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Warhammer Fantasy: Divided Loyalties - an Advisor's Quest

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Rotekian said:
A shadow blade is still a blade so that wouldn't work. We could use a mountain though no problem.
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You know... absent all other criteria, the Eye of Gazul does very nicely fit "Darkest magic," and "Consumed by flames (of Gazul) for eternity"

Reentering said criteria army of terrible beasts: All the mixed folk who call Karak Eight Peaks home, especially with The We included. Firstborn of Noble Blood? Could possibly be Belegar's heir. Or, for that matter, Belegar himself if he can wrangle into the other requirements sideways. This does, of course, require somehow learning a dwarf in "darkest arts," but with how flexible prophecies can be, that could be anything from the obvious magic, to ancient dwarven sculptural styles born out of the practical need for navigating unlit sections of Karaks by touch.
 
Geedubs said:
Y'know, Mandred could potentially fit most of that prophecy's criteria...
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There are tens of thousands of magic wielding firstborn noble sons the prophecy could be referring to. Until Mandred takes over the imperial zoo and starts monologuing on the foolishness of the Articles, I don't think we have anything to worry about lol.
 
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Mathilde could train Mandred with her vast knowledge of necromancy and other magics. Also beast could mean a lot of things since elves look down on humans .
 
Boney said:
Again, this isn't just Warhammer - Shadowrun and the World of Darkness originally had Earthdawn and Exalted respectively as prequel settings before the links between them got severed for various IRL reasons. So there's not just secrets to be found, there's also a lot of red herrings that can lead you astray.
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Yeah, back when Exalted was in development, the map they first made was based on the Mediterranean, given that they floated the idea of making the world a prehistory-style setting like the Hyborian Age from Conan. Then they dropped that idea and modified the map, so it is now a continent in the middle and a supercontinent surrounding it from the south, east and north, with the west being mostly sea.

This had the side effect of messing with scale and raising a lot of questions as to the world's logistics, geography, etc. In at least one case in I think second edition, some writers decided that one specific warlord (introduced in first edition) was casually at war with a polity that should in theory have been several hundreds of miles away from him. The World of Darkness links were also dropped mid-development, but by contrast didn't really raise any specific issues. There's only so far that you could have gone 'yeah this Exalt splat made this WoD splat' or say that they had the same patrons.

Fascinatingly, I've found a similar phenomenon to what you were saying on Nobilis and its high school AU, Chuubo's Marvelous Wish-Granting Engine. In Nobilis 2e, there's a story (not necessarily accurate) that the goddess of the Sun was visited by a demon named Nightmare in her sleep, and that from that nightmare she had a child named Arikel, who had power over the Night. Being a mythical sort of setting, it is entirely possible that Arikel really was born from an actual nightmare, and in fact later sources in Chuubo's lean more towards that idea (probably because the framing of sexual assault is tasteless and unfitting).

This is important because Chuubo's premise is that an otherworldly guy who was the Sun's archnemesis (and possibly lover) went and shot down the Sun with an arrow in a metaphysical gambit to end the world (the sun being representative of enlightenment and banishing ignorance or chaos) which only partly succeeded. And there are other hints in there that point towards some very interesting but ultimately very optional Deep Lore.
 
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Codex said:
That sounds like a Lord of the Rings Witch King of Angmar reference. He did die at the hands of a Hobbit and a woman, neither of which were Men.
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I honestly admire that loophole because clearly it was meant to mean Men as in Race of Men, as in Mankind but because of the properties of language and because noone seriously thought there would ever be a woman on a battlefield, Eowyn just bulldozed through.
 
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Aranfan said:
I was talking about the "not slain by blade or arrow" bit.
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Even without that, Alcadizzar certainly wasn't "learned in darkest arts" or commanded an army of beasts. And I don't think any of the Council of 13 had a central enough role to qualify.

So unless it's the Horned Rat, Nagash being cut to pieces and burned doesn't fit.

AsuraAtlas said:
Holy shit. It totally works with the wording too, and it's super ironic the way so many of the best prophecies are. That's such a cool theory.
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Problem: Malekith isn't a first-born son. He's Aenarion's 2nd son, after Morellion.
 
pucflek said:
I honestly admire that loophole because clearly it was meant to mean Men as in Race of Men, as in Mankind but because of the properties of language and because noone seriously thought there would ever be a woman on a battlefield, Eowyn just bulldozed through.
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A decently large part of LotR is Tolkien saying "Man, the way the prophecies in MacBeth turned out were really disappointing weren't they?"
 
pucflek said:
I honestly admire that loophole because clearly it was meant to mean Men as in Race of Men, as in Mankind but because of the properties of language and because noone seriously thought there would ever be a woman on a battlefield, Eowyn just bulldozed through.
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It was also a reference to Shakespeare

Article:
Tolkien's Legendarium:
One of the Trope Namers (specifically, the "No Man" part): In The Lord of the Rings, the Witch-King of Angmar is the subject of a prophecy made by the Elf-lord Glorfindel, who foretold that he would not fall by the hand of man; naturally, he was slain by Éowyn, a woman who entered the battle in disguise, with the aid of Merry, a hobbit. This was intentionally based on Macbeth, where the prophecy that "none of woman born" could harm Macbeth was fulfilled by a normal dude who was cut from his mother's womb (by C-section) and thus was not technically "born" - a pay-off which Tolkien considered an eye-roll-inducing cop-out. Same thing with the prophecy that Macbeth should not fall until "the Great Birnam Wood" marched against him - this being fulfilled by Macbeth's enemies putting some twigs in their caps. Tolkien resolved to do things properly: the latter with Ents (actual walking trees), and the former by having the killing-blow struck by a woman.
J. R. R. Tolkien has a prophecy theme in The Silmarillion. One involves the death of Huan, the Hound of Valinor, which will happen only when he fights the greatest wolf ever to live. So at one point Sauron the shape-shifter (yes, that Sauron) decides to try to play the prophecy by turning into the greatest wolf in the world... and it doesn't work, because the greatest wolf ever to live won't be around for another three pages or so. So Huan kicks Sauron's ass.
 
Mopman43 said:
Problem: Malekith isn't a first-born son. He's Aenarion's 2nd son, after Morellion.
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I guess never mind then lol. I do think it's the coolest theory anyone's thought of so far, but I suppose it will have to languish down in the awesome disproven fantheories graveyard.
pucflek said:
I honestly admire that loophole because clearly it was meant to mean Men as in Race of Men, as in Mankind but because of the properties of language and because noone seriously thought there would ever be a woman on a battlefield, Eowyn just bulldozed through.
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I once read a thing that asked why no one tried to kill the Witch King with an Elf or a Dwarf, and someone else said that his protections actually didn't matter, and it was his aura of destiny that made him such a big fish. The Elves and Dwarves respect magic and legends. Eowyn was informed of his whole deal and still chose to bravely fight on under a loophole, and that had just straight up never happened before. Maybe he had actual magical protections or maybe it was just some random prophecy, but either way there's no reason to think it would work considering "mankind" was the more common and logical reading. It wasn't the loophole that defeated him, but Eowyns bravery. She spoke confidently that she could kill him, and the Witch King doubted for a single moment, and so he lost.
 
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Nurgle said:
Mathilde could train Mandred with her vast knowledge of necromancy and other magics. Also beast could mean a lot of things since elves look down on humans .
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I don't think the Elves even knew humans existed when the prophecy was given.

Codex said:
That sounds like a Lord of the Rings Witch King of Angmar reference. He did die at the hands of a Hobbit and a woman, neither of which were Men.
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It's an old theme. There's a prophecy in, I think Hinduism? about someone who can't be killed inside or outside, during the day or night, by man or woman, weapon or beast. And then somethign really really specific happens and he dies. Don't remember the whole thing though.

pucflek said:
I honestly admire that loophole because clearly it was meant to mean Men as in Race of Men, as in Mankind but because of the properties of language and because noone seriously thought there would ever be a woman on a battlefield, Eowyn just bulldozed through.
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It wasn't meant to mean that. People interpreted it that way, it just never actually meant that. The prophecy is written with a small m in the appendixes for exactly that reason (although it was spoken, so no one would be able to distinguish that).

AsuraAtlas said:
I once read a thing that asked why no one tried to kill the Witch King with an Elf or a Dwarf, and someone else said that his protections actually didn't matter, and it was his aura of destiny that made him such a big fish. The Elves and Dwarves respect magic and legends. Eowyn was informed of his whole deal and still chose to bravely fight on under a loophole, and that had just straight up never happened before. Maybe he had actual magical protections or maybe it was just some random prophecy, but either way there's no reason to think it would work considering "mankind" was the more common and logical reading. It wasn't the loophole that defeated him, but Eowyns bravery. She spoke confidently that she could kill him, and the Witch King doubted for a single moment, and so he lost.
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Plenty of people tried to kill the Witch King. Elrond and Gandalf took a pretty good shot at it when he tried to cross the Ford of Bruinen. But that's the nature of prophecies. You can't beat them.

He did absolutely have protections btw. We're straight up told so.

There's no indication Eowyn knew the prophecy either; the "I am no man!" part is awesome, but is sadly film canon only. In the books, he's about to kill Eowyn, Merry stabs him (incidentally undoing a spell that protected or healed him) and then Eowyn just about gets up and stabs him before collapsing.
 
While we're on the topic, how do you think the Elves of Lotr and WHF would react to each other? Probably a lot of polite "Wtf", unless its the Druchi, in which case war happens.
 
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