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Warhammer Fantasy: Divided Loyalties - an Advisor's Quest

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Rafin said:
I expect that the majority of Witch Hunters that are versed in the symbols of the rarer Elven gods will also know that (typical) Waystones are magical and important both. A group of magic Elves erecting new Waystones to protect the Empire from magic can be expected to dedicate them to their deity of magic. Anyone who takes issue with that due to the goddess being a goddess of magic specifically would also take issue with all those magic Elves setting up magic stones in the Empire.
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The Witch Hunters can argue that pre-existing Waystones in the empire don't seem to require markings of Elven Gods to function, so this is clearly an optional step for Tindomiel to spread the influence and increase the status of their Goddess.

Dedication will ruffle people's sensibilities and make it harder to build Waystones if the host nation holds reservations about potential conflicts of interest.

The best bet is to keep things secular, but failing that at least we should try to account for the local demographics. Either keep Hekarti within Laurelorn or pick an old world god to dedicate in the empire.

Dedicating markings to Hekarti won't be seen as some harmless action in the Empire, it is still equivalent to a foreign deity infringing on important landmarks with graffiti and symbolizes her claim on them.
 
StormySky said:
That's a bit murky. Normally gods have children with other gods, who themselves are also gods (ie Ranald and Shallya having Halétha and her sister). Then we have Myrmidia who, if the legends are correct about, was once incarnated and acted as a mortal. But if an incarnated god conceives physical children with a mortal while on the physical plane, how would that child be affected by one of their parents' divinity? Would they just be a regular mortal with a particularly strong affinity for channeling divine power?
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Well that really depends. Aranessa was entirely mortal, albeit rather mutated. She did not channel any miracles, but supposedly Manaan showered her with favour. Which i think tracks, but its one example of potential godly child.
 
Mellowfellow said:
The Witch Hunters can argue that pre-existing Waystones in the empire don't seem to require markings of Elven Gods to function, so this is clearly an optional step for Tindomiel to spread the influence and increase the status of their Goddess.
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How would they know? This is absurdly esoteric lore than no one understands, if we manage to make new waystones no one but the people in the project will understand them
 
DragonParadox said:
How would they know? This is absurdly esoteric lore than no one understands, if we manage to make new waystones no one but the people in the project will understand them
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Because they can just go cross-check whether pre-existing Waystones have the same Hekarti markings or not? They're all still functional without them. And the markings will be recognizable as per the description, so it's not hidden or obscured.

I just don't get why people don't just vote for Plan Discretion is the Watchword, if they really wanted the Magical Theorist.

It would let Tindomiel tailor their dedication to local Gods instead of stepping on people's toes by forcing Hekarti on foreign countries.

Seriously I'm just boggled that the leading plan name is called "who can read elf anyways". There's so much hubris that it's asking for trouble.
 
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Adhoc vote count started by CrimsonOddball on May 2, 2022 at 3:56 AM, finished with 765 posts and 136 votes.
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There are two votes for plans identical to Just The Heir, so once you merge them there's only six votes between it and the leading plan. It's a pretty close vote.
 
K von Carstein said:
Worshipping a god of storms and wrecks when your livelihood depends on sailing looks like a bad idea. Wouldn't Manaan be more appropriate? Even if you go on the waves to raid others, you still need not to sink.
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Not worshipping a god of storms and wrecks when your livelihood depends on sailing seems like a very bad idea.
Worship does not just mean you think a given god is neat and wish them to help you.
Sometimes worship is paying protection money in hopes you get to keep your kneecaps.
 
Mellowfellow said:
Because they can just go cross-check whether pre-existing Waystones have the same Hekarti markings or not? They're all still functional without them. And the markings will be recognizable as per the description, so it's not hidden or obscured.
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Waystones are not really within the Witch Hunters sphere. Waystones are mostly "officially" watched over by the jades, the ambers, and the Cults of Taal and Rhya. The Witch Hunters authority starts and ends with "are the forces of darkness doing anything weird with it, and do I need a wizard or a priest to help me stop them?"
 
Rafin said:
Are you sure that it was the High Elves that persuaded the Humans to conveniently cut an Ellinilli in twain? Doesn't seem like something they would do.

"Hey primitives. I see you like one of our more angry gods. Please don't worship him as we do (even though we are definitely more correct and knowledgeable than you in this and every other aspect) and instead invent a new deity in order to push all the negative character traits our god has into this new made up entity. No, of course we won't do the same."

Seems off.
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The high elves know they know how to worship a god in moderation. They also know that the humans of Marienberg worshipping the unfiltered version didn't, and were also doing things they strongly disapproved of like raiding Ulthuan.

As a result, they insisted that the humans worship a 'child-safe' version of their god, embracing the safer bits of that mindset, as they aren't elves and so can't be trusted with the grown up version.

If gods aren't completely discrete entities, worshipping a god that is 75% of the original Mannan/Mathlann might be perfectly viable for humans.
 
Mellowfellow said:
Because they can just go cross-check whether pre-existing Waystones have the same Hekarti markings or not? They're all still functional without them. And the markings will be recognizable as per the description, so it's not hidden or obscured.

I just don't get why people don't just vote for Plan Discretion is the Watchword, if they really wanted the Magical Theorist.

It would let Tindomiel tailor their dedication to local Gods instead of stepping on people's toes by forcing Hekarti on foreign countries.

Seriously I'm just boggled that the leading plan name is called "who can read elf anyways". There's so much hubris that it's asking for trouble.
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How do they cross-check. These are thousands of stones scattered throughout the Empire, many of them in remote and dangerous places. I do not think the witch hunters have the manpower or the will to do something like that in order to get the markings 'off' what is a bunch of stones they do not know the significance of even if the GT knows.

I feel like you might be falling into the trap of thinking imperial institutions that are busy as hell have the time to worry about minor things around the edges like the name of obscure elven gods on stones in the middle of nowhere.
 
Boney said:
Cython spitballed Ellinilli, rogue Daemons, or Wind worship (Azyr for Tor, Aqshy for Dazh, Ghur for Ursun, Shyish for the Widow), but also shrugged and said that they could just be gods from east of the World's Edge Mountains, of which they know pretty much nothing.
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It's one and a half years ago, but I don't think Cython bringing up the possibility of Wind worship in Kislev there would fit the flow of the chapter, given that he and Mathilde only spoke of Kurgan Wind worship after that moment and Mathilde presented it as something novel.
That said, the two of them might have circled back to Kislev after that or during a subsequent conversation.

Expanding on the Wind idea though, it must have been mostly idle spitballing. Dazh and Ursun fit well enough. But Tor misses most of the aspects of Azyr (having only lightning and thunder and maybe meteorites if one is generous) and the Widow isn't really a straight forward death god and has far too much proven and provable weather control for any known examples of Shyish manifestation.

Cool that he too spitballed Ellinilli though.
Boney said:
Cython has no way of judging how disconnected from Chaos the gods of Kislev may or may not be.
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Cython needs to get out more. Or read Mathilde's book (it features the Bearicane, right?)
Mellowfellow said:
The Witch Hunters can argue that pre-existing Waystones in the empire don't seem to require markings of Elven Gods to function, so this is clearly an optional step for Tindomiel to spread the influence and increase the status of their Goddess.

Dedication will ruffle people's sensibilities and make it harder to build Waystones if the host nation holds reservations about potential conflicts of interest.

The best bet is to keep things secular, but failing that at least we should try to account for the local demographics. Either keep Hekarti within Laurelorn or pick an old world god to dedicate in the empire.

Dedicating markings to Hekarti won't be seen as some harmless action in the Empire, it is still equivalent to a foreign deity infringing on important landmarks with graffiti and symbolizes her claim on them.
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It's not about requiring them. It's about the completely natural behavior of any goodly folk to dedicate important work that is supposed to last centuries to their gods. It's the Empire Wizards who are weird for being secular, but they are as a compromise and have the blessing of Magnus and Teclis.

Also no one is infringing on existing important landmarks. The Elves would be building new landmarks and tagging those. That's not graffiti, it's legit decoration.

Anyway, I have no preference for Dedication. I actually would prefer Discreet, not just because it's safer politically but also because it would allow us to see who Tindomiel thinks of as Hekarti with a mustache and I'm curious. But I have two other priorities. I like the +2 representatives more than the +1 representatives and I don't want Mathilde to exceed her authority by promising more than the Empire. Still, I am in fact also voting for [] Plan Middle Ground.
 
K von Carstein said:
Worshipping a god of storms and wrecks when your livelihood depends on sailing looks like a bad idea. Wouldn't Manaan be more appropriate? Even if you go on the waves to raid others, you still need not to sink.
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I think it's suggested that the Cult of Stromfels doesn't believe that there's a difference. To them, they're the same god, it's just Stromfels is the original version before the reforms Marienberg imposed won and changed popular perception of the god.

The Sartosan Cult is probably simply a hold out of the members of the cult that kept to the traditional doctrine and Marienberg couldn't displaced it with the less anti-social version.
 
Here is the argument in brief
  1. Most witch hunters can indeed not read elven
  2. Of those who do most do not know what Hekrati is
  3. Of those who also know that most do not know or care what a waystone is
For this to be a problem a lot of people who are very busy with Chaos and necromancy would have to suddenly do an about face to spend political capital on countering an obscure and esoteric part of an already obscuure and esoteric project.
 
Nerdasaurus Rex said:
Waystones are not really within the Witch Hunters sphere. Waystones are mostly "officially" watched over by the jades, the ambers, and the Cults of Taal and Rhya. The Witch Hunters authority starts and ends with "are the forces of darkness doing anything weird with it, and do I need a wizard or a priest to help me stop them?"
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And those cults won't necessarily be happy about extraneous markings or they might have wanted to dedicate it to their own Gods instead. I can think of any number of potential conflicting interests that will make it harder to negotiate building Waystones if it comes attached with Hekarti dedication.

DragonParadox said:
How do they cross-check. These are thousands of stones scattered throughout the Empire, many of them in remote and dangerous places. I do not think the witch hunters have the manpower or the will to do something like that in order to get the markings 'off' what is a bunch of stones they do not know the significance of even if the GT knows.

I feel like you might be falling into the trap of thinking imperial institutions that are busy as hell have the time to worry about minor things around the edges like the name of obscure elven gods on stones in the middle of nowhere.
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Any new Waystones will be a watershed moment that attracts lots of scrutiny and attention. Once they find unusual markings and determine its Hekarti, they'll have sufficient reason to check. Not all Waystones are in hard to reach locations, the one Mathilde observed was right outside a guard outpost iirc.

And they don't even need to personally check each one by one, they just need to contact the local Cult/caretakers and ask "hey are these strange markings present on your Waystone? No? Thanks."

It's so much simpler to just avoid this potential issue by going wider with Empire/Bretonnia/Kislev but adding discretion. I've yet to see a single reason why Plan Discretion is Watchword isn't better. If there was really no issue then why does Mathilde believe it's a concern?

Actually better to just ask @Boney: what does Mathilde believe could be problematic if Hekarti dedication is attached to new Waystones outside Laurelorn? Am i just blowing things out of proportion, or is there a very real possibility that Sigmarites/Cults will object to it in principle?
 
Mellowfellow said:
Any new Waystones will be a watershed moment that attracts lots of scrutiny and attention. Once they find unusual markings and determine its Hekarti, they'll have sufficient reason to check. Not all Waystones are in hard to reach locations, the one Mathilde observed was right outside a guard outpost iirc.

And they don't even need to personally check each one by one, they just need to contact the local Cult/caretakers and ask "hey are these strange markings present on your Waystone? No? Thanks."

It's so much simpler to just avoid this potential issue by going wider with Empire/Bretonnia/Kislev but adding discretion. I've yet to see a single reason why Plan Discretion is Watchword isn't better. If there was really no issue then why does Mathilde believe it's a concern?

Actually better to just ask @Boney: what does Mathilde believe could be problematic if Hekarti dedication is attached to new Waystones outside Laurelorn? Am i just blowing things out of proportion, or is there a very real possibility that Sigmarites/Cults will object to it in principle?
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Most people do not know what a Waystone is, they do not know the significance of them and would not believe it if you told them. IMO you could put a image of Ulric personally killing all the Chaos Gods in single combat on there and the cult of Sigmar would shrug because it would not in any significant way impact their power base.
 
DragonParadox said:
Here is the argument in brief
  1. Most witch hunters can indeed not read elven
  2. Of those who do most do not know what Hekrati is
  3. Of those who also know that most do not know or care what a waystone is
For this to be a problem a lot of people who are very busy with Chaos and necromancy would have to suddenly do an about face to spend political capital on countering an obscure and esoteric part of an already obscuure and esoteric project.
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.... Really? Your third point is an nonsensical. Waystones are definitely considered important for Witch Hunters to know about since y'know, they hunt down magic users that can tap into them? Like Necromancers and Chaos who are known to corrupt Waystones for their own purposes?

The Waystone Project is not as obscure as you make it out to be, it's the lynchpin that's holding back the Middenland-Nordland conflict. Nordland and by extension the Sigmarites, are paying close attention to ongoing developments coming from Laurelorn.
 
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DragonParadox said:
Here is the argument in brief
  1. Most witch hunters can indeed not read elven
  2. Of those who do most do not know what Hekrati is
  3. Of those who also know that most do not know or care what a waystone is
For this to be a problem a lot of people who are very busy with Chaos and necromancy would have to suddenly do an about face to spend political capital on countering an obscure and esoteric part of an already obscuure and esoteric project.
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While I am not as sure about your enumerated points, I still agree with your ultimate conclusion.

Even if we suppose that 1) plenty of Witch Hunters learn to decipher Elven divine symbology, 2) have heard of Hekarti or care enough to look it up or have it looked up by their more scholarly colleagues and 3) are easily distracted by what they consider suspect or unsavory when no obvious Chaos or Necromancy related plots are happening right under their noses (all three are fair assumptions given what we know about random Witch Hunters imho), what are they going to do about it? Tear down the Waystones that we got an EC to officially commission? Attack a group of invited Elven Wizards in some kind of ambush? Openly challenge the Dämmerlichterreiter Grey Lady Magister who has the backing of at least three of Magnus's Wizard Colleges? Or secretly send assassins against her?

This whole project is massively above the pay grade of any individual or small group of Witch Hunters. And the Witch Hunter institutions are too networked to be dumb about it. The worst worry is that random civilians study the Waystones (without using magic) out of curiosity, really like a couple symbols, go to the library, find out who Hekarti is, like her enough to worship her but not enough to start using magic and then get caught and killed despite being innocent. And I guess that would be tragic. But it would also be very much below our own pay grade and pale under comparison with all the other things that trouble the Empire that we could care about.
 
Mellowfellow said:
.... Really? Your third point is an nonsensical. Waystones are definitely considered important for Witch Hunters to know about since y'know, they hunt down magic users that can tap into them? Like Necromancers and Chaos who are known to corrupt Waystones for their own purposes?

The Waystone Project is not as obscure as you make it out to be, it's the lynchpin that's holding back the Middenland-Nordland conflict. Nordland is paying close attention to ongoing developments coming from Laurelorn.
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I think you have a seriously outsized notion of what the average witch hunter looks like and what lore they have. They are not in fact all Van Hall with his high learning. Most of them know what a mutant looks like, what an undead looks like and they know how to shoot stab and otherwise remove them from the earthly plane. As to the importance of the project to the local balance of power, I think you are forgetting that it was held back before we got here. What is holding back the Middleland Norland conflict is that Norland would lose against a combined Middleland Eonir armies and those armies would likely trigger a wider imperial response. It is thus in the interest of neither party to wage war even if the Project never was
 
I like that people are discussing why weirdly shaped waystones will/won't go over well with all these logically supported arguments when its probably more likely going to be a problem because people don't like weird and unusual that doesn't come from them and its going to get an entirely emotional counterpoints from any political blowback it potentially faces.

Kind of like villages feuding over some local monument because its in some squiggly creek and people are getting into uproar about disrupting natural aesthetic of the place. Just the most inane shit that happens to get track because some people with power dislike it.
 
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It could be more accurately to be said to be the other way around, in that the stability of Laurelorn-Nordland relations is one of the lynchpin of the Project.
 
pucflek said:
I like that people are discussing why weirdly shaped waystones will/won't go over well with all these logically supported arguments when its probably more likely going to be a problem because people don't like weird and unusual that doesn't come from them and its going to get an entirely emotional counterpoints from any political blowback it potentially faces.
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I mean if they d not like weirdly shaped waystones then they probably are not going to like the ones we make anyway because it is vanishingly unlikely we will be able to perfectly imitate the aesthetics of the Golden Age with our Hodge-podge lore
 
Rafin said:
While I am not as sure about your enumerated points, I still agree with your ultimate conclusion.

Even if we suppose that 1) plenty of Witch Hunters learn to decipher Elven divine symbology, 2) have heard of Hekarti or care enough to look it up or have it looked up by their more scholarly colleagues and 3) are easily distracted by what they consider suspect or unsavory when no obvious Chaos or Necromancy related plots are happening right under their noses (all three are fair assumptions given what we know about random Witch Hunters imho), what are they going to do about it? Tear down the Waystones that we got an EC to officially commission? Attack a group of invited Elven Wizards in some kind of ambush? Openly challenge the Dämmerlichterreiter Grey Lady Magister who has the backing of at least three of Magnus's Wizard Colleges? Or secretly send assassins against her?

This whole project is massively above the pay grade of any individual or small group of Witch Hunters. And the Witch Hunter institutions are too networked to be dumb about it. The worst worry is that random civilians study the Waystones (without using magic) out of curiosity, really like a couple symbols, go to the library, find out who Hekarti is, like her enough to worship her but not enough to start using magic and then get caught and killed despite being innocent. And I guess that would be tragic. But it would also be very much below our own pay grade and pale under comparison with all the other things that trouble the Empire that we could care about.
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The problem is that Nordland and the Cult of Sigmar can use this controversial point regarding Hekarti to score political points by complicating the process for building new Waystones. They have lots of influence and reach over institutions in the Empire, putting up obstacles is well within their ballpark.

It's not the direct impact of Hekarti markings but rather the perception and sensitive political situation surrounding Laurelorn, putting Hekarti front and center in the final product will hamper its appeal to otherwise interested parties.
 
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It's also worth remembering that Waystones are already very diverse in nature and appearance, and already have the glyphs and symbols of weird pre-Imperial religions on them.

Hell, for all we know there are already Waystones from the golden age built by elves that leaned towards the Hekartian end of the spectrum of ways of approaching magic with such markings.
 
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