Remove ads

Warhammer Fantasy: Divided Loyalties - an Advisor's Quest

Voted best in category in the Users' Choice awards.
Voting is open
Reader mode
Alratan said:
The problem is that we don't have any evidence that this is true, and we don't know it is true. After two and a half thousand years all sorts of things could have crept in the Hedgewise's oral histories. This could easily be something that was invented or misunderstood along the way to try to add to the Hedgefolk's legitimacy as the Cult of Sigmar grew.

Askel believe's it, but that doesn't tell us much. It's like a modern day neo-pagan telling us that Alexander the Great entrusted the ancestors of them and their particularly faith with a specific duty.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
.... my whole thing was about how polite fiction was better than the raw truth.

The hedgewise bowed to Sigmar in the past and worked for him looking after the Forest of Shadows? it doest matters if it's true, just that its convenient that such as story is part of the Oral histories. if we want to empower the Hegdewise. its a tool to help Save face if we can convince to cult of Sigmar to not throw a fit. how true it is of little consequence, just that it will help us get what we want.
 
Boney said:
Zlata seems interested in traveling with him. You haven't pried into why, as whether it's because of the complicated relationship between Kislev's magic-users and the Hedgewise that border it or something just between the two of them, it's not your business either way. Or at least, it might aggravate them if you informed them that it actually is your business, and the risks of being found out while snooping are greater than the value of knowing for sure what's going on.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Ooh. The very first on screen intrigue of the Project that we aren't involved in. Even if it's just the two of them hitting it off, I'll remember it as the first. Scrap that. Zlata is sworn to maidenhood until she graduates. Even if this is innocent and apolitical intrigue, it might still have Consequences.
Boney said:
The exact details make you raise an eyebrow - that if the ritual is cast outside the Forest of Shadows, it requires that the caster be of the bloodline of the ancient Was Jutones, and that the ritual chants are in their ancient and largely forgotten tongue, could lead one to suspect that Aksel crafted the ritual to ensure that the Nordland Hedgewise could not be cut out of the project. But it's an entirely deniable suspicion, as it's far from the most obscure requirement you've heard of from a ritual, and the hand at work here may be that of Halétha herself.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
I'm curious what Zlata contributed and how she feels about the resulting ritual. Maybe it serves her just right because she paid enough attention to convert it to a Widow ritual even more easily than before, complete with Ice Witch Only parts she can now work in. And of course there's nothing stopping her from developing such a ritual on her own time. Or from sending a letter to a more experienced Ice Witch to do it instead.
Boney said:
In the end the final piece of the puzzle was the inclusion of some sort of ritual drinking horn common to most of the nature deities you know of, and when the two of them finally emerge it's with a complete ritual ready for distribution.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
So did they go the first route that requires perfect understanding and willingness to interface or the second that requires deep metaphors?
Boney said:
The Haléthan ritual, dubbed 'Roots of Stone', requires a working knowledge of the near-dead language of Was Jutonian - only spoken by the Hedgewise and a handful of extremely isolated villages.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
I assume that this means that rote repetition doesn't work for rituals in general? I always thought that, while one can't develop a ritual without speaking any language it requires of you, one can still learn it by pronouncing a long string of syllables correctly. Or is the requirement of working knowledge something that's explicitly particular to Roots of Stone?
 
A wonderful update to wake up to. I love the idea of Mathilde looking at the budget and considering the possibility that Niedzwenka is embezzling biscuits.

A round of applause to our tireless researchers, without which these results would either be impossible or taken several years to meaningfully replicate. Though they may have held their own interests in heart, I would agree with Mathilde that it's a potential opportunity to build bridges rather than selfishly benefit at the expense of others.

And finally, I will second the comments on Mathilde's publishing habits. Waaagh magic, magic mushrooms, and very mundane terrain obstacles all in six months has got to be confusing to anyone watching what Mathilde puts out.

The mushroom book is solid research she could be expected to put out as someone who got a college branch dedicated to multi-wind collaborations - they can benefit users of any of the eight winds. The Waaagh magic paper, well, they could guess it's something we had in our backlog. But the terrain paper? I can't imagine our colleagues looking at this and not being completely baffled.
 
I suspect there's more to Aksel's and Zlata's relationship than simple attraction (although I'm not completely ruling that out). Zlata grew up expecting to be a merchant like her father, so she probably spent her childhood worshipping Kalita, but then the Widow called her and now she's an Ice Maiden. Kalita, as we know, is an aspect of Haletha, Aksel's Goddess, so their relationship could be based on being coreligionists.

Which is potentially problematic, because she's sworn some very important oaths to the Ancient Widow, and we do not want her to get icicled for heresy.
 
Nerdasaurus Rex said:
I suspect there's more to Aksel's and Zlata's relationship than simple attraction (although I'm not completely ruling that out). Zlata grew up expecting to be a merchant like her father, so she probably spent her childhood worshipping Kalita, but then the Widow called her and now she's an Ice Maiden. Kalita, as we know, is an aspect of Haletha, Aksel's Goddess, so their relationship could be based on being coreligionists.

Which is potentially problematic, because she's sworn some very important oaths to the Ancient Widow, and we do not want her to get icicled for heresy.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Does the Widow demand sole worship?
Because Zlata could do what Mathilde does: Main Ranald/The widow, and pray to the rest as appropriate.

Because otherwise, all she has to do is graduate before hitting that.
 
Rafin said:
I assume that this means that rote repetition doesn't work for rituals in general? I always thought that, while one can't develop a ritual without speaking any language it requires of you, one can still learn it by pronouncing a long string of syllables correctly. Or is the requirement of working knowledge something that's explicitly particular to Roots of Stone?
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
I'm like 70% sure the actual words are there to shape you and your magic in the right way, and saying words that are meaningless to you to make it work is going to botch
 
Nerdasaurus Rex said:
Successes all round, looks like the tributary stuff worked out.

Of course, we now have a bit of a divided loyalties moment—do we leave things as they are, and make the Colleges dependent on external magic users (some of whom are illegal), or do we create a Teclisian tributary and weaken the bonds of international magical co-operation.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
I'd be surprised if Tochter doesn't make her own version whether we tell her to or not. Same goes for Zlata.
Boney said:
By 'Arcane' it means more 'Witch Hunters don't @ me' than 'the stark and artificial divisions of the RPG are completely correct and applicable in this quest'.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
So "officially" there's two versions of the ritual. One Divine one that is a mystery ritual of the completely legal cult of Halétha and one Arcane one that is of course designed by and for Wizards that happen to have studied some weird ancient language and also happen to have the right blood or found themselves in the Forest of Shadows.
Nerdasaurus Rex said:
Oh wow, Aethyric Impluvium could be really good for our new bog friends in Sylvania. "Here's a water based ritual that drains away excess magic and purifies the surrounding area." The only issue is the language involved (and also maybe the casting difficulty).
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
One more difficulty is that this is a tributary ritual and there's no Waystones left in Sylvania. The amount a Tributary drains on its own is miniscule and the only place it sends it to if there's no nearby Waystones is underground, which has a limited carrying capacity.
mathymancer said:
This is even better, as it requires Eonir casters working with human casters and using a human arcane language.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
I don't think there's anything in the requirement about requiring a Human caster. Elves could just learn Lingua Praestantia.
Nerdasaurus Rex said:
I see three solutions to this, all of them problematic:

1) We put the ritual solely under the authority of WEB-MAT. Our Charter is specifically designed for stuff like this, but will probably mean having to properly employ Aksel as a member of WEB-MAT, rather than as a project collaborator. It would also mean that managing the deployment of the ritual would be our responsibility, and any political blowback would fall on us directly.

2) The Grey College publicly announces a partnership of some sort with the Cult of Haletha. This reinforces the idea that the Hedgewise are priests and therefore legal users of magic, but throws the College into conflict with Nordland and everyone who hates the Hedgewise, such as the Cult of Sigmar.

3) The Grey College establishes a "Forest of Shadows Branch College", probably under the authority of Kurtis. This is basically the same as option 1, but we're dumping the responsibility for managing the whole thing on someone else.

All three of these options mean either bending the Articles in some way, or subsuming the Hedgewise into the colleges and forcing them to obey the Articles or else (which is clearly something they don't want, or they would have done it already).

Edit: Oh wait, option 4) We pull a Deiter IV, and have Lutipold legalise the Nordlander Hedgewise, just like the College of Elementalists. I foresee absolutely no problems with this idea.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
I haven't quite understood why the Nordlander Hedgewise can't just officially form a legal Cult of Halétha and codify many of their rites and traditions into religious practices dedicated to a legal goddess in good standing.
 
IronFist said:
Does the Widow demand sole worship?
Because Zlata could do what Mathilde does: Main Ranald/The widow, and pray to the rest as appropriate.

Because otherwise, all she has to do is graduate before hitting that.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

Ice Witches are more or less priests of the Widow, so a certain level of monotheism is expected from them. The average layperson can (and absolutely should) double dip, and Zlata would be required to know and respect the other Gods of Kislev, but her faith and loyalty should be reserved solely for the Widow. If that gets muddled by her connections to the Hedgewise and their Goddess—especially considering that's she's previously stated that she occasionally "resents" being an Ice Witch—then that could become an issue.

Of course, this is all speculation on my part—maybe the Widow isn't a jealous God, and gives her witches a fair degree of religious freedom. In which case, we're fine. But I kinda doubt it.
 
veekie said:
I'm like 70% sure the actual words are there to shape you and your magic in the right way, and saying words that are meaningless to you to make it work is going to botch
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
I have no grounding in the actual lore behind it. I'm mostly going off of how rituals are often portrayed in media with rote babbling in long forgotten languages and even accidental casting from a book while being ignorant of or even lied to about the results. And how Warhammer rituals aren't ever bound to any one Wind or tradition and can be cast by comparatively weaker spellcasters (iirc).

In fact, does the difficulty level of a ritual (i.e. Moderately Difficult or Fiendishly Complex ect) denote the magical power the caster needs to have, similar to typical spells, or does it denote the difficulty of the steps the caster has to take and not fumble, independently of their raw magical power?
 
Rafin said:
In fact, does the difficulty level of a ritual (i.e. Moderately Difficult or Fiendishly Complex ect) denote the magical power the caster needs to have, similar to typical spells, or does it denote the difficulty of the steps the caster has to take and not fumble, independently of their raw magical power?
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
It's been a while since I read the 2e rules, but from my recollection I'm pretty sure it's supposed to be magical power.
 
Rafin said:
I haven't quite understood why the Nordlander Hedgewise can't just officially form a legal Cult of Halétha and codify many of their rites and traditions into religious practices dedicated to a legal goddess in good standing.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Coming out into the light also exposes them to a great deal of direct attack and turf wars they've avoided via obscurity
 
chocolote12 said:
It's been a while since I read the 2e rules, but from my recollection I'm pretty sure it's supposed to be magical power.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
I think 2e has a Minimum Magic Level required.

Gilding requires (iirc) magic 2 for the smallest parts (fingers/toes), and goes up to magic 4 for the more important parts, so possibly a relatively simple to fiendishly complex ritual.

Aksel and Cadaeth are Moderately complex, so require Magic 3.
And Baba Niedzwenka's is Fiendishly complicated, i.e. Magic 4.
 
veekie said:
Coming out into the light also exposes them to a great deal of direct attack and turf wars they've avoided via obscurity
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Probably also would have the Witch Hunters going "So what about those guys in other provinces that do the same things you do but say they don't worship Haletha?"

I feel like the only way they become an official cult and escape persecution would be to conquer/wipe out the other branches of Hedgewise to remove doubt that it's just the power of Haletha.
 
Mopman43 said:
Probably also would have the Witch Hunters going "So what about those guys in other provinces that do the same things you do but say they don't worship Haletha?"

I feel like the only way they become an official cult and escape persecution would be to conquer/wipe out the other branches of Hedgewise to remove doubt that it's just the power of Haletha.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Don't the other Hedgewise worship Ranald and Verena?

If only we had a way to prove it :p
 
IronFist said:
Don't the other Hedgewise worship Ranald and Verena?

If only we had a way to prove it :p
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
The branches in the various provinces give different sources of their magic, which is why they can't go 'legit' because they can't say these are just the Rites of Haletha when there's plenty of non-Halethans out there doing them.

Boney had a post laying that out pretty explicitly.
 
Rafin said:
So did they go the first route that requires perfect understanding and willingness to interface or the second that requires deep metaphors?
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

Mathilde doesn't know, she wasn't there.

Rafin said:
I assume that this means that rote repetition doesn't work for rituals in general? I always thought that, while one can't develop a ritual without speaking any language it requires of you, one can still learn it by pronouncing a long string of syllables correctly. Or is the requirement of working knowledge something that's explicitly particular to Roots of Stone?
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

You can do a ritual that's in a language you don't know, but you shouldn't. Words of magical languages do have arcane meaning even if the person saying them doesn't understand them, but they work more easily and reliably if the person's thoughts are in synch with the words. And it's extremely easy to garble or misremember a single syllable and be completely unaware that the ritual's going to blow up in your face when you finish it, and for a translation of the instructions to communicate something poorly due to it missing words for the precisely right concepts.

Rafin said:
So "officially" there's two versions of the ritual. One Divine one that is a mystery ritual of the completely legal cult of Halétha and one Arcane one that is of course designed by and for Wizards that happen to have studied some weird ancient language and also happen to have the right blood or found themselves in the Forest of Shadows.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

Well, right now there is no 'officially' since it's all falling under the protective aegis of 'when there's no cops around, anything's legal'. But that's one way it might end up being spun for widespread dissemination.

Rafin said:
I haven't quite understood why the Nordlander Hedgewise can't just officially form a legal Cult of Halétha and codify many of their rites and traditions into religious practices dedicated to a legal goddess in good standing.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

Because the Witch Hunters would say they are lying, and would lay out proof that they are lying, and then kill them.

Rafin said:
In fact, does the difficulty level of a ritual (i.e. Moderately Difficult or Fiendishly Complex ect) denote the magical power the caster needs to have, similar to typical spells, or does it denote the difficulty of the steps the caster has to take and not fumble, independently of their raw magical power?
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

A bit of both. It's an abstraction, don't poke it too much.
 
Mopman43 said:
The branches in the various provinces give different sources of their magic, which is why they can't go 'legit' because they can't say these are just the Rites of Haletha when there's plenty of non-Halethans out there doing them.

Boney had a post laying that out pretty explicitly.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
I was referring to using AV to identify the gods they worship. (As a joke, not a relitigation)
 
Nice to see some successes all around! I'd be happy to work on some different designs later on, so that everyone has their own design to use, but I'd rather ride this little success into the Capstone or Foundation investigation for now.
 
Reader mode
You must login or register to reply here.
Voting is open
Remove ads
Back
Top