settlement finds a particularly weird looking rock inhabited by a not quite unfriendly spirit), so I don't know if said villagers have to, like, declare their newfound deity and have it checked out for potential daemonhood or something before legally being allowed to worship it. So maybe there's actually a list of illegal gods, not a list of legal gods, making Hekarti worship technically okay for now.

Also, if it's not too much work right now, do you have a list of Elf gods that are definitely legal and recognized in the Empire? I imagine Hoeth being one simply because of Teclis. Then there's the list of "these are the same gods anyway" which includes Morai-Heg (as Morr), maybe Kurnous (as Taal I think), Isha and/or Lileath and/or Ladrielle (as Rhya and/or Shallya whether accurate or not), and maybe even Loec (though Ranald is already iffy so excluding his guises is something the Conclave might have done).
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Illegal gods are a blacklist not a whitelist. It's not illegal to pray to a god the witch hunters haven't heard of.
Boney said:
For the purposes of this quest, I'm going to say that it's blacklist, not whitelist. Defaulting to pogroms seems unsustainably grimdark to me.
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Rafin said:
Just to make sure, "legal status" is the same as illegal in the Empire, right? Or am I mistaken? I actually am not quite sure anymore because the Empire has so many minor and regional gods and more pop up from time to time (any time a new settlement finds a particularly weird looking rock inhabited by a not quite unfriendly spirit), so I don't know if said villagers have to, like, declare their newfound deity and have it checked out for potential daemonhood or something before legally being allowed to worship it. So maybe there's actually a list of illegal gods, not a list of legal gods, making Hekarti worship technically okay for now.
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It means if someone starts worshipping Hekarti, the established local clergy will investigate and if they think something's off they'll call in Witch Hunters to investigate further. But Hekarti is the Goddess of Doing Magic and the only people who can legally do magic in the Empire are the Colleges, who are officially secular, so any attempts at Hekarti worship by non-Magisters would skip right to the Witch Hunters and everyone involved being dragged to Altdorf in chains if they're lucky.

Rafin said:
Also, if it's not too much work right now, do you have a list of Elf gods that are definitely legal and recognized in the Empire? I imagine Hoeth being one simply because of Teclis. Then there's the list of "these are the same gods anyway" which includes Morai-Heg (as Morr), maybe Kurnous (as Taal I think), Isha and/or Lileath and/or Ladrielle (as Rhya and/or Shallya whether accurate or not), and maybe even Loec (though Ranald is already iffy so excluding his guises is something the Conclave might have done).
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It is not the Empire's business to police who the Elven citizens of Ulthuan worship, so none of the Gods of Ulthuan have legal status in the Empire (except Khaine, who is super banned). They didn't legalize Hoeth for Teclis because the Empire has absolutely no authority to dictate who Teclis can and can't worship. For that reason almost none of the Gods of Ulthuan have legal status in the Empire, in the same way that Ulthuan doesn't have any laws on the books about whether worshipping Sigmar is legal or not.

The Grand Conclave makes no attempts to dictate international law. Their authority ends at the Empire's borders, so they do not make judgements about Gods that do not exist within the Empire. If some of the Empire's Gods are worshipped on Ulthuan under other names, that's between that God and Ulthuan. When Khaine worship sprouted up, it wasn't treated as an extension of a Cult of Ulthuan, it was treated as an entirely new Cult and then it was banned because of all the murder.
 
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Khaine, Vylmar, and Nurgle are illegal gods.

Ranald, Sigmar, and Taal are major gods.

Everything between those two points is a grey area of "it's not illegal to worship those gods, but if their worship requires you to do crimes (like performing unsanctioned magic, or killing tax collectors) we will hang you".
 
Boney said:
It means if someone starts worshipping Hekarti, the established local clergy will investigate and if they think something's off they'll call in Witch Hunters to investigate further. But Hekarti is the Goddess of Doing Magic and the only people who can legally do magic in the Empire are the Colleges, who are officially secular, so any attempts at Hekarti worship by non-Magisters would skip right to the Witch Hunters and everyone involved being dragged to Altdorf in chains if they're lucky.
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Wait wait wait, what if she was worshipped by soldiers accompanying Battle Wizards specifically in the sense of 'please please please don't let him explode into daemons'? Or basically any citizen who doesn't want the wizard doing Magic Stuff to fuck up Bad.

EDIT: I am actually really warming up to this. Hekarti, Goddess of Please Don't Let Me Get Reamed By Daemons Today Because Magister Timmy Failed His Roll.
 
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Shane_357 said:
Wait wait wait, what if she was worshipped by soldiers accompanying Battle Wizards specifically in the sense of 'please please please don't let him explode into daemons'? Or basically any citizen who doesn't want the wizard doing Magic Stuff to fuck up Bad.
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Then the established local clergy will investigate and if they think something's off they'll call in Witch Hunters to investigate further.
 
Boney said:
But Hekarti is the Goddess of Doing Magic and the only people who can legally do magic in the Empire are the Colleges, who are officially secular,
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As in there's a legal precedence for them to remain secular? Or just that historically the College leadership itself has erred on the side of appearing secular and kept religion out of their education of new Wizards?

That said, I am definitely not in favor of Hekarti spreading to the Colleges to the point where she becomes their official patron. But her becoming popular enough among Empire Wizards that she would be a hypothetical starting option for a newly rolled Quest character sounds fun enough.
Boney said:
It is not the Empire's business to police who the Elven citizens of Ulthuan worship, so none of the Gods of Ulthuan have legal status in the Empire. They didn't legalize Hoeth for Teclis because the Empire has absolutely no authority to dictate who Teclis can and can't worship. For that reason almost none of the Gods of Ulthuan have legal status in the Empire, in the same way that Ulthuan doesn't have any laws on the books about whether worshipping Sigmar is legal or not.

The Grand Conclave makes no attempts to dictate international law. Their authority ends at the Empire's borders, so they do not make judgements about Gods that do not exist within the Empire. If some of the Empire's Gods are worshipped on Ulthuan under other names, that's between that God and Ulthuan. When Khaine worship sprouted up, it wasn't treated as an extension of a Cult of Ulthuan, it was treated as an entirely new Cult and then it was banned because of all the murder.
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But Elves come to the Empire. And then they worship their gods sometimes even outside of embassies. And then some Humans might become interested.

I guess such a thing has not happened enough to ever have become a legal concern. Elves are simply neither as frequent, nor as liked, nor as straight-forward as Dwarves.

One thing that might have let me astray are the busts/shrines of Hoeth we have (or could have had?) in our Library in K8P. But that's nowhere near the Empire and specifically in a library that's supposed to be open and friendly to all goodly races.

Anyway, none of this really matters since Quest canon is a blacklist instead of a whitelist.
Shane_357 said:
Wait wait wait, what if she was worshipped by soldiers accompanying Battle Wizards specifically in the sense of 'please please please don't let him explode into daemons'? Or basically any citizen who doesn't want the wizard doing Magic Stuff to fuck up Bad.

EDIT: I am actually really warming up to this. Hekarti, Goddess of Please Don't Let Me Get Reamed By Daemons Today Because Magister Timmy Failed His Roll.
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I love it. Also, Hekarti could be a Goddess of magic items. Those are legal if safe (safe being that they never summon daemons or open portals into the Warp and are also not primarily used for crime). And if there is a deity to thank for their supernatural working then they are much more like holy items and thus less suspicious to Imperial lay folk.
 
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Boney said:
It really isn't.
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I meant it more as in how extremely diverse and granular the Empire is religiously. If someone has an issue, just Grey Wizard a coalition of everyone else faith-wise in the area to say 'nuh-uh'. Everyone loves getting one over a rival, the impulse is so predictable and fun.

EDIT: 'Grey Wizard' is now a verb describing just... everything Mathilde does.
 
Shane_357 said:
I meant it more as in how extremely diverse and granular the Empire is religiously. If someone has an issue, just Grey Wizard a coalition of everyone else faith-wise in the area to say 'nuh-uh'. Everyone loves getting one over a rival, the impulse is so predictable and fun.

EDIT: 'Grey Wizard' is now a verb describing just... everything Mathilde does.
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I don't think the local clergy take a vote, it just requires any of them to think the new goddess is sus.
 
Shane_357 said:
That seems incredibly and hilariously abusable, thank you.
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You have to think about lived experience.
If the local barely literate lay preist hears about a bunch of soldiers praying to a new goddess of magic, are they more likely to think "Ah yes, this is the elf goddess I have never heard of being whorshipped in a novel way. All clear gents!" or "That is totally The Plotter in a dress again. Damn it that's the third time this month."
 
Shane_357 said:
That seems incredibly and hilariously abusable, thank you.
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The problem, of course, is that the more hilariously you abuse the system, the more Witch Hunters fume angrily about you.

And the Witch Hunters actively fantasize about killing you with fire, and have no sense of humor, and they aren't above going rogue to get you if they're convinced that you're actually a Chaos cult hiding behind the law or something.

At some point, you have to worry about giving them an excuse. Especially because as worshippers of a very obscure and kinda sus foreign god, you don't have an institutional support structure.

...

Worshipers of Taal can get kind of weird dancing naked in the woods because Taal has institutional leverage within the Empire to protect them, so Witch Hunters who attack a cult of Taal and win will have to face the displeasure of powerful people within the Empire.

Witch Hunters who attack a cult of Hekarti and win will not have to face the displeasure of anyone particularly important.
 
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