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Warhammer Fantasy: Divided Loyalties - an Advisor's Quest

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I was going to ask for clarifications, but I do not want to pester the GM with hypotheticals that will never happen so I will just say that in my understanding there is room in the dwarf mindset for a distinction between vampire in the metaphysical sense and vampire in the political sense, just as there is between Skaven in the biological sense and subject of the Underempire in the political sense... and it would probably be about as hard to drive that wedge in for a vampire that wishes non-hostile reactions with the Karaz Ankor.

For what it's worth Mathilde is probably the person most likely to manage it, which does not mean it would be easy.
 
The default Dwarven stance towards literally any being without grudges leveled against it specifically is that if you stay out of their mountains and don't materially contribute to their enemies, they don't need to have an opinion about you, hostile or otherwise. Skaven, Orc, Goblin, Vampire, anyone, if you stay the fuck away from them, they'll stay the fuck away from you. If you're shaped like millennia of Dwarven trauma, all you have to do is not get up in their face with it and they'll never have any reason to make any judgement about you.

If you are a Vampire, or an Orc, or a Skaven, or whatever, and you really, really, really want to insist that you're going to get up in the face of the Dwarves and not be killed by them, then it's on you to give them a really convincing reason why they should believe that you're the exception to millennia of trauma.
 
This thread is like Carcinisation but for Vampires. Leave it alone for a while and it always goes back to Vampires.

Yes, I get it. Vampires are sexy. I think Vampire Mathilde is hot. That is the extent of how far I go into thinking about it though.
 
Codex said:
This thread is like Carcinisation but for Vampires. Leave it alone for a while and it always goes back to Vampires.

Yes, I get it. Vampires are sexy. I think Vampire Mathilde is hot. That is the extent of how far I go into thinking about it though.
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Was going to say the thread needs a new tag saying 'this is not a vampire quest,' but then I actually looked and saw it was there.

Well played SV.
 
My view on vampires is that they're a 10/10 for effort, 8/10 for execution, and then Nagash mostly ruined them with his curses.

Surely Mathilde can do better. Hubris is a coward's word, after all. More seriously, while Mathilde may not be as inherently talented as Neferata and W'ssoran (if you believe the sources that say they invented their version of Elixir of Life based on Nagash's looted notes rather than being his cats paws), she has other advantages.

The first one is that she's not starting from a blank sheet of paper. She can look at how vampires work and don't work under very high end Windsight for a insights. Now, this may require using a captive vampire and experimenting on some condemned prisoners, but the Colleges have probably done worse.

Mathilde also has access to a broader range of sources about the nature of the soul than Nagash. She already knows advanced Morrire lore, and she can access Gazulite Lore. Notably, we know that the dwarves have already defied the natural order of life and death and built their own afterlife*. She may also be able to get access to elven lore on the soul from the Eonir, as they may not currently consider it militarily relevant. She may also be able to learn some of what the Druichi know from someone who isn't kept drugged out of their mind. There are also apparitions, as they're spirits of the material world that eat magic, so might provide an alternative route to feed a soul no longer touching the Aethyr (bonded apparition eats magic and converts it into soul-stuff, then the wizard bound to them takes of tithe of that soul-stuff to refresh their own soul, for example).

I'm not sure on this, as it might fall into the burrito category; but Ulgu may be better suited to natively produce immortality than Shyish, as the Wind of Endings needs to be corrupted by Dhar to produce its antithesis. Interacting with souls at the moment of transition from life to death, or messing with the interface between the material and the Aethyr that souls may span/exist in could be within Ulgu's conceptual wheelhouse.

AV. I'm not sure precisely how it would help, but having a source of the raw material of the Aethyr; the stuff that souls are probably made of, seems like the kind of thing that would come in handy. Even if it's not directly useful, having things like Orbs of Sorcery to soften reality in desires ways seems like the kind of thing that might be handy.

* whether living dwarves' souls touch/are part of the Underearth rathe than the wider Aethyr is an interesting question that may be relevant to such a project as well.
 
Its not about being sexy. Its avout the capability to wage war against the skaven rats and lay siege to skaven blight with un ending horrors.
 
Alratan said:
My view on vampires is that they're a 10/10 for effort, 8/10 for execution, and then Nagash mostly ruined them with his curses.
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Speaking of this, I have a question if you don"t mind me asking since this is something which comes up often about vampires, do we have any idea on how Nagash was able to curse the entirety of the vampire species? Asking because the capability to curse entire bloodlines of beings does not seem to be applied much by Nagash against any of his foes he faced such as humans, orcs or skaven but instead only on the vampires once.
 
Dheer said:
Speaking of this, I have a question if you don"t mind me asking since this is something which comes up often about vampires, do we have any idea on how Nagash was able to curse the entirety of the vampire species? Asking because the capability to curse entire bloodlines of beings does not seem to be applied much by Nagash against any of his foes he faced such as humans, orcs or skaven but instead only on the vampires once.
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Neferata quite literally used Nagash's own formula for the Elixir he made to turn himself into a Lich, except it was derivative. Of course he can do whatever he wants to them. They're inferior versions of what he's done to himself.
 
Honestly, I just want to complete our collection of vampire skulls so we can slam down a big book of "hey check out my vampire skull collection, isn't it neat?"

Nyklaus is probably a Von Carstein, and there's a rogue Lahamian running around the Stirlandian countryside—although we could probably borrow Roswita's if really need to.
 
Holy shit, Brettonian cavalry can storm along over 125 kilometres a day!

They don't even need remounts!

No wonder they're the greatest cavaliers in the old world!
 
Dheer said:
Speaking of this, I have a question if you don"t mind me asking since this is something which comes up often about vampires, do we have any idea on how Nagash was able to curse the entirety of the vampire species? Asking because the capability to curse entire bloodlines of beings does not seem to be applied much by Nagash against any of his foes he faced such as humans, orcs or skaven but instead only on the vampires once.
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Unknown, but W'ssoran was a Nagash cultist. He may have slipped a back door into the Elixir of Life, which would also explain how he could command vampires he met in person and delegate that ability to the ring he gave Vashasanesh.

It's unclear whether he retains that ability, he may have exhausted it by cursing them, as it certainly doesn't show up in his later fluff or crunch,

Codex said:
Neferata quite literally used Nagash's own formula for the Elixir he made to turn himself into a Lich, except it was derivative. Of course he can do whatever he wants to them. They're inferior versions of what he's done to himself.
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Arguably, Neferata's Elixir of Life is an upgrade/refinement of Nagash's. Nagash needed to eat large amounts of Warpstone for his transformation (and he probably still eats it to sustain himself), and needed to use Warpstone to produce the Dhar to practice necromancy. The vampires' vortex can be used to suck in the Winds of Magic and manufacture large amounts of Dhar for them to use. Nagash's transformation process also massively mutated him and left him as an animated skeleton. I believe vampires can choose to have biologically living bodies.

Being self-replicating is also a massive advantage on Neferata's version. The vampiric version only looks worse because of the series of curses that have been levied on it.

Also worth noting is that Nagash would already have been a liche, he didn't use Necromancy to become one. As a High Priest of the Mortuary Cult he'd already have been immortal. His transformation was a further upgrade on top ot that (I'm not sure whether Arkhan was one of his junior priests or not). This is unlike the vampiric ones which also grants immortality.

Note also that Nagash being irrevocably bound to his physical body doesn't seem to be a feature of his original Elixir of Life but something he developed after going north to Cripple Peak, given that he seems to have died, left his body, and then come back and reanimated it on the journey. It is a feature of Neferata's version.
 
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Codex said:
Neferata quite literally used Nagash's own formula for the Elixir he made to turn himself into a Lich, except it was derivative. Of course he can do whatever he wants to them. They're inferior versions of what he's done to himself.
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That still does not explain on how that allows him to curse an entire species. And as for the statement of them being inferior versions of himself, that is completely incorrect. The capabilities of the vampires both in immortality, sustainability and other aspects such as self replication far surpass his version even with the curses he put on them and without those curses they are superior to what Nagash has done such as the fact his resurrection time compared to them is extremely slow.

Alratan said:
Unknown, but W'ssoran was a Nagash cultist. He may have slipped a back door into the Elixir of Life, which would also explain how he could command vampires he met in person and delegate that ability to the ring he gave Vashasanesh.

It's unclear whether he retains that ability, he may have exhausted it by cursing them, as it certainly doesn't show up in his later fluff or crunch,
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Interesting, the possibility of the backdoor could be what allowed him to affect the entire species but also leads to the question on how the curse he set is sustaining itself. Still interesting to know that what he did is potentially non repeatable.
 
Alratan said:
No. As you're not actually casting Dhar spells yourself. Your allowed to study Dhar as that helps to better counter it. You're just not allowed to use it yourself.
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But would not experimenting with and creating undead (unless you… first create alive non vampiric immortals without creating vampires first) fall under the Unholy Act of Necromancy and such?
 
Dheer said:
Interesting, the possibility of the backdoor could be what allowed him to affect the entire species but also leads to the question on how the curse he set is sustaining itself. Still interesting to know that what he did is potentially non repeatable.
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We don't know it's non-repeatable, just that he hasn't repeated it and that his ability to command vampires seems to have degraded over time.

As for joe it would be self-sustaining, he'd have cursed the bloodlines and so all descendants of the bloodline would inherit it along with the blood. This would be sympathetic/contagious ritual magic.[

Shine said:
But would not experimenting with and creating undead (unless you… first create alive non vampiric immortals without creating vampires first) fall under the Unholy Act of Necromancy and such?
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Necromancy is a Lore of Magic based around using Shyish tongs to manipulate Dhar. Now, turning someone into a vampire using a captive vampire's blood might look to the unenlightened like Necromancy, but as long as you don't touch the bad magic yourself you're not practicing necromancy, I think.

Now, you'd probably not want to advertise this to anyone, as some insufficiently forward thinking of your peers might vigorously disagree, but given the magnitude of the threat vampires pose, understanding what makes them tick and hoping that knowing more about how they're made will lead to being able to unmake them may seem justifiable.

I mean, some Bright Magister at some point decided to experiment with burning people alive on a pyre as fuel to create Incarnates of Aqshy, and the ends were seen to justify the means for them. And this is something that I strongly suspect involves messing around with the souls of the victims.

Xepheria said:
What I'm taking from this is that Nagash cursing the vampiric bloodlines was him malding that his Elixir of Life was manifestly worse.

He got patent-sniped!
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The lore about the Elixir of Life and it's creation is really quite messed up and contradictory between sources. A lot of it comes down to choosing your own preferred version.
 
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Alratan said:
Necromancy is a Lore of Magic based around using Shyish tongs to manipulate Dhar. Now, turning someone into a vampire using a captive vampire's blood might look to the unenlightened like Necromancy, but as long as you don't touch the bad magic yourself you're not practicing necromancy, I think.

Now, you'd probably not want to advertise this to anyone, as some insufficiently forward thinking of your peers might vigorously disagree, but given the magnitude of the threat vampires pose, understanding what makes them tick and hoping that knowing more about how they're made will lead to being able to unmake them may seem justifiable.

I mean, some Bright Magister at some point decided to experiment with burning people alive on a pyre as fuel to create Incarnates of Aqshy, and the ends were seen to justify the means for them. And this is something that I strongly suspect involves messing around with the souls of the victims.
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Although I admire your scholarly rigour, I don't think 'it's technically not Necromancy, only lower case necromancy. I am merely using and replicating the results to create undead and experiment on them' is going to stop us from being swiftly executed.

So if we do do this, maybe we should go somewhere else to do so. Somewhere quite far away.
 
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Alratan said:
We don't know it's non-repeatable, just that he hasn't repeated it and that his ability to command vampires seems to have degraded over time.

As for joe it would be self-sustaining, he'd have cursed the bloodlines and so all descendants of the bloodline would inherit it along with the blood. This would be sympathetic/contagious ritual magic.[



Necromancy is a Lore of Magic based around using Shyish tongs to manipulate Dhar. Now, turning someone into a vampire using a captive vampire's blood might look to the unenlightened like Necromancy, but as long as you don't touch the bad magic yourself you're not practicing necromancy, I think.

Now, you'd probably not want to advertise this to anyone, as some insufficiently forward thinking of your peers might vigorously disagree, but given the magnitude of the threat vampires pose, understanding what makes them tick and hoping that knowing more about how they're made will lead to being able to unmake them may seem justifiable.

I mean, some Bright Magister at some point decided to experiment with burning people alive on a pyre as fuel to create Incarnates of Aqshy, and the ends were seen to justify the means for them. And this is something that I strongly suspect involves messing around with the souls of the victims.



The lore about the Elixir of Life and it's creation is really quite messed up and contradictory between sources. A lot of it comes down to choosing your own preferred version.
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I'm just saying, Nagash's PR would have been a lot better if he were a sexy vampire instead of a pile of angry bones.

Presentation, people!
 
Shine said:
Although I admire your scholarly rigour, I don't think 'it's technically not Necromancy, I am merely using and replicating the results to create undead and experiment on them' is going to stop us from being swiftly executed.

So if we do do this, maybe we should go somewhere else to do so. Somewhere quite far away.
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It's like reading the Liber Mortis. You can convince yourself it's fine, but it's a hard sell to anyone else.
 
Alratan said:
and needed to use Warpstone to produce the Dhar to practice necromancy
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I'm not aware of anything saying that? Like, Necromancers can use Dhar without needing Warpstone, we saw an Eshin Sorcerer produce Dhar from surrounding Winds.

And he didn't get access to Warpstone until his exile to Nagashizzar, he was using Necromancy and Dark Magic before that.

He used Warpstone for the same reason everyone else, including vampires, use it- it's a hefty power boost if you don't mind the risks or side effects.
 
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