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Presumably there's also the option that reality's influence extends/leaks into the liminal boundary, so she's mistaken when she thinks it was completely isolated from reality.

Just as the Aethyr spills into reality when a tear is open, the reverse could be true as well, making regions adjacent to reality take on some of reality's nature. Alternatively, just as things in/of the Aethyr can influence reality via a soul that may (or may not span) both, so to could Mathilde's soul act as a vector conducting reality's influence to touch the AV. Or similarly, Mathilde's soul could be imbued with reality's signature and so imprint it on the AV.

Something something measurement of planar influence through the liminal barrier, something something planar conductivity of the human soul, something something turbulent flow variability of reality based on local Wind concentrations. Mathilde would have ruled out the extremely basic possibilities before throwing the entirety of the mainstream Sevirric origin theory into the trashcan.

@Boney , Can we destroy the books we should have, then contact the college?

You can write it in and try to convince others to do so if you feel the need, but I'm not going to formally invite a full relitigation of all of those matters at once.
 
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When Aethyr enters reality it turns into the Winds, which all represent aspects of reality - life, death, light, shadow, and so on. Why do they do this, instead of turning into, say, Dhar, or aspects of the Chaos Gods, or completely alien concepts, or a more basic form of energy like light or heat? The traditional explanation for why this is is because they are influenced by reality itself. That reality (that the Winds are based on aspects of reality) is imposed upon Chaos by reality (that they take on aspects of the world when they enter it). But in the course of this experiment, Mathilde completely isolated the Vitae from reality and still they turned into the Winds, instead of turning back into Aethyr or something else or not transforming at all. So something else is making Vitae, and therefore the Aethyr, turn into the Winds, something whose influence is found not only in reality, but also in the liminal border.
Huh, thinking on it, the AV turned into Winds, then those Winds formed the Liminal realm? That's the accurate order of events?

That would suggest that any High Magic wizard could theoretically make a liminal realm just with regular-ish casting techniques.
Iirc the father of mammoths was worshipped as a god. Then he got broken by a Chaos dude and the tribe fell to chaos.

I'm rooting for Snerra befriending the guy and bringing mammoths to karaz-ankor.
Angkor, god of mammoths.

Only ever appeared in a pdf that Forgeworld hosted on it's website to my knowledge, was never published in a WD article or similar that I'm aware of.
 
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By the way @Boney I was surprised that there was no option to study our newfound necromantic bounty last turn. Is that Mathilde preferring to wait a bit before committing? Or should we use a generic 'study an artifact' action?
 
[X] [COLLEGE] Everchosen and Greater Daemon
-[x] Destroy illegal books prior to telling them
OK this is getting silly, but I am going to try this one more time:
  1. By what mechanism would the colleges know we even have books in Belegar's treasury? The only person we asked was him and the only people who saw us put them there are his guards. All these people are dwarfs who live on the edge of the known world, in an insular society where we are the only Grey Wizard.
  2. Assuming by some miracle, Tzeench personally talking to Algard say, the Colleges know we have some books in there how are the going to get at them? It is a diplomatic mindfield that they would have to navigate for a literal shot in the dark.
... By sending someone to snoop our library and obvious places we'd hide stuff once they determine they need to check us out? There are better people at sneaking than us.
 
Huh, thinking on it, the AV turned into Winds, then those Winds formed the Liminal realm? That's the accurate order of events?

Yes.

By the way @Boney I was surprised that there was no option to study our newfound necromantic bounty last turn. Is that Mathilde preferring to wait a bit before committing? Or should we use a generic 'study an artifact' action?

The generic study action, they're listed under accumulated artefacts.

... By sending someone to snoop our library and obvious places we'd hide stuff once they determine they need to check us out? There are better people at sneaking than us.

She's didn't shelve them under 'E' for 'Execute Me Immediately'. She has a vault that is as secure as the artifice of the Dwarves and the trickery of a Grey Wizard can make it.
 
Huh, thinking on it, the AV turned into Winds, then those Winds formed the Liminal realm? That's the accurate order of events?

That would suggest that any High Magic wizard could theoretically make a liminal realm just with regular-ish casting techniques.

Or a wizard from each of the Colleges directed by someone with Windherder that they trusted deeply enough to direct their activities.
 
True, but if something could detect a demonic intrusion inside the room of calamity, it would be a Golden Age Masterwork with five runes imprinted on its soul.

I'm not saying it has, I just want to consider the possibility that it might have been able to.
Speaking of Bok, maybe that's the secret: Maybe Bok has a liminal realm where its soul would be, and that's how five runes are able to fit together, because they're carved into the material of reality itself.
 
Speaking of Bok, maybe that's the secret: Maybe Bok has a liminal realm where its soul would be, and that's how five runes are able to fit together, because they're carved into the material of reality itself.
It's got runes on its soul. The "Rule of Three" went out of the window along with the implicit assumption of "must be inscribed on a material object"
 
@Boney so quick question.

with Morbs and Liminal realms and repeatable proof that the mainstream Sevirric origin theory needs to go into the bin on the horizon...

have we officially entered the realm of 'dog breaking into the lecture hall in the tower of hoth and then solving Poincaré conjecture on the blackboard.' level of magic study?


edit: Poincaré conjecture is a solved, but really fucking hard (as in most people can't do it, me very, very much included) math problem.
 
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All of this talking about forbidden knowledge makes me wonder. Why the heck didn't Van Hal destroy the Liber Morris when he had it? Why would he give it to us? Surely he knew that it would be extremely sketch for him a Van Hal of all people to have the book?
Probably for the same reason that the cult of Sigmar has a copy too: as an emergency button to push if a Fourth Vampire War breaks out.
 
Fair warning, I'm going to be doing a line by line reaction to "Architecture of Fate". If you don't want to read it, scroll along. I'll even go so far as to spoiler it for those who don't want to read the update again.
There is, you discover through trial and error, a minimum amount of Vitae required for you to be able to get an adequate 'grip' on the liquid so you can attempt to squeeze it into a power stone. You're uncertain as to whether this is because of the physical properties of the Vitae changing at differing amounts or if it's simply a matter of it needing to be big enough that you can see it clearly. You end up settling on a third of a gallon as a minimum size to achieve adequate control, and after you've grown familiar with the metaphysical weight of the liquid as you enforce your will upon it, you lift it with a gesture into the air, holding it in as perfectly spherical a shape as you can. Every distortion from that perfectly round shape signifies an unevenness in the willpower pressing in on the ball from each side, and having such plainly visible feedback makes it easier to refine your control than your experiments with power stones. You settle in, take a breath, and begin to squeeze.
I like how mundane the update starts. It's not a jump straight into the action, it's a setting of the scenes so the tension can be appropriately ratcheted and amplified.

As far as setting the scenes goes, this is a pretty interesting way to present the supposedly very boring process of powerstone making and how it was implemented in relation to AV. Take a bunch of AV and then squeeze it into a sphere with your soul. This isn't exactly the most intriguing method I've seen. Making a perfect sphere using your own eyes and brain is extremely inefficient. They could only hope to have the ability to create a perfect runic structure repelling the winds equidistant to each other like Thorek can do with AV.

Also, this may or may not be relevant, but the whole tangent on there being a minimum amount requires for Mathilde to be able to get a proper hold of AV to start the process reminds me of how Aethyric energy at a small amount is so insignificant it's effectively neutral in energy, but when accumulated it gains a nature and becomes the Winds. There are Powerstones for the Winds, but I don't see Powerstones for Earthbound Magic. I wonder if the amount thing is somehow related to that concept. Learning that there's something enforcing the existence of the Winds beyond reality makes me intrigued.
[Squeezing Vitae: Learning, 1+29=30.]

For quite some time it remains stubbornly inert, and you have to fight off the worry that Vitae is as incompressible as mundane fluids. But after your attention begins to waver and you turn some of your attention away from the ball of shimmering fluid you drag in your wake so you can see to biological necessities, you notice that as your attention turns elsewhere, the ball grows a small but unmistakable amount. No, not grows - it decompresses.

Reassured, you continue your vigil over the fluid and keep pushing in on what only seems to be unable to be pushed any further. With carefully-honed patience you maintain and very gradually increase the even pressure that keeps the shimmering sphere suspended in the air.

And it disappears. After a moment of befuddlement and looking around the room in case you'd somehow missed the sudden addition of a great deal of agitated Winds, you scrutinize what you just saw and felt. It's more like it drained away extremely rapidly, the pressure sharply dropping to zero instead of instantly being gone. No, not gone. Growing more distant? But your will still grasps it from every dimension, doesn't it?
Kind of like clearing an obstruction on a drainage system. The instant you remove it, all the water comes rushing out like a tidal wave.

There were a lot of different metaphors that came to my mind, but I can't say flushing a toilet or fitting into tight jeans were that great.

More seriously, when Mathilde is referring to "every dimension", does she refer to this within the context of the axises of reality (second, third, fourth dimension) or within the concept of dimensions in the other sense. I don't really know Mathilde's geometry and physics knowledge.

I assume she means it in a magical "I can still feel it through the Warp" sort of way, because she later identifies it as being within a familiar realm.
But there is another dimension, isn't there? One you're intimately familiar with.

The Vitae burrows into the fabric of reality, flashing and sparking into magic as it begins to transform, but in the instant of its transformation the energies disappear, replaced with an absence of pushback against your will that almost causes you to stumble. In the place of the shimmering ball of Vitae is a hole orthogonal to real and about the size of your hand, a slit carved in the wall that separates life from dream. And as you circle it, you can see the empty space within, a uniform greyness of the inside of the barrier that makes life possible. You've seen that shade once before - in the Grey College, in the room without walls that reveals its existence within a liminal realm. Either you've uncovered a very small liminal realm - about two cubic meters, by your estimation - that just so happened to be where you performed this experiment, or your experiment has created it.
I wonder why the realm's inside appears to be grey rather than any other color. It could be pure white, pure black, a multicolor swirling prism of fascinating colors, but it shows a grey color, somewhat reminiscient of our image of the Grey College's liminal realm. Is it somehow related to Mathilde's nature as a Shadow Wizard, or is that the default state of this neutral liminal realm? Either way, I have to say that the descriptions from here on out begin to amplify in their intensity and descriptivity (if that's a word), as if Boney started going into overdrive. I'm probably imagining this, but as a viewer it almost seems as if the writing itself is becoming more excited and amplified, which may be the result of Mathilde's own excitement being represented.

I say this because Mathilde starts to describe the fizzing and popping of the magical energies as well as the deformations of the spatial barriers in a very descriptive manner, completely discarding her analyitical dry reporting earlier in the update. I think the contrast between the dry beginning and the action here is what creates this feeling of the writing becoming amped up.
You peer through the hole, and begin extending the instruments you always have at hand for these sorts of experiments to gauge what's within. Temperature, normal. Air pressure, normal. Humidity, normal. Everything about the inside of this realm is entirely normal. Of all the various states of being, of the infinite variability of reality the Winds have apparently created new reality that is entirely typical for this place.

So what does that indicate? That when forced into the barrier between reality and unreality, Vitae undergoes a transformation into... what, into nothing? No, into empty space where previously there was none. There's nothing there, but there is a there there to contain that nothing, where previously it was not. How? Well, Vitae was the substance of the realm of Aethyr, so transplanted to where there was no realm, it creates some more. But what you're looking it is certainly no Aethyr in miniature, is it? Well, no, you don't know the ground state of the Aethyr, you only know it as it is with the many Gods in residence. It could be that without them, the Aethyr would just be emptiness? But isn't the Aethyr inherently psychoreactive? This little pocket you've created doesn't appear to be. So it's not mimicking the Aethyr, it's instead mimicking reality? Could it have been imbued with... reality-ness from its time as Vitae? Or was this tiny, nascent realm of Chaos overwhelmed by the weight of a much larger reality through the pinhole that the Vitae had escaped through?
I want everyone to remember where Vitae comes from. An apparition. But not just any apparition, it comes from a Wisdom's Asp, a snake that seemingly teleports between reflective surfaces yet is still capable of interacting with the real world. I noticed while reading that the descriptions of AV "slithering" into the barriers between reality sounded oddly snake-like, but then I thought about it.

We're using the make-up of a mystical snake whose entire schtick is to move between liminal realms. How have we not considered its influence.

Maybe this is completely unrelated to the Asp's own nature, but remember, the Asp goes through "reflective surfaces". AV "copies" whatever its exposed to. The Asp creates liminal realms.

The liminal realm may be a copy of what we have her because that's what the Asp does. It infiltrates the real world by burrowing through liminal realms inside reflective surfaces, which by nature copy whatever occurs in the real world, and it uses that barrier to interact with the real world.
No. You've tested Vitae in every way imaginable and know that it is unreactive, its nature unchanged from the moment it bled through into reality. This effect must rely on the inherent properties of the Winds it created. But that would mean that when Winds are presented with a blank slate and transform into a realm to fill it, they birth normality. But that makes no sense - the Winds are the energies of Chaos, aren't they? Well, no, not quite, that's why they're legal when Chaos Sorcery very much isn't. The Winds all represent facets of the real - life and death, light and shadow, passion and instinct, solidity and ephemerality. Mainstream theory is that this is the energies of Chaos having the nature of reality imprinted upon it when too far from the attention of the beings that command it.

And there is no weight of reality here. Your lab is magically isolated from the outside world, and the Aethyr was forced into a space between realms before it transformed. Placed equidistant between real and unreal and isolated from the pressure of existence to impose a decision upon it, Aethyr still became Winds and the Winds still retained the nature of reality.

Which means that the Winds can't be born of the mere inertia of what already is. Reality is being imposed upon Chaos by something other than reality.
This is one of the most important discoveries to find. The Winds are not just reality, they're something more. The legend regarding Ulgu being the Sword of Tlanxla, the Slann having impeccable control over the Winds despite them supposedly not existing before the Polar Gates collapse...

Could the Winds be Artifacts of the Old Ones? The story of Hoeth/Verena wielding the Sword of Tlanxla could be a representation of the Gods wielding the Artifacts to fight back against Chaos, and their influence shaping the Wind in question. Verena's symbol being the Sword of Justice is not lost on me, and Boney has made a lot of posts pointing out similarities between lots of mythos across the world and building it into a coherent narrative...
[Rolling...]

"Do you know what tickles me most about all of this?" The thought arrives in your brain packaged and labelled as sound, but never existed as something so ludicrously inefficient as vibrating air. The past was simply changed so that the words had been heard.
Oh boy here we go. It's Daemon time.

First thing I noticed is that Mathilde's very first impression of the Daemon is a delivery guy. He sends words to her packaged and labelled as sound, except far more efficient. The Delivery Bird imagery is now stuck in my head.

The second thing I noticed is that Mathilde calls speaking ludicrously inefficient, which could be just artistic liberty to amplify the scene, or she truly believes that to be the case. Or the Bird is messing with our head by using the Celestial thing where we were forced to consider the Tower majestic until we browbeat our way back the opposite way.

The third thing I noticed is that Mathilde knows that sound is vibrating air. I didn't know she knew about molecules.

The fourth thing I noticed is that Mathilde instantly realised that the past was changed, which by the way is a frankly ridiculous power well fitting of a Greater Daemon and I love how non-chalantly Boney threw it in there to set the scene. There are probably huge limitations to what it can do, but changing the past is somewhat possible to an extent. Ribauld's Retroactive Illusion is a Grey Calamity Spell that lets you do just that during Storms of Magic if you have control over an Arcane Fulcrum. No wonder a Daemon can do something as simple as changing the past so you heard him.

Also it's an absolutely hilarious way to sidestep the "talking is a free action" and "villain monologue" tropes. Bravo to Boney for finding a perfect way to have a villain monologue that doesn't feel forced or tropey.

Also, I note that because he said everything in the past, Mathilde would have it all downloaded straight into her head. Boney could have just dumped a wall of text monologue to represent that it was all consecutive, but I like that he broke up the monologue with snippets to make it look less one-sided. There is a degrading power to monologues the longer they go on without pause.
At the far side of the bubble of new space from the opening into reality, tendrils of magic wriggle through the thinned membrane that separates reality from unreality like maggots through dead flesh, and once they wriggle their way free they dissipate into will made manifest.
Gross imagery more fitting of a Nurgle scene but still incredibly viscerally uncomfortable. It's a perfect encapsulation of Mathilde's feelings at the moment. She was on the verge of an absolutely amazing breakthrough that could have revolutionised the magical world, pursuing one of her greatest passions, only to have it spoiled by none other than the greatest spoilsports of the magical world. It quite literally is the equivalent of the desecration of a corpse to Mathilde. Nothing harshes the vibes more than a party crashing bird who wants to turn this place into a dump.

No dude, I am not going to try out your experimental drugs and tattoo "Tzeentch Rulez" on my chest. Please leave.
"It's that every word I say will further excavate a warren of bad decisions that you will have to scurry your way through. Do you tell your little friends that you have thinned the one border of their reclaimed home that they cannot guard themselves? Do you tell them that you have been singled out for special attention by one of the Eyes of Tzeentch, the very one that once ensnared their brothers in the far north and began the twilight of their race?"
Is it a coincidence that the Daemon chooses to use "excavate a warren" and "scurry through" of all words? I don't think so. He's using earthly metaphors against Mathilde, a woman who has been heavily influenced by Dwarves and their mountaineous/earthy metaphors, while comparing her to a rat, something she has particular experience with considering her extensive Skaven contact. Beyond that, Mathilde just describe the Daemon's influence as maggots crawling out of a corpse.

It could be just stylistic flair from Boney, but everything syncs up in a very well thought out manner. Since we know that the Daemon delved somewhat into Mathilde's brain, it could be that he's syncing up with Mathilde so his jabs hit deeper even in his subtle wordplay.

I'm assuming the "brothers in the far north" here refers to the Chaos Dwarves. Uzkulak isn't as far north as I'd like to think for a place the Daemon calls north, but it fits the best because Mathilde already recieved a vision that told her Tzeentch was involved with the Chaos Dwarves' downfall.

And I have to say that the callbacks here are excellent. Like, from both a narrative and a meta point of view, Boney is collecting a bunch of different plot points and previous events and referencing them in a tense moment to ramp things up. I love it.
It took only heartbeats for you to activate the Rune that flushes the magic out of the air, but entire sentences had already manifested themselves.

"What about your little magic club? They've already fretted about this very possibility, haven't they? Can they distinguish between a few whispered words and a full ensnaring of a soul? Could they dare to take such a chance that one such as you might already be suborned when you have the trust and ear of so many? Of course not. You already know what their response would be, because you've already delivered it unto another. The blood on your hands matches that on the crown on your friend's head."
It's the "Esteemed Ducklings Club" to you Mr. Birdman. I would expect you to appreciate the avian imagery. What a missed opportunity to mock them for their flightlessness or something wacky like that.

Oh wait, maybe he was referring to the Waystone Project/WEB-MAT. We have more than one magic club. He really needs to specify.

Also, my memory may be spotty, because I'm trying to recall which exact incident he means by "delivered it unto another". Is he referring to Mathilde telling Horstmann that the two will keep each other and everyone else in check? The first thought was our lecture to Panoramia, but that was relating to miscasts, not responding to possible black magisters.
How do you ignore words you never heard in a present tense? You do your best to focus on the whisking away of magical energies, and note that none are escaping the slit in reality you have created. Of course not. Magic bleed-off is the result of inefficiency in spellcasting, and this being is beyond such limitations.

"Do you know how much effort it normally takes to craft a platter of truth and lies that will so haunt a mortal that they will spend the rest of their days trying their best to decorticate it?
I had no idea what decorticate meant, so Boney keeps teaching me new words. From context I knew it would have a similar meaning to untangle, but the actual meaning is interesting. Apparently it means removing the rind, bark or husk from something, or removing the cortex from a medical viewpoint. It sounds like it's the sort of word that Boney got from his upbringing, considering what other words and experiences he's admitted to having picked up from his tropical experiences.
But you and yours who have so wonderfully usurped the Sword of Tlanxla have so twisted your own minds that I could say anything or nothing and you will dwell obligingly on it forever.
Yes I realise that this is a Daemon who is more than willing to lie, but I'm interested in his wording here, using "usurped" to refer to the Sword of Tlanxla. This matches perfectly with the Elven retelling of a myth that I previously posted in the thread:

"When she arrived, she was shocked to see how few remained. Knowing they desperately needed an advantage, Verena studied the great tablets of the Old Ones, and uncovered the existence of Tlanxla's Sword of Judgement, a weapon of incredible power. So, without informing Taal, she travelled to the Southern Gate disguised as a servant of the Dark Gods. After hardships unnumbered, she eventually found it in the hands of a Daemon God.

Like many other artefacts of the Old Ones, the Sword was being used to further the schemes of the Dark Gods. The Daemon God in question was called Ulgu, who had been commanded by the Lord of Change to join with seven other Gods to flood the mortal realm with the Aethyr. Verena, using her intelligence and wit, tricked Ulgu into giving her the Sword, then fled back to the Pyramid, to join the last stand against the Dark Gods."

In this scenario, the Eight Winds were Daemon Gods bound by Chaos to fight against the world after the Polar Collapse, and Verena, who is orginally Hoeth in the Elven myth, steals it from Ulgu and wields it to fight back against the Dark Gods. This is also somewhat referenced, albeit in a different manner, by Marrisith in her first meeting with Mathilde:
She reaches out towards you and a wisp of spray from Rainbow Falls answers the gesture, abandoning the pull of Ulgu to entwine around her finger. "Ulgu. Legend has it that it was the first Wind that Hoeth mastered, as His confusion at the Winds drew it to Him. A good omen." She smiles briefly, a flash of genuine amusement that disappears in a heartbeat.
It's presented in a far less mythical fashion, but Ulgu was Hoeth's first Wind in another story.

The Daemon's words mean nothing by themselves. It's how they relate to other stories that intrigues me. Learning that the Winds seem to possess a will of their own and knowing Cython's own theories regarding the Winds being counter gods to Chaos, and I'm starting to truly consider the existence of the Winds as independent entities which have bound themselves to the Gods in some manner to fight back against Chaos after having been weaponised. Perhaps they were Artifacts that the Old Ones possessed which held a rudimentary sentience, or perhaps they're something else, but I'm intrigued.
If I said 'I like your hat' - and I really, really do -
I'm tempted to commision an art piece of bird guy telling Mathilde he likes her hat but it's the "fish fear me, women want me" hat instead of her usual.
you will wonder, is this an example of the pettiest of statements for you to nevertheless obsess over, to demonstrate that I can command your mind through only your ears? Or am I making a deeper statement about how truly it pleases the Lord of Sorcery for a witch to wear the garb of those that would hunt her? Am I masking truth in lies, or lies in truth? Would it only be a truth if you decide it a lie, or only a lie if you decide it a truth? Or is eternal indecision that which I seek?"
I will have you know that is the source of our power. As agonising as it is, Mathilde will become a bigger walking engine of Ulgu, so at least we have you to thank for that.
Once none remains in the air, the pull of potent runecraft exerts itself on everything within the room, including yourself. It's not exactly painful to have the magical energies that have become so much a part of you drawn forcefully out, but it feels like it should be.
It doesn't hurt but it feels like it should hurt. I'm pretty sure that is what phantom pain is all about. There are no pain receptors in the limb you're missing, it's just gone, but you still feel like it should be there and that mayeb it should hurt so you can remember it's there, but it isn;t. It's only the body making up for its lack, having not grown used to the loss.

Mathilde is rarely Wind starved, but when she was in the Light College she really disliked the place and couldn't sleep properly, and had to constantly occupy her brain with questions and musings to keep her Ulgu up because of how starved the place was. I imagine a situation like this where she doesn't even have the time to compensate is considerably worse.
"The importance placed upon such pleasure, upon who has delivered them, grows by the hour. The First Betrayer sobs his fury for all to hear, knowing that the time will soon come again when he will crown one that might achieve what he could not and will never. Already the Four tally their joys and prod their servants, willing and not, knowing and not, into greater efforts. And do you know the most delightful part? That of all the promises and threats that have been whispered into the ears of the greatest and most terrible of champions, none have removed so many of their competitors from the greatest of tournaments than you."
Really, what can I say that hasn't already been said? This is probably one of the most obsessed over sections of this update. I don't have much to say about it personally. I love this conversation but I'm not that scared of being reverse psychologied into becoming Everchosen. We took down a bunch of candidates, yay us. I'll take it as the ego boost that it deserves to be.
You stride towards the slit and gather your will and what scraps of Ulgu managed to cling to your soul.

"You have heard for yourself how exquisitely cultivated the resentment within Egrimm is, and seen how convincingly soothed his ruffled feathers now appear. You have tasted the millennia of curdled hate of the Briarmaven of Woe, and struck her down when she left her beloved shadows to finally act. You have known how blind Alric is to the unsuitability that all else know and sneer at, and you have thwarted his ambitions and eliminated his last chance to claw his way back into relevancy. You have felt your blade sing as it sliced through the Elector Count that demanded respect for a title when he had no part in the killings that brought it to him, and the knowledge that the one that thwarted him is also the one that has propped up two generations of the dynasty that usurped him will burn within him until the burning is all that remains of him."
Bird Boy is engaging in poetry here. He would do good at the slam poetry annual at K8P. I hear they've been getting less competitors lately now that the eye candy (Johann) is off wrestling half naked dudes across the continent. There's a vacancy waiting to be filled.

I like that he uses "soothing ruffled feathers" for Egrimm as if he's some bird, likely referencing Tzeentch's attention. He uses "curdled hate" for Drycha, likely indicating Khorne's attention. The blind ambition of Alric also feels Tzeentchian, but Alberich is obviously Slaaneshi, with a side dish of laughing at how miserable Mathilde made him in several ways.

Also, I note the presentation of this paragraph. The Daemon says "you have heard/cultivated -seen/soothed -tasted/struck -known/thwarted/eliminated- felt/sing/knowledge".

The Daemon is combining the senses together in a melange of experiences, blending all the elements together to craft a narrative of triumph, playing to Mathilde's ego, something that she has stroked here and there quite a few times in her journey, while emphasising how she handled them in a manner that Tzeentch would be proud of.

Say what you will about this guy, but he's a pretty damn good orator, and considering Boney pumped this out in a day, I have to give my biggest round of applause for this trickery.
You reach forward with your soul and bury talons of willpower into the newly-created fabric of reality.

"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."
I'm not entirely sure who he's talking about here. The phrasing of "brood" makes me think he's referring to Clan Mors and their failed uprising, which may imply that the Third Skaven Civil War was instigated by Chaos and that Pestilens is truly usurped by Chaos, and that they were planning to cultivate Mors into their new weapon through their Warlords, which Sleek was definitely a good candidate. Maybe he was also an Everchosen candidate? Which is why his siblings are bickering over whether she should be given the credit.

Or maybe he's referring to something else and I'm just getting caught up in the word "brood".
Tendrils of the purest magic burrowing through reality seep into your now magic-starved soul and your grip on reality redoubles and redoubles again.

"Should you earn this world through right of conquest, your will here would be paramount. Not because you would be stronger than the Four, but because They want to see what you would do with it. They have worlds without counting where Their will becomes fact, and They have wrung every morsel of enjoyment out of such simple games. If you would take up the crown and with it make yourself the ultimate bulwark against Them, They would whisper and cajole and threaten and offer you every temptation to turn upon your wards, but every 'no' would be a rapturous novelty. All you'd need do to keep this world from their grasp is to stay true to your purpose. And is that not the founding purpose of your order? To be the 'no' in the darkness?"
No in the darkness sounds like the catchphrase for a lighthouse.

"Hello and welcome to Weber Enterprise Lighthouse. We say "NO" to the Darkness!".

Mm. Could do some workshopping.
You don't even know where to begin rejecting the strength that even the slightest wisp of the energies of the Changer of Ways has given you, and even if you could, it would render you unable to do that which needs to be done.

"Why do you think you were able to pull back so many of the generations born in Chaos from the Desolation Hold? Because the sweetest of victories was not those bludgeoned into submission and dragged off in chains, but those that would forge the chains themselves. A single sentry that walked into the darkness themselves and let the Maidens of Ecstacy have them delights the Four more than ten thousand who fight and bite and scratch and need their souls flayed down to the gristle before they obey."
I mean, that makes sense. Slaanesh could have definitely destroyed Vlag if he really wanted to. They were in the Warp after all. We already knew that the reason they kept so many of them alive was so that they could have them willingly surrender, which would be so much more exquisitie than just flensing all their bones. That's more Khorne's way.

It does make me wonder if Boney could have come up with a justification for Khorne pulling Vlag into the Warp. I can see Nurgle, Tzeentch and Slaanesh playing with their food, but I struggle to think Khorne would do that. And that's not mentioning the whole trick regarding the Waystones and the "Stone is an excellent insulator". I'm pretty sure Boney rolled for who controlled Vlag after we began messing with it rather than before.
Already chewed through by the tendrils of magic, it takes only a few tugs for your empowered will-claws to force the newly-formed walls of reality to buckle and pucker.

"When you can be sure of nothing else, be sure of the boredom of the Four. When they want puppets, they have as many of the likes of me as they could ever want. What they don't have is you. Should you be willing to change that, you could command any price. Every price."
Completely willing to admit that he's a puppet. Some Daemons seem to hold greater aspirations and beliefs about themselves, but this one is fully willing to admit he's a puppet. Although, being a Changer of Ways, I think they're the most likely to realise of all that they're just fragments of a greater whole.
Scraps of reality's bloody flesh are pushed towards you by a sudden influx of the energies of the Aethyr, but they cannot flood freely into the world, because their point of ingress is contained within a bubble in the wall, and the only egress is the size of your palm. Like debris in a suddenly-narrowing river, as soon as one part of it snags it causes a pile-up of the rest, and in a moment a portal becomes a scarred pucker, holding fast against all that would press against it. This stops the tendrils, but it cannot stop the last whisper already planted in the past.

"You cannot prevent the emergence of a Thirteenth, just as you cannot prevent the existence of Ulgu. All you can do is decide whether such a weapon should be surrendered without a fight to the whims of the vilest."
Oh hey, he's doing a callback to the Verena/Hoeth legend. He's basically telling us that Verena/Hoeth wielded Ulgu, which already existed and was used by an evil god, to fight back against Chaos, and that we could do the same with the title of Everchosen!

Not that I care about that title, like, at all. I'm sure we can find a better title.
There we go. I should note that half of the spoiler is not related to the Daemon, so maybe you'd like to read part of it anyway even if you don't care for HatEnjoyer999.
 
@Boney so quick question.

with Morbs and Liminal realms and repeatable proof that the mainstream Sevirric origin theory needs to go into the bin on the horizon...

have we officially entered the realm of 'dog breaking into the lecture hall in the tower of hoth and then solving Poincaré conjecture on the blackboard.' level of magic study?


edit: Poincaré conjecture is a solved, but really fucking hard (as in most people can't do it, me very, very much included) math problem.

Presumably the elves know that the version of Seviric theory passed onto humans is simplified/redacted.

They can make Liminal Realms and Orbs, so probably know all this already.

We may have found proof that the Aristoteqn model of the cosmos has flaws, but we've not invented the Copernican model, and for all we know the elves are working with general relativity and the Big Bang.
 
Presumably the elves know that the version of Seviric theory passed onto humans is simplified/redacted.

They can make Liminal Realms and Orbs, so probably know all this already.

We may have found proof that the Aristoteqn model of the cosmos has flaws, but we've not invented the Copernican model, and for all we know the elves are working with general relativity and the Big Bang.
thats why i used an solved problem, not an unsolved as a example.

its not coming up with new stuff, its just surprising that we are doing stuff at that level.
 
Also because I don't want this section of my 3k word post to just be ignored because I put it in a spoiler alongside some brilliant jokes such as "this is like toilet flushing", I'll repost this here independently as a theory:

"I want everyone to remember where Vitae comes from. An apparition. But not just any apparition, it comes from a Wisdom's Asp, a snake that seemingly teleports between reflective surfaces yet is still capable of interacting with the real world. I noticed while reading that the descriptions of AV "slithering" into the barriers between reality sounded oddly snake-like, but then I thought about it.

We're using the make-up of a mystical snake whose entire schtick is to move between liminal realms. How have we not considered its influence.

Maybe this is completely unrelated to the Asp's own nature, but remember, the Asp goes through "reflective surfaces". AV "copies" whatever its exposed to. The Asp creates liminal realms.

The liminal realm may be a copy of what we have her because that's what the Asp does. It infiltrates the real world by burrowing through liminal realms inside reflective surfaces, which by nature copy whatever occurs in the real world, and it uses that barrier to interact with the real world."
 
Presumably the elves know that the version of Seviric theory passed onto humans is simplified/redacted.

They can make Liminal Realms and Orbs, so probably know all this already.

We may have found proof that the Aristoteqn model of the cosmos has flaws, but we've not invented the Copernican model, and for all we know the elves are working with general relativity and the Big Bang.

I think relativity is more the domain of Golden Age elf/dwarfs as it would contain the seemingly incompatible runes and seviric theory, with the Old Ones being the post scarcity Theory of Everything people... who were still screwed up by Chaos. I think there might be a higher than old old understanding of magic that would involve both haveing the lore of the Old Ones and Chaos though it's probably conceptually incompatible, as in if you fully understand Chaos you are its puppet and cannot really use the knowledge productively
 
The Asp creates liminal realms.
That makes a lot of sense, nicely seen!

Or the Bird is messing with our head by using the Celestial thing where we were forced to consider the Tower majestic until we browbeat our way back the opposite way.
It was the Lights' glorified caltrop who got us talking in purple prose :V

It's the "Esteemed Ducklings Club" to you Mr. Birdman. I would expect you to appreciate the avian imagery. What a missed opportunity to mock them for their flightlessness or something wacky like that.

Oh wait, maybe he was referring to the Waystone Project/WEB-MAT. We have more than one magic club. He really needs to specify.
I think he's referring to the Grey College, because he said « fretting over the possibility » and « taking the chance ». The ducklings and WebMat are less likely to worry over our allegiance, and they wouldn't be the one taking chances. We also know that Algard thought it was necessary to demon-check us once.

The Daemon is combining the senses together in a melange of experiences, blending all the elements together to craft a narrative of triumph, playing to Mathilde's ego, something that she has stroked here and there quite a few times in her journey, while emphasising how she handled them in a manner that Tzeentch would be proud of.

Say what you will about this guy, but he's a pretty damn good orator, and considering Boney pumped this out in a day, I have to give my biggest round of applause for this trickery.
It's actually fascinating to see someone explaining exactly why a piece of writing felt so visceral to me while not being able to put words on it myself.
 
Also because I don't want this section of my 3k word post to just be ignored because I put it in a spoiler alongside some brilliant jokes such as "this is like toilet flushing", I'll repost this here independently as a theory:

"I want everyone to remember where Vitae comes from. An apparition. But not just any apparition, it comes from a Wisdom's Asp, a snake that seemingly teleports between reflective surfaces yet is still capable of interacting with the real world. I noticed while reading that the descriptions of AV "slithering" into the barriers between reality sounded oddly snake-like, but then I thought about it.

We're using the make-up of a mystical snake whose entire schtick is to move between liminal realms. How have we not considered its influence.

Maybe this is completely unrelated to the Asp's own nature, but remember, the Asp goes through "reflective surfaces". AV "copies" whatever its exposed to. The Asp creates liminal realms.

The liminal realm may be a copy of what we have her because that's what the Asp does. It infiltrates the real world by burrowing through liminal realms inside reflective surfaces, which by nature copy whatever occurs in the real world, and it uses that barrier to interact with the real world."

Interesting thought, I seem to recall that at some point earely in our studies Mathilde reached the conclusion that AV was separate from the Asp and it became consensus that this was just what non-Chaos daemon blood looked like, but that is not really accurate is it? Separate does not mean 'wholly distinct'. If you take blood from someone and then put that blood under the microscope it will tell you things about them and it will also tell you things about humans more generally, about mammals etc...
 
I'm not entirely sure who he's talking about here. The phrasing of "brood" makes me think he's referring to Clan Mors and their failed uprising, which may imply that the Third Skaven Civil War was instigated by Chaos and that Pestilens is truly usurped by Chaos, and that they were planning to cultivate Mors into their new weapon through their Warlords, which Sleek was definitely a good candidate. Maybe he was also an Everchosen candidate? Which is why his siblings are bickering over whether she should be given the credit.
my first thought is that it was referring to the Unfähiger family
My new mental image for our new antagonist of sorts:
I mean if it that adorable I think we are doomed to join chaos then :V
 
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I think relativity is more the domain of Golden Age elf/dwarfs as it would contain the seemingly incompatible runes and seviric theory, with the Old Ones being the post scarcity Theory of Everything people... who were still screwed up by Chaos. I think there might be a higher than old old understanding of magic that would involve both haveing the lore of the Old Ones and Chaos though it's probably conceptually incompatible, as in if you fully understand Chaos you are its puppet and cannot really use the knowledge productively

A fuller theory of the Winds probably requires understanding divinity, as there are indications there may be more similarities than expected.

As we've sworn off researching the nature of the divine, that might close off more research into the fundamental nature of magic as well.
 
Maybe it's the other way around?

Chaos influencing something that's normally a metaphorical reflection of reality to be more akin to itself. It'd fit Chaos' MO of claiming that it is inevitable, and corruption is definitely right up their alley.

Though even if there's a grain of something in that, I doubt it's even remotely close to the whole story.
 
A fuller theory of the Winds probably requires understanding divinity, as there are indications there may be more similarities than expected.

As we've sworn off researching the nature of the divine, that might close off more research into the fundamental nature of magic as well.

True, on the other hand we do have a friendly* god around and Mathilde is in a bit of a Tzeench pickle. Ranald may decide to just tell us more things if they help with the whole evil blessing issue. I do not think it is all that likely, but there is at least a faint chance that prayer action people have been talking about would do something more than be a placebo.

*for values of friend that includes a fundamental unchangeable power inequality
 
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