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Warhammer Fantasy: Divided Loyalties - an Advisor's Quest

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Asking ourselves "what's the worst that could've happened" is a great way to use our collective imaginations as a torture device, so let's calm down a little. Dice operate within a constrained possiblity space: rolling a 1 in a combat roll means Mathilde fucked up, but it does not mean that Mathilde fell and stabbed herself with her own sword - Mathilde's fuckups should still be believable fuckups, and Mathilde is a skilled fighter. Mathilde has spent a lot of time constructing safety protocols for handling AV, and she has taken care to use small amounts of it in experiments. So let's ask ourselves what's the worst that could reasonably happen. How could AV power stone creation go wrong?

The obvious way for it to fail is for the AV to blow up. AV is fairly volatile, and using power stone creation methods on it could plausibly agitate it enough to induce a transformation. This is not that big of a deal - Mathilde has made careful measurements of AV explosions, and had small amounts of AV detonate in a fairly small distance from her. A low roll might mean that Mathilde blew up a lot of AV before making it work, or that she blew up a lot of AV and failed to make it work, or that she blew up a lot of AV and realized that this cannot possibly work and this line of research is a dead end. But Mathilde didn't just roll low, she rolled the lowest that she possibly could...so what's a less obvious way for power stone creation to go wrong?

Power stone creation methods force the winds to be dense, despite the winds really wanting to spread like a gas. I can actually imagine this being easier to do for the AV, which mostly acts like a liquid which is already much denser than a gas so we're already halfway there...except that as we just said AV likes blowing up. If the power stone creation methods mostly work we might end up with the AV condesing, and then turning into the winds. This means we now have a whole lot of winds bunched togther in a small space, and we all know what that means - Dhar.

The above is still not that bad. Dhar sucks and all, but a small amount of AV won't make a ton of it. However, the whole idea behind power stone creation is compressing the thing you're working with. With a core of Dhar at the center, you have the whole cloud of primodrial winds being pulled from within and pushed from without, and that makes me think 'singularity', which in this context makes me think 'portal'. Maybe a small portal - probably a small portal - and that would make it no worse than a bad miscast, which is pretty bad but not quite disastrous. Unless someone on the other side of the veil is paying attention to Mathilde, and we just gave Them an opening.

So, my guess is a portal, and the attention of something bad, which can act in a limited way thanks to Mathilde tearing a hole in reality. Maybe the Chaos Gods themselves, as so many have speculated, maybe "just" some demons. If we really did draw the attention of Tzeentech to the AV then our asp might be a goner, which means no new AV which would sure suck a whole lot, but our current supply of AV is probably safe. Mathilde's first investigation into the AV suggests that the stuff does not retain a link to the asp, so you can't destroy it by fucking around in the warp, so any demons who want to take our snakeblood must actually come to reality and break Mathilde's jars. That's very bad, but not quest endingly bad, at least not unless we keep rolling low on dealing with whatever fallout there is.

Now of course all of this could be completely wrong, but knowing what we know of the AV and of Mathilde's caution around the thing this is more or less the worst case scenario that still makes sense to me. I'm definitely not going to say that I'm confident this or something like this is what's actually going to happen, but having (what I consider) a plausible scenario laid out is enough to make me stop imagining new ones, and that's something.
Dark as Silver said:
For the record, 1d6 have not always been bigger is better. When Ranald robbed Gork and Mork a 6 was Tzeench catches him on the way to bank and steals everything.
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Not literally always, which is why I said "pretty much always", but even this was a case of "suffering from success" iirc: the heist being too succesful thus drawing the attention of Slaanesh. Anyway, in general the rule has ususally been higher is better, I'm pretty sure about that though for all I know there may be a large number of counter examples which I forgot about. R
 
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Parabola said:

I definitely think it's odd that a Manticore was just there hanging out with Drycha's forces. We didn't really question why it was there, did we?
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I've just looked it up, and Manticores are typically found on mountain peaks in the far north. They are not "forest" creatures. So yeah, that is weird.

Dark as Silver said:
I think Tzeentch was an option because it was his scheme to create gods of Only Gork and Only Mork so he was watching to some degree when Mathile ruined it.
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No, it was Slaanesh, 6 is Their sacred number and would have been drawn to the situation by Ranald's pride and ego.
 
I think it would be fucking hilarious if we some how made something wacky like a Dhar orb. It makes no sense but it does not need to.
 
13th Bee said:
A dice-based bad end to this quest will almost certainly involve multiple consecutive large failures, not just a single natural 1.
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As Mopman says, using Substance of Shadow during the rescue of the sunken Dwarf monitor would have meant instant death and quest end, but in the time since I first read that, I looked back through the thread and found that Substance of Shadows had been previously talked about, at length, about how it's Very Dangerous and attempts at abusing it to achieve noclipping or other similar nonsense are Not Appreciated.

Something along the lines of how Substance of Shadow in a bad situation causing a fusion bomb, I think? I can't find the exact quote.
 
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Okay I know I'm normally just a lurker but the doomposting is getting a little out of hand and it's really annoying me.

So here are my 2 grains of sand.

Yes this is bad but I don't think it's oh quest ends, everything is fucked Karak is lost and Mathide is burned at the stake.

No, we were in a safe environment with all the measures against that and it will take multiple rolls of nat 1 for that, at the most I think we will have to fight some apparitions or demons and permanently lose the action of trying to do this again, very possibly lose this tower was due to contamination for hundreds of years aka forever, as happened with the section of the castle in stirland and of course losing a good amount of our good reputation.

We could also get another arcane mark on top of that. but all those altogether it stretches it out for me.

but I don't think it all ended because we rolled a 1 once other heroes have had multiple Rolls when this kind of thing in the past and they've been in much worse places, with worse advantages, and many more disadvantages.

So please don't say it's all over or let's just talk about how we will deal with the consequences of this.

Does anyone else wants to see what else we can do for the dwarves to make it up to them I'm sure there's a Karak somewhere we could rescue;)?

but we do have to think about how to deal with the fallout of whatever this is.
 
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GrimTheMad said:
This is reminding me of that time we fought Drycha and we saw the rolls ahead of time looked pretty bad, and people proceeded to argue themselves in circles over how bad it was with each circuit getting progressively worse, and then ultimately it turned out to be not nearly that bad at all.

I guess what I'm saying is- don't panic? There is absolutely nothing we can do at this point regardless, and constantly inventing new terrible things that could result helps no one.

Also, just- Mathilde once survived rolling a nat 1 while fighting a necrarch vampire lord. This probably isn't worse than that.
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I agree, we've seen what a nat 1 looks like while we were already in a bad situation. It was very bad, but not catastrophic.

I think most likely this will be putting us in a bad situation, rather than immediate catastrophe. How that situation is handled is still entirely up in the air; it's entirely possible it is solved quickly and nobody even notices, a weaker daemon or something is summoned and Mathilde manages to despatch it almost immediately, and then this is just a cautionary tale confined to Mathilde's head (and the thread). More so I'm hoping it's publicly noticed (hoping for not is a bit much imo) but the worst that comes from it is some pointed looks and maybe we need to tell Algard what the hell we were doing that summoned a daemon of Tzeentch, which might reduce some later smugs as he now knows about AV and maybe Orbs. Worse than that is possible, very possible, but who knows.

Parabola said:
An incomplete list of possible results of what Tzeentch's attention could manifest as, according to me:
  • Temptation hits Mathilde. Direct temptation from the Changer of Ways, the very source of our power. Ranald may match up against another God of Cunning.
  • Tzeentch decides to include us in the Everchosen tournament. Or, if we happen to already be in it unknowingly, we are put in the general trajectory of the next contestant.
  • Mathilde accidentally creates a lot of Warpstone. Possibly, a very spherical one which all Dhar-users would like having and is Very Bad. Still better than anything below on the list.
  • A demon, or several of them, manifest.
    • Pink/Iridescent Horrors of Tzeentch, or a Herald of Tzeentch - these are his weakest daemons but they all still cast from his Lore. The Herald can also cast Chamon spells.
    • Flamers of Tzeentch show up. A relatively benign result, in that these are ranged units and not melee-oriented ones, so within the Room of Calamity they would have no room to escape. Still, they shoot out Warpflame so don't underestimate them.
    • A Burning Chariot of Tzeentch shows up. Same as the Flamers, the Room of Calamity is no place for it, being literally a chariot, but also you can't underestimate Warpflame.
    • A Lord of Change peeks their head through. According to Asarnil they're very difficult to get into an actual fight when they don't want one, but possibly one could think they could take on Mathilde - they're nothing to sneeze at in combat or in magic.
    • The Blue Scribes decide that AV is a neat thing that we shouldn't have possession of, they should. They are very magically powerful, but unless they have a troupe of Horrors with them, they're physically frail enough that Mathilde might be able to gank them.
    • The Changeling tries to take Mathilde's position. If it's alone, Mathilde has a good chance of success against them - it can't replicate magical items. But if they succeed, Eike has an assuredly a bad time in the future, and so might the Grey College.
    • Kairos Fateweaver thinks it'd be neat to plunder literally our entire penthouse. They have a high chance of success.
  • I'm not sure how the methods of powerstone creation work with AV given that for the Winds they involve 'touch it with your soul' and AV is a literal liquid, but it's possible directly doing so is Bad For You. Worst case scenario, death. I hope not.
  • A good chunk of the Room of Calamity (presumably where we were making the experiment) gets sucked into the Warp, ala the East Wing of Eagle Castle. Mathilde may or may not be in that range. Belegar is Disappointed, Roswita is Concerned; somewhere in the afterlife, Abelhelm sighs.
  • A portal to the Warp opens up. It tries and/or succeeds to drag in Mathilde. If she is, the quest either ends or suddenly shifts to Impossible Mode (Malekith and Oxyotl are the only ones who are known to have succeeded in escaping the Warp).
    • The portal is unstable and closes afterward.
    • It stays open. Belegar is disappointed. No more headpats. This one is very unlikely to happen on accident, but if a daemon gets through and is quick enough to channel the power of the Waystones toward it, they might be able to manage it.
  • Remember Karak Vlag and how some of Tzeentch's forces fled east instead of facing the Expedition alongside the Slaanesh forces? Maybe they get a message saying 'hey why dont you go all the way south until you get to Karak Eight Peaks?'
  • Tzeentch thinks it'd be neat to send an entire (new) army to Karak Eight Peaks.
  • Several of the above, combined.
...So does anyone want to make a 'Dedicate an entire month to praying to Ranald' action next turn?
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If Ranald bails us out of this I propose we use Dwarf favour to make a very large, solid gold, intricately carved statue of a cat, dedicate it to Ranald, enchant it to be invisible and as undetectable as possible, then smuggle it into Marienburg's main street or central government building or other prominent location to invisibly look over the proceedings and maybe fall on someone's head a few decades down the line if someone pisses off Best God.
 
Dark as Silver said:
I think Tzeentch was an option because it was his scheme to create gods of Only Gork and Only Mork so he was watching to some degree when Mathile ruined it.
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Considering that 6 is the sacred number of Slaanesh and the number 6 result was literally labeled "The Sacred Number" I'm pretty confident that Tzeentch wouldn't have been the one invoked there, involvement in the overall scheme notwithstanding.
 
Boney said:
Since the dice are apparently in the mood for ratcheting up suspense, I feel it's only fair to inform anyone who might be waiting to see how this plays out that the earliest I'll be able to dedicate the time to get this update done and out is tomorrow.
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Well hey...on the bright side, something to potentially look forward to reading after my tonsillectomy tomorrow :p
 
FallenPears said:
If Ranald bails us out of this I propose we use Dwarf favour to make a very large, solid gold, intricately carved statue of a cat, dedicate it to Ranald, enchant it to be invisible and as undetectable as possible, then smuggle it into Marienburg's main street or central government building or other prominent location to invisibly look over the proceedings and maybe fall on someone's head a few decades down the line if someone pisses off Best God.
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If Ranald bails us out, that'll be our third Chaos God thwarted, directly or otherwise. Stealing a hold full of dwarves from Slaanesh, beating out one of Khorne's champions, hanging on to a substance that Tzeentch wants... we'd only need Nurgle to even out the Four.

And that'd still be far preferable to other alternatives.
 
Parabola said:
As Mopman says, using Substance of Shadow during the rescue of the sunken Dwarf monitor would have meant instant death and quest end, but in the time since I first read that, I looked back through the thread and found that Substance of Shadows had been previously talked about, at length, about how it's Very Dangerous and attempts at abusing it to achieve noclipping or other similar nonsense are Not Appreciated.

Something along the lines of how Substance of Shadow in a bad situation causing a fusion bomb, I think? I can't find the exact quote.
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Yeah, the no clipping issue with Substance of Shadow was one of the first times in the quest Boney explicitly put their foot down and said "This is what it does" iirc.

If you're hunting exact quotes I'm fairly sure it's in the Stirland arc or right after it, before the K8P expedition.
 
Parabola said:
If Ranald bails us out, that'll be our third Chaos God thwarted, directly or otherwise. Stealing a hold full of dwarves from Slaanesh, beating out one of Khorne's champions, hanging on to a substance that Tzeentch wants... we'd only need Nurgle to even out the Four.

And that'd still be far preferable to other alternatives.
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There was also that one time we sent some witch hunters to investigate an outbreak of plague among the labourers building the dwarf canal. It might have been Skaven, but it could have been Nurgle. Or it might have been nothing. We never really had an opportunity to follow up on that.

If it was Nurgle, that means we've messed with all four gods now.
 
Parabola said:
If Ranald bails us out, that'll be our third Chaos God thwarted, directly or otherwise. Stealing a hold full of dwarves from Slaanesh, beating out one of Khorne's champions, hanging on to a substance that Tzeentch wants... we'd only need Nurgle to even out the Four.

And that'd still be far preferable to other alternatives.
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We already did Tzeentch, when Mathilde accidentally disrupted the ritual of Only Gork- a Tzeentchian plot millennia in the making.
 
Nerdasaurus Rex said:
There was also that one time we sent some witch hunters to investigate an outbreak of plague among the labourers building the dwarf canal. It might have been Skaven, but it could have been Nurgle. Or it might have been nothing. We never really had an opportunity to follow up on that.

If it was Nurgle, that means we've messed with all four gods now.
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That one would be too indirect, I think. Like, it'd be amusing, but you might as well put that on Wilhelmina for telling Mathilde about it in the first place.

Like, Karak Vlag and the champion of Khorne? Those were incidents we directly went out of our way to get involved with. We could have left KV alone, or ran out on Ljiljana, but we didn't. This... it's not intervening to help someone, and it's not something Tzeentch has a monopoly on, but it's directly grasping at forbidden knowledge, which is definitely up his alley.

Mopman43 said:
We already did Tzeentch, when Mathilde accidentally disrupted the ritual of Only Gork- a Tzeentchian plot millennia in the making.
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True, but does Tzeentch know that? We didn't attract his attention for that one.

Also, it's not out of the question for other Black Orcs to try it again. We didn't make it impossible for Gork and Mork to split up.
 
Parabola said:


That one would be too indirect, I think. Like, it'd be amusing, but you might as well put that on Wilhelmina for telling Mathilde about it in the first place.

Like, Karak Vlag and the champion of Khorne? Those were incidents we directly went out of our way to get involved with. We could have left KV alone, or ran out on Ljiljana, but we didn't. This... it's not intervening to help someone, and it's not something Tzeentch has a monopoly on, but it's directly grasping at forbidden knowledge, which is definitely up his alley.
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I can't find the quote right now, but I remember someone saying "isn't it weird we've never fought a chaos cult" and Boney replied with the ominously vague "That you know about". This was before the Karak Dum expedition, and the only thing I can think of that qualifies is the canal-plague thing. Or maybe Boney was just pulling our collective legs as a joke.
 
Nerdasaurus Rex said:
I can't find the quote right now, but I remember someone saying "isn't it weird we've never fought a chaos cult" and Boney replied with the ominously vague "That you know about". This was before the Karak Dum expedition, and the only thing I can think of that qualifies is the canal-plague thing.
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The Skull River Ambush is another possibility. Fooger made a decent case for Marienburg not actually benefiting from it, and while it's possible that someone managed to convince themselves that they'll benefit anyway there actually is a faction that does definitely benefit - Chaos. I can kind of see it beinga Tzeentchian plot: if the dwarves blame Marienburg, the Empire gets involved in a war at a time it can't afford to, and if they're really lucky Ulthuan gets dragged into it as well. If the dwarves blame the Empire, the Empire's relations with its closest and greatest ally take a powerful, perhaps irrevocable, blow. If the dwarves blame the Skaven or the Chorfs instead, that's not as great but the dwarves are going to want revenge so at least that means some number of dwarves will spend their time fighting The Horned Rat and Hashut (which based on what Borek said are probably not Chaos Gods, and in any case are definitely not Tzeentch's buddies) instead of Chaos. And if cooler heads prevail and the dwarves don't jump to any conclusions, well, a few hundred dead dwarves are their own reward.
 
Sparsebeard said:
We don't need to finish swording this turn they said, we are only taking safe actions they said. Not that sword mastery would be of help here necessarily, but stil my point about being better safe than sorry still stands.
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We used to be a lot more diligent about using the Gambler on our dangerous magical research. Between the recent Windherder failure and now this, I think we really ought to reconsider where we put the coin.
 
Derpmind said:
We used to be a lot more diligent about using the Gambler on our dangerous magical research. Between the recent Windherder failure and now this, I think we really ought to reconsider where we put the coin.
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I'm standing behind putting the coin on the tributary actions. Three rituals in one action is dangerous, and even with the benefit of hindsight I don't think it was clearly a worse use for the coin than the AV - natural 1's happen with or without the coin. Doing one dangerous action per turn because we're scared of not having the Gambler on it means we'll never get anything done, we gotta play the odds sometimes and sometimes we'll get unlucky.
 
Dark as Silver said:
I think Tzeentch was an option because it was his scheme to create gods of Only Gork and Only Mork so he was watching to some degree when Mathile ruined it.
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The possibilities were directly labeled as such:
Boney said:
1: One Less God.
2: Two Gods Notice.
3: Man In The Middle.
4: Split Four Ways.
5: A Fifth Aspect.
6: The Sacred Number.
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6 is the Sacred Number of Slaanesh, if Boney meant to imply that Tzeentch would the one interfering then I feel like he would have worded that differently, there are plenty of other ways to refer to Chaos in general or Tzeentch in particular after all. Rather than calling on the sacred number of an entirely different Chaos God.
 
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Nerdasaurus Rex said:

I can't find the quote right now, but I remember someone saying "isn't it weird we've never fought a chaos cult" and Boney replied with the ominously vague "That you know about". This was before the Karak Dum expedition, and the only thing I can think of that qualifies is the canal-plague thing. Or maybe Boney was just pulling our collective legs as a joke.
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...You know, I mentioned this recently, but back in Drakenhof, Boney offhandedly mentioned that the spell that Hexensohn dispelled wasn't Necromancy, it was Dhar - Doombolt specifically.

Unless he got it mixed up with Gaze of Nagash, Doombolt is one of the two Signature spells of Dhar - like, the actual Lore of Dhar/Chaos. It's not strange that necromancers could learn Dhar by themselves in addition to Necromancy, but it's odd that they'd be a strong enough user of it there to get to Battle Magic levels.

It's really really unlikely, but I give it a non-zero chance of the so-called Countess Von Carstein having a Chaos cult problem in Drakenhof town.

Derpmind said:
We used to be a lot more diligent about using the Gambler on our dangerous magical research. Between the recent Windherder failure and now this, I think we really ought to reconsider where we put the coin.
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Admittedly, we did put The Gambler towards the Ritual actions, because when Rituals go wrong results can be horrific. That said, I'm not sure a +20 would have helped that much for a nat 1.
 
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