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Warhammer Fantasy: Divided Loyalties - an Advisor's Quest

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One point I will make is that we, the thread are aware that the EverchosenBowl is ongoing, and that's lending the daemon's words more credibility than is otherwise warranted.

I genuinely think that if we go to the Grey Order and tell them about this we will, at most, have an eye kept on us for a while. We are not going to be the first wizard a daemon has tried to tempt with lies; in fact, Algard almost outright said that our getting Chaos's attention was more of an inevitability than anything else.

They aren't going to go rooting through Mathilde's most secretly kept notes in the heart of a vault in Karak Eight Peaks. They're going to examine her for mutation, keep an eye on her mental state and help her get through this, because that is what it makes the most sense to do. Every wizard of sufficient notability is going to have gone through something like this. Maybe they aren't all told they're prime Everchosen material, but believing a daemon's words that it explicitly taunted Mathilde were to pressure her to keep it a secret would just be bad practice.

It would not surprise me if daemonic temptation was so expected of Lord Magisters that they keep track of who admits to it and who doesn't. Mathilde has done nothing wrong here, and they aren't going to break into Karak Eight Peaks' vaults to search our reading materials because we heard a daemon make alarming offers. This paranoia is the trap that's being laid.
 
What I'm genuinely curious about, which Mathilde would know, is what standard protocols are upon discovering that some normal means of using magic, which was not previously considered especially dark, turns out to summon daemons or do something equally bad. I assume this is actually not all that uncommon, Warhammer being what it is- how does that get communicated?
How do we balance not studying dark magic with figuring out what things outside of dhar-use tend to do that?
 
There are other possible negative outcomes to telling the Colleges beyond Mathilde being executed.

It could result in her being removed from the Waystone project, due to its sensitivity. Or it could result in them distrusting her miraculous new Orbs of Sorcery, when she just revealed she had possibly been compromised by the Chaos God of Sorcery. Just like telling Belegar probably won't get her thrown out the door, but it would most likely seriously hurt their relationship and possibly make him forbid further experimentation within K8P.
 
Parabola said:
I truly hate (in a Watsonian sense, I'm loving this Doylistically) that Mathilde was read like a book as far as her deeds go, and some of her personality. I really do hate that we're already proving this goose right that we are already dwelling and obsessing over the most inane statements it makes because that is our nature as someone who has taken in Ulgu into our souls (and also being a quest thread).

But the birb did not touch into anything really meaningful of Mathilde as a person, only of her deeds. It didn't say anything about being someone who loves a really hardcore farmer girl, or how she loves making puns, or all the more positive or petty aspects of her that still make her who she is.

The only aspect of that whole monologue that I think is fully 100% right is that the purpose of our Order is to be the little 'no' in the darkness.
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bit slow to reply to this but this stuck in my head for a bit

I think I can definitely see the angle that the demon knew perfectly how to play Mathilde Weber, the prideful and ambitious Lady Magister with a savior complex, but maybe had less of a grasp on Mathilde, a woman who loves her girlfriend and dog and loves to play little pranks on people.
 
Deathbybunnies said:
They aren't going to go rooting through Mathilde's most secretly kept notes in the heart of a vault in Karak Eight Peaks. They're going to examine her for mutation, keep an eye on her mental state and help her get through this, because that is what it makes the most sense to do. Every wizard of sufficient notability is going to have gone through something like this. Maybe they aren't all told they're prime Everchosen material, but believing a daemon's words that it explicitly taunted Mathilde were to pressure her to keep it a secret would just be bad practice.
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Pretty much, yeah. At most I expect us to get another volunteer for the Waystone Project and/or Web-Mat. I don't think most people even know she had a secret Vault in Eight Peaks? I very vaguely remember it being described as Mathilde basically putting the book in and then telling what few dwarves were a part of it that it would be best if its existence is forgotten, or something. That might be my imagination though.
 
So I think the next step is to play 'two truths and a lie' with Eike.

"A significant chunk of my magical discoveries happened because I accidentally damned a snake to eternal suffering, I once played dice with the Orc gods, and Tzeentch likes my hat."

(The lie is that they're all true.)
 
Ericwinter said:
…Do you think the Colleges know that Liminal realms can even be broken into?
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So can the regular one.

Aura said:
What I'm genuinely curious about, which Mathilde would know, is what standard protocols are upon discovering that some normal means of using magic, which was not previously considered especially dark, turns out to summon daemons or do something equally bad. I assume this is actually not all that uncommon, Warhammer being what it is- how does that get communicated?
How do we balance not studying dark magic with figuring out what things outside of dhar-use tend to do that?
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Saying 'don't do X because demons happen' does not count as studying or teaching dark magic, as long as you don't get prohibition fruit concentrate levels of detailed about your warnings.
 
To use the old line: If I had a nickel for every time an SV quest cut off a promising line of inquiry involving false realities got pulled because of the looming, feathery prospect of doom. I'd have two nickels. Not much, but it's funny it happened twice.

As far as Tzeentch's goal here...

There's an old trick: Use one lie to cover up another. When the first trick is found out, people will be satisfied and stop looking for the second. The example given is that they may realize that your little shell game contains no pea at all, but they don't know you're just using it to figure out where they hide their coin purse so your associate can sneak up as they turn to leave and cut the strings.

The real failure here is that, as Vitae comes out of a liminal realm, I'm pretty sure this could have been used for any number of things, potentially including the non absurd-luck based production of more AV. It's just, you know. *gestures at daemon.*

Absent the daemon, we have reason to believe this is something that can and does work out pretty well. The Dwarves used them once upon a time, in the Glittering Realm. At this point I am absolutely certain Teclis knew how to make them from AV, as form of the Grey College and the college Orbs of Sorcery both indicate. The Rainbow Falls and its association with Laurelorn makes me suspect it may be possible to extract AV from them.



I feel like that might Tzeentch's primary goal here: Not the Everchosen Job Offer, not the string of paranoia around his words or the prospect of mutation, but being the force that says Questers Should Not Do That Again.



But, as this is something that we see evidence of happening quite a lot, a solution present itself: Next time we try it, we bring a source of the flame of Gazul with us, and molotov coktail said liminal realm, and any demon that tries to get inside it.

I mean, it worked out quite well last time someone (Gazul) did that.

So, a prospect if we ever know we're going to get into this situation again.

Coin: Deceiver
Lie: That literally anything I'm saying has any point other than ensuring you're in the room before I hit you in the face with Gazul's flame.

The3rdCorinthian said:
IT COULDN'T BE THAT BAD THEY SAID

THIS PLACE IS SHIELDED THEY SAID
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No, I said it wouldn't be an explosion. :p And there wasn't!
 
Would that Cathayan jet talisman work against Tzeentchian sorcery? Or would it work to ward against any Daemonic intrusion through the sealed liminal realm?
 
I mean.

The fact it was shielded is probably why it only could throw words out despite a nat 1.

That those Words were scary ones to us--the readers--comes down to Tzeentch leaning on the Fourth Wall a bit too hard.
 
Boney said:
"And even now, my siblings bicker over whether you should be given credit that the brood that contained three generations of exquisite warlords that were so cleverly walked onto the precipice of apostasy, are now so utterly defeated that they will shriek and bite at any hand that reaches out for them, instead of allowing themselves to be properly usurped like their allies were."
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…Apostasy and warlords. Was the clan of orca that tried doing the whole Only Gork thing completely destroyed?

Anyways, while I don't assume that everything was true and all the listed people were, in fact, part of the 32 supposed candidates, it does still amuse me to imagine that Mathilde has wiped almost a fifth—at least—of the competition completely by accident.
 
Alectai said:
I mean.

The fact it was shielded is probably why it only could throw words out despite a nat 1.
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Boney said:
Tendrils of the purest magic burrowing through reality seep into your now magic-starved soul and your grip on reality redoubles and redoubles again.
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tbf to the demon it did more than that the demon mess around with something in us and now we got a trait from that

edit: also it was in our mind he was saying all that too not to be pendatic
 
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You know, I bet Hatalath could tell us how to ward a liminal realm so that demons can't break in and compliment your hat. Also probably can check to make sure said compliments didn't leave any nasty scars or anything.
 
Mopman43 said:
We're living in a Dwarf hold, and you're immidiate thought for brewing expertise is the Halflings?
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I figured the Halflings would be less hesitant about actually testing the end results.

We've made the world's most friendly to magic Dwarf Hold, but I rather doubt it goes to the extent of 'chug this mug full of liquid magic for me so I can see what happens'.
 
Alright, so that happened. Right now, we have, uhhh *checks notes*, writing about terrain obstacles, recruiting scribes for our library, investigating Reikland nexuses with WEB-MAT, and the tributary rituals left.

If anything besides the last one steals the AV liminal realm birdbrain thing as highlight of this turn, I'll eat my shoes.
 
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