Remove ads

Warhammer Fantasy: Divided Loyalties - an Advisor's Quest

Voted best in category in the Users' Choice awards.
Reader mode
I suppose we could try to get a total gag order out of the Emperor, but while that would potentially keep Alric out of the loop, it would come with problems of its own.

For one, convincing the Emperor that "we need to study this sketchy magic" is probably a lot easier than "we need to study this sketchy magic and none of your loyal wizards can hear about it".

For another, I'm not sure how the various patriarchs would take all the results of the Waystone Project being classified beyond their reach, when a fair amount of why they agreed to help us was to try to grab more Waystone lore for their own College.
 
I also just am not sure it's a good idea to decide to go over the heads of the guys we made deals with to make this possible in the first place, all because we fear about Alric getting a memo about this.
Boney said:
If you go to the Emperor, only the Emperor needs to know. If you go to Dragomas, then you go via Algard, and Alric, Paranoth, and Feldmann would need to be looped in (or at least sent a memo, since at least two of them are out and about right now) because their Wizards would be involved.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Because that's what it comes down to. Alric would get a memo about what some of his wizards are doing over in Laurelorn and about the Waystone project.

Why do people assume that he will immediately decide to stick his noise in and mess with us? Or failing that -- why do people assume that the other Matriarchs and Patriarchs, and Dragomas and the Emperor, won't be very very unamused if a single Wizard Patriarch decides to start playing silly games with the Waystone Project just for his own prestige? Or, hell, maybe he'll decide to throw extra support our way because getting in front of a big and prestigious project would be helpful, in which case we get even more help than Mira was willing to provide on her own, yay.

In short, I don't think Alric should be the major consideration here.
 
Redshirt Army said:
I suppose we could try to get a total gag order out of the Emperor, but while that would potentially keep Alric out of the loop, it would come with problems of its own.

For one, convincing the Emperor that "we need to study this sketchy magic" is probably a lot easier than "we need to study this sketchy magic and none of your loyal wizards can hear about it".

For another, I'm not sure how the various patriarchs would take all the results of the Waystone Project being classified beyond their reach, when a fair amount of why they agreed to help us was to try to grab more Waystone lore for their own College.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

I mean if he is not willing to give gag order then the emperor option is indistinguishable from the Draonas option as far as I can see. @Boney would going to the Emperor come with a gag order if we managed it?
 
Garlak said:
I also just am not sure it's a good idea to decide to go over the heads of the guys we made deals with to make this possible in the first place, all because we fear about Alric getting a memo about this.

Because that's what it comes down to. Alric would get a memo about what some of his wizards are doing over in Laurelorn and about the Waystone project.

Why do people assume that he will immediately decide to stick his noise in and mess with us? Or failing that -- why do people assume that the other Matriarchs and Patriarchs, and Dragomas and the Emperor, won't be very very unamused if a single Wizard Patriarch decides to start playing silly games with the Waystone Project just for his own prestige? Or, hell, maybe he'll decide to throw extra support our way because getting in front of a big and prestigious project would be helpful, in which case we get even more help than Mira was willing to provide on her own, yay.

In short, I don't think Alric should be the major consideration here.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Because he's probably not going to try to sabotage the project, he's going to try to usurp the project from under our control to regain lost favour.

Edit: and the emperor and the rest of the patriarchs would not intervene because our project hasn't done anything yet.
 
Last edited:
I was leaning towards Emperor but the arguments are making me think might be better to follow the proper channels with Dragomas
 
DragonParadox said:
I mean if he is not willing to give gag order then the emperor option is indistinguishable from the Draonas option as far as I can see.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

In my eyes, without a gag order, the difference would be that by going through the Emperor, the project getting permission would be a fait-accompli and Alric could only mess around politically with the aftermath, whereas by going through proper channels he (or some other group that's kept informed, like the Church of Sigmar) could actually stall us getting permission until we worked out the politics.
 
DragonParadox said:
I mean if he is not willing to give gag order then the emperor option is indistinguishable from the Draonas option as far as I can see. @Boney would going to the Emperor come with a gag order if we managed it?
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

No, but you don't really need it. If you've got the Emperor's signature on it, then it becomes standard practice to not put those parts in writing unless you really have to because that stuff is still need-to-know only. That means the only way a Magister Patriarch finds out about it is if they do an in-depth investigation of the minutiae of each aspect of the Waystone Project. As opposed to going to Dragomas, where the Magister Patriarchs each get a memo outright saying 'your Wizard now has dispensation to investigate the Dhar-creating aspects of Waystones'.
 
Mopman43 said:
They certainly wouldn't have any Elven Waystones, they split off from the Karaz Ankor before those were ever put up.

I expect the continents with Elven Waystones are Naggaroth, Ulthuan, the Old World, and the Southlands (the northern part anyway).
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
They split 5-600 years after meeting the Elves, according to my copy of the 8th edition Army Book.

I doubt Naggaroth has any. Maybe like, two, one in Ghrond and one in Arnheim. The Dark Elves like their Dhar though.

Boney said:
Ulthuan helped build a replacement that had an Old One monolith as its spine
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Huh. I just realised this means that Ulthuan can apparently build (or at least, help build) new Waystones, as long as they have a supply of Old One monoliths. That's interesting. Implies that they know how to link things into the Network at a minimum.
 
Raiseth said:
The lines are probably non-linear, since the planet is in fact round and not a flat plane.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Not sure what you specifically were trying to say, but that brings me to a question - do leylines that are sent out to east/west or ordinal directions follow geodesics (big circles on a sphere) or parallels? Former seems more natural yet brings significant veering off by latitude - in moderate latitudes shift by longitude by 1° brings about ~0,5' latitude shift (taking Earth's diameter that's ~1 km for ~100 km shift), growing quadratically from longitude under small angle approximation from there.
I suppose Old World has developed spherical geometry from long history of astronomy, like Europe did from hellenistic times, so IC we can formulate and answer that question by observations.
 
DragonParadox said:
How would he do that? I mean the only reason Thorek for instance is even here is because of us, same with Askel and both Kislevites. We spent favor to get them in the room. Odds are if we go they go.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Because we have two light wizards in there and him going "oh it seems you find light wizards usefully, why don't I go help." Would be terrible for us. Because we don't really have a answer except "no I don't like you."
 
Boney said:
No, but you don't really need it. If you've got the Emperor's signature on it, then it becomes standard practice to not put those parts in writing unless you really have to because that stuff is still need-to-know only. That means the only way a Magister Patriarch finds out about it is if they do an in-depth investigation of the minutiae of each aspect of the Waystone Project. As opposed to going to Dragomas, where the Magister Patriarchs each get a memo outright saying 'your Wizard now has dispensation to investigate the Dhar-creating aspects of Waystones'.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
So if we go to the Emperor, the only reason that even Dragomas will know is because the Emperor will mention it to him later, never mind the Patriarchs.
 
Z000 said:
given what we know about Dhar, this is the first secret, you can turn the thing on itself
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
I think it's actually closer to the much hypothesized "tongs" idea, it just turns out that the the two halves of the tongs used to guide the Dhar need to be of different winds. I'm pretty heavily reminded of the concept of keeping antimatter trapped with magnetic fields.
 
Tobtorp said:
Because we have two light wizards in there and him going "oh it seems you find light wizards usefully, why don't I go help." Would be terrible for us. Because we don't really have a answer except "no I don't like you."
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

We do not need a better answer. There is no law that says w have to like him. But if we really wanted to be at least a little circumspect we could ask the Eonir not to let him in because he is the fuck up who caused the Night of a Thousand Arcane Duels. They are a sovereign tate and can do that.
 
Boney said:
No, but you don't really need it. If you've got the Emperor's signature on it, then it becomes standard practice to not put those parts in writing unless you really have to because that stuff is still need-to-know only. That means the only way a Magister Patriarch finds out about it is if they do an in-depth investigation of the minutiae of each aspect of the Waystone Project. As opposed to going to Dragomas, where the Magister Patriarchs each get a memo outright saying 'your Wizard now has dispensation to investigate the Dhar-creating aspects of Waystones'.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

I see. That assuages a lot of my concerns with going to the Emperor, then.
 
Tobtorp said:
Because he's probably not going to try to sabotage the project, he's going to try to usurp the project from under our control to regain lost favour.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
... He's not going to be able to do that tho'.

Try to usurp the project from under our control, I mean.

He, uh, can't do that. The Elves are working with Mathilde; because only Mathilde can connect them with the Runesmiths of the Karaz Ankor; the Runesmiths, Thorek, is only working on this because Mathilde brought him in. Mathilde is the one who brought in the Kislevites, the Halethan, and the other Elf noble houses too. She's the one who brought the other Colleges of Magic in too.

You're really thinking that if we go to Dragomas and explain, and Dragomas then goes "through the proper procedures" which involve "sending a memo to the other Patriarchs/Matriarchs involved, while going to the Emperor with Mathilde to talk to him about this"... that this would result in Alric, once he gets the memo, deciding to... muscle into the Waystone Project and outdo Mathilde?

He could invite himself into the Waystone Project Party, as part of the Light College's contribution. But he'd just be one part of it, and might even be under Mathilde's command, since she's in charge of the Empire side of things here and is definitely the one who is bridging things between the Elves and Dwarfs.

Because, let's not forget, this meeting and project came about because the Elves learned the Dwarfs turned part of their Waystone system back on, and wanted to coordinate with the Dwarfs to get some of that for them. Something which the Elves need Mathilde for, because she's close with the Dwarfs.

It's also possible that we could arguably say "No" to him asking to join the Waystone Project to boot. :V It might cost us political favor or whatnot, or maybe not, but we could do that. Because a Patriarch of another Magic College cannot just muscle in on the project of another Wind College's wizard lord so easily.
 
Boney said:
As opposed to going to Dragomas, where the Magister Patriarchs each get a memo outright saying 'your Wizard now has dispensation to investigate the Dhar-creating aspects of Waystones'.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Would it really be that blunt or would it be more "Its been brought to our attention that the interaction of multiple winds that must be dragged away from a point may unintentionally interact despite the best efforts of the wizards, and we're letting you know we'll pardon that if it happens."
Or is it a moot point as the Patriarchs would read that and read that as "Its probably inevitable that we end up making some Dhar here" not see a difference? Or you were just abreviating?
 
[Q] Maritial Dispensation
Seek dispensation from Article 7 directly from the Emperor for the study of the Waystones. But delegate it to get Heigi to do it for you.

:V:V:V
Even more procedure skipped
 
Boney said:
It's still not something that is allowed lightly or often, so it could not be said that the Colleges boast any experts in the matter. College theory dictates that there is no safe level of exposure to Dhar, and College procedures dictate that any study of it must have the express permission of a Magister Patriarch or Matriarch, which are given out very infrequently indeed, and almost never more than once to the same Wizard for fear of accumulated corruption. So how can any Wizard build up a working knowledge of Dhar under those circumstances?

Well. More or less inadvertently, you've answered that question.

Due to an espionage gambit of your former Master, you campaigned against the Necromancers of Sylvania. Due to the... opinions of Abelhelm's heir, you were looking for a new purpose when Belegar called for aid, and by sheer chance one of your fellow campaigners was an undercover Magister given permission to study Skaven technosorcery, and under that aegis you've studied a number of applications of Wyrdstone. And when you called upon the Light College for aid in the Karag Dum Expedition, they sent a Magister who was entrusted with another very rare permission, this time to study the Windfall and the atmosphere of the Chaos Wastes. Through happenstance and good fortune, you've found yourself in three different, excellent, and above all College-authorized opportunities to study the terrible substance of Dhar when most Wizards would never have one.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Here is my argument for going to the emperor instead of the proper channels. While getting repeated opportunities to study dhar is not a crime in itself, the colleges seem to limit how many a wizard gets as a matter of policy. While this would be Mathildes first official dispensation, it would her fourths project in that direction, with all three previous ones known to the colleges.
Bottom line, I think Mathilde specifically would have a very hard time getting the dispensation, while after the fact scrutiny would be more easily weathered.

[x] Imperial Dispensation
 
Last edited:
Reader mode
You must login or register to reply here.
Remove ads
Back
Top