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Warhammer Fantasy: Divided Loyalties - an Advisor's Quest

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mathymancer said:
Well, the wiki article on the Doom of Kavzar includes a quote - supposedly from the The Loathsome Ratmen and All Their Vile Kin - according to which there's a sketch with the caption 'Kavzar is Tylos', "a phrase the true meaning of which is at present unclear." So..probably?

The Faceless Wind getting a face is strange, but so does the nomad God becoming City Father, and recall that his original role was a warden and a teacher, that's not a great fit for a nomad God either. Either Khsar's true domain is something that's really hard to grasp, or Khsar rebranded Himself a number of times, abandoning his original domain and picking up entirely new ones. I think Borek's narration indicates that the latter is the case, and that this had a cost:
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I don't know how the other gods all had their origin, but according to Borek Khsar was pretty much some kind of servitor spirit for the Old Ones originally, not a deity focused on one or more domains. And once he could not be the Warden-Teacher to a population of servant Dwarves in or around the city of Zl, he decided to become a nomad wind deity. We have no idea what happened in between, but it does seem like "nomad wind deity" became his first choice at the time despite not being that before the death of Umskaladrak and the exodus of the Dwarves. We also know that after the Doom of Kavzar he became a wanderer once more, but was specifically embodied. Sure, Myrmidia also did the walking around in a mortal body thing for a while, but Morghur did this constantly and repeatedly whenever he was slain. That's also not usual god behavior.
 
Boney said:
The creation of the Great Maw was about 1500 years after the departure of the Ancestor Gods, before which they were isolated to western Cathay.
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Thought that included Golden Age, not just Age of Ancestor but yeah, that was a misread from me. Its really hard to differentiate because everyone is Ancestor :V

Rafin said:
servitor spirit
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I don't particularily like these spins. From what we seem to have heard, which is mostly mythology but like, whatever deities are is their own stuff that happened to ally to Old Ones the same way Dragons ended up doing in some cases.
 
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Rafin said:
I don't know how the other gods all had their origin, but according to Borek Khsar was pretty much some kind of servitor spirit for the Old Ones originally, not a deity focused on one or more domains. And once he could not be the Warden-Teacher to a population of servant Dwarves in or around the city of Zl, he decided to become a nomad wind deity. We have no idea what happened in between, but it does seem like "nomad wind deity" became his first choice at the time despite not being that before the death of Umskaladrak and the exodus of the Dwarves. We also know that after the Doom of Kavzar he became a wanderer once more, but was specifically embodied. Sure, Myrmidia also did the walking around in a mortal body thing for a while, but Morghur did this constantly and repeatedly whenever he was slain. That's also not usual god behavior.
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I agree that "normal" Gods are probably a different kind of being than Old One wardens, and that it's possible (and even likely) that the former are more tied to their domains than the latter, but Borek still seems to imply that Khsar changing domains hurt him. I'm still not sure what to make of Him having a physical body, because while that could be something fundamental to His nature it could also be a result of desperation and perhaps it's something all Gods can do but usually avoid. It occurs to me that some of the surviving Ellinilli are said to walk the mortal world after the massacre of their siblings, that's possibly another example of Gods getting closer to mortals when in dire straits.
 
Boney said:
Not every head that wears a crown lies uneasy, but those that don't, don't deserve to wear it. And sometimes that can make them miserable company.
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Its honestly pretty lucky that every single leader Mathilde has had in her life is in some way admirable. For the distant ones, Luitpold, Algard and Dragomas are reasonable people, and dare i say that Dragomas is actually a pretty great person himself, even if we saw very little of him.

He goes easy on the contestants for his spot that don't immediately whip out lethal spells, he stands for Battlemages whose lot has been shitty before him. Not that much to go on but very promising.

And then there is Abelhelm and Belegar, who are(were) just amazing. Mathilde is very lucky even when Ranald isn't rolling for her, personally.

I just hope Belegar proves a match to his burden. That he still does not appear to be married seems concerning somewhat. I dunno.

mathymancer said:
I'm still not sure what to make of Him having a physical body, because while that could be something fundamental to His nature it could also be a result of desperation and perhaps it's something all Gods can do but usually avoid.
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Grombrindal has a physical body too.

Arguably so does Isha (she just occupies two at the same time) and Kurnous. It could just be that the being that is Morghur was emptier than most mortal vessels and so it being an Avatar of its God made it a vessel for the whole of it, diminished as it was.
 
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Nicholas said:
Well, while we're waiting, @Codex have you been able to read any more of the quest with your sibling? Last I recall was the turn where Abelhelm executed the Professor, but I might have missed if you've been able to do more since then.
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There was this:
Codex said:
Raven and I read Turn 4 Results together. To those who don't remember, it's the one after Verezzo's brains were blown out. We had a lot of fun as usual and Raven commented how much they liked Boney's seamless worldbuilding like mentioning Magic Lock being used to maintain privacy in the College dorms. Mathilde is still a silly goose, injuring her hand while whittling and gettiing mad:

Lots of exclamation marks and irritated inside talk in this chapter. Raven loved the D6 bit but made fun of Mathilde for playing DnD by herself. We had good times riffing off the two stooges Wolf and Heideck. It was great.

Raven likes Markus a lot. They love him and his dad dynamic with Mathilde and told me "I hope he officially adopts Mathilde by the end of the story". I had to keep very still and not show anything on my face.

Raven loves Ranald's cat connection. "He's getting more based by the minute".

Raven loves Anton's cameo. They always like it when he pops up. They ask what he looks like, and I don't really have an answer. They have a tendency to pet the screen when a character they love is on it, so they pet Anton's name in lieu of a picture.

Raven loves Van Hal and Mathilde's dynamic. They kept going on and on on how many dads she's collecting and how she loves it so I had to tell them them in advance that Mathilde gains a crush on him after a vote. I felt bad seeing them deflate. They no longer headcanon them having a parental relationship because it's extremely awkward now. They really don't like this, but I had to tell them in advance. It would have been much worse if they were caught by surprise.
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Raven and I haven't gone any further yet. We've been preoccupied with this and that and Raven's interest in things ping pongs all over the place. We'll get back to it eventually.
 
Boney said:
Everything bad about their worldview is so inextricably tied to everything admirable about them that you can't separate the two without a lot of time and effort and pain.
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A Kragg the Grim that wasn't part of the main holds of the Karaz Ankor, but instead some minor clan Runesmith, would still probably have spent a thousand years malding over perfecting his art -- he just probably would have been focused on "becoming as good as those other Runesmiths/Runelords, who had the benefit of standing on the shoulders of giants". Or something like that. i.e. He still would have been an ancient and curmudgeonly Dwarf, and he still would have been obsessing over perfecting his art, he just... probably would have been less impressive than Kragg-as-we-have-him-now. He also (if he was an Imperial Dwarf and not a Karaz Ankor Dwarf) would not have been willing to do favors for Imperials in exchange for something they did for the Karak Zhufbar Dwarfs by destroying Vampire Mountain -- because that favor exchange was predicated on the ancient alliance between the Karaz Ankor and the Empire, and upon the even-ancienter ties that the Karaz Ankor holds have to each other. (i.e. Kragg is willing to do stuff for us, because we did something for the Karaz Ankor.)

If that wasn't the case, getting anything from him would be darn near impossible. Because Dwarfs don't do things that don't concern them; that don't involve oaths or grudges or some ancient agreements, or their self-interest somehow. That... sort of it sounds like a "well, duh, doesn't everyone mainly do things in their interests?" thing, but... With Dwarfs, if they're willing, then they're willing to keep doing that -- or keep remembering it -- for thousands of years. For good or for ill.

As. that same willingness to be part of a favor exchange system, one that is thousands of years old, cuts both ways. Because he's willing to do something for somebody who helped the Karaz Ankor in a big way, it also means that he... malds and seethes over the Dwarfs -- the Karaz Ankor as a whole I mean -- being in a terrible position compared to the past.

Some Holds have it worse than others. Karak Azul seems to have it pretty good! Karaz-A-Karak and Ungrimm's Karak Kadrin, probably not so good. (Mathilde's visit to Kadrin to mention killing Alkharad comes to mind. And the state of the Slayers there. It seemed gloomy. Karaz-A-Karak also seemed empty and gloomy, when Belegar and Mathilde visited it. So empty.)

Azul and Vlag were disconnected from the other Holds. This could mean that Holds that see how poorly everyone else is feeling, begin to catch some of that, er, aura of gloom perhaps. Or maybe it was Thorgrim's leadership; maybe people were able to catch the vibes that Thorgrim was giving of in how he was going about things even if he never shared the reasons for it, of "make peace with your ancestors", and over a century that vibe was felt. Though if so, then Thorgrim's abrupt 180 in terms of attitude -- smiling as he reactivates an Ancient Wonder, and monologues to his fellow Kings -- might be giving some people whiplash. Not to mention, the Karaz Ankor being a hell of a lot more active now, and Karaz-A-Karak's coffers being active and flowing. (It probably was before of course, since Thorgrim would have been just as intent upon spending money and lives as effectively as Grudge-lessly as possible in an attempt to strike out as many Grudges as possible. But even so, it was probably different in terms of output and usage.)

It could also be because all those Holds felt the losses of the Great War Against Chaos in 2300. Whereas Vlag and Azul would have been isolated. Vlag's a bit of an outlier and question mark though. Maybe it is that "Dwarfs have something to do in front of them and measure themselves by how well they make progress towards that goal." ... Or maybe it's because everybody gloomy and depressed in Vlag, had already died long long ago. That's kind of a grim thought. But then, they were in a grim situation.
Boney said:
Everything bad about their worldview is so inextricably tied to everything admirable about them that you can't separate the two without a lot of time and effort and pain. Belegar is doing a lot of the hard work to make this happen, which is why he's so damn miserable, and probably why others needed a few kicks to start along that path themselves. It can be a lot easier to accept death with a clear conscience, to proclaim that 'ours is not to reason why' and charge, than to chart an entirely new course into the unknown and accept that any failure will be entirely your own fault.
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And part of the problem is that, because he's being so unorthodox, he's questioning himself highly. Like when I mused on the implications of Belegar deciding to melt down the coins found in Karag Zilfin's vaults. It was probably a bigger deal than it'd look to a human, because to a human it can be just a shrug and a "Well, if we can preserve some of the coins for their historical value, then, neat. Otherwise, okay." But to a Dwarf, it would be deciding to not hold up something from the ancient past; to take a look at something their predecessors had taken up, and go "No, I don't necessarily need to hold on to that" which is a big fucking deal for Dwarfs. Maybe Belegar was right with that "Well, it's probably impossible to figure out what the hell to do with this, who it belongs to, and how to get it to people." Maybe he's wrong. But a more orthodox Dwarfy reaction possibly would have been to go "... Well, I guess I'll keep it in a vault forever anyway, and slooowly start working on a way to track down and untangle the inheritance Gordian Knot in that spot. Maybe it'll never get untangled. But. If so, the coins will lie there forever then, as is right and proper." To slowly use only the coins you can guarantee don't belong to anybody, as you make headway on that bit by bit. Realistically you probably don't have this at the top of your to-do pile, but, it's probably somewhere on the to-do list and maybe some hobbyist archivist or historian is slowly working away at it, off and on. Or maybe they would have noted down and written down who all the coins belong to, and then started spending the coins, and recorded an IOU in the vault for the coins; and that, if somebody in the future showed up that could have an ironclad claim on some of that wealth, then the Dwarfs would examine that claim, and if it's correct, they'd pay it off. Instead, it was something more surreptitious or furtive.

Which... isn't necessarily to say that borderline, unorthodox, shameful, weird, or etc stuff, doesn't happen or doesn't get done in some Holds. Apparently there's something rotten in, uh, Karak Hirn I believe; two princes killing each other, and Ulthar wandering off to join Belegar's expedition instead. (I'd wondered whether that was a Changeling plot or something. Or just paranoia on the part of one of the princes, as one of the few surviving bodyguards claimed. Could just be normal nasty business, with no need for Chaos/cultist shenanigans.) Or the Holds that didn't answer the Karaz Ankor's call to war at the time of the War of Vengeance, like Karaz Ghumzul; though given that's ancient business, and cursed mountains, and maybe not wanting to fight former friends/allies... though, every other Hold would have considered the High Elves former friends/allies too, so... Eh.

Or whatever the hell happened to make Karak Kadrin's Kings the Slayer Kings; the general gist of it is something about the dragon Skaladrak Incarnadine killing some princess of Karaz-A-Karak that was going to marry somebody in Kadrin (if I remember correctly) I think. But the truth of it might be more... well. You know how Josef Bugman dedicated his life to hunting goblins, after his hold was burned down? And then we found out that perhaps the reason he's so stubborn, and probably bitter and feeling hapless about it, is because Khazad Thar was part of the Waystone network; meaning both that Bugman's possibly required some flow of energy, and also possibly that the Norn royal family that settled there, did so knowing they had an important duty to handle... a duty that they could no longer fulfill, with the destruction of the settlement. Hence why Josef Bugman is on a crusade and doesn't rest or give up; it's because he can't fix Khazad Thar and rebuild the magical doohicky stuff and brew the ale again. Which means he needs to make up for that in some way. And he decided that that way, would be rangering the shit out of as many Goblin lives as Dwarfishly possible. If you can't fulfill your obligations to your ancestors and your kingdom one way, you do so another, I guess. (It's better than going Slayer. So. Yeah.)

So anyway, back to Kadrin. Keeping in mind that the story of Josef Bugman turned out to have an interesting twist to it, it could be the case that the Skaladrak Incarnadine and Slayer King thing also has a bit of a twist to it. For example, maybe the princess was transferring some control key of one of the Ancestor God's Great Works -- Axe of Grimnir stuff maybe? -- or something. ... Or maybe it was the mining. Mining might have woken Skaladrak up, and maybe King Baragor felt responsible for what happened. Or maybe the mining and industry that Karak Kadrin was doing -- and which Skaladrak disrupted or ruined -- was very crucial to the Karaz Ankor at the time, and so being disrupted by Surprise Emperor Dragon had horrible knock-on effects on the rest of the Karaz Ankor (and resulted in a dead bride to be) and the King felt responsible and ashamed. Or maybe it really was just the result of a King swearing the Slayer Oath, but then being caught in a Catch-22 because of that, as the general understanding of the story goes.

... Or maybe Baragor was cowardly. He swore the Oath... but then didn't want to actually go off and die. And so reasoned his way out of it. And the rest of his lineage have had to bear that double-shame ever since.
 
Garlak said:
he just probably would have been focused on "becoming as good as those other Runesmiths/Runelords, who had the benefit of standing on the shoulders of giants"
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I kinda doubt that. Everyone is standing on shoulders of giants anyway and Kragg would've probably been granted an anvil or spot somewhere either way. Being a living ancestor does that.
 
pucflek said:
I don't particularily like these spins. From what we seem to have heard, which is mostly mythology but like, whatever deities are is their own stuff that happened to ally to Old Ones the same way Dragons ended up doing in some cases.
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What I was going for was that Khsar seems to not have the same origin as most deities. Maybe he was an independent spirit that came to awareness with the first coming of Chaos, which the Old Ones then got through one way or another to play Warden over Dwarves, but he didn't seem to be the kind of independent being of power born by the imagination of a mortal race the way that Deathfang described deities to be. I might be wrong, but that's the feeling I got.
 
Rafin said:
What I was going for was that Khsar seems to not have the same origin as most deities.
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I think this here is doing a lot of heavy lifting. What most deities?

We don't even know what a deity is.

Ancestor Gods don't seem to fit the mold, we know at least some of the Gods have part of the mojo made out of spirits that cults slapped onto their domains, there was a bit of theorycrafting around particularily potent magical forests essentially being gods in their own right, because Souls are made of Aethyr, Gods are in Aethyr and maybe made out of it, and what are dreaming woods but conglomerate really big soul made out of entire forest.

I don't think we know enough about gods in the first place to state that any of them really differ from some kind of normal platonic average of what a God is, because there might simply not be one.

EDIT. I don't think i necessarily disagree with you, i just don't much like deities not being emergent beings that sort of belong with their people and instead being something made by the Old Ones. That entire creation mythos never sat well with me.
 
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Gods could easily be a generic term for a sufficiently powerful creature that primarily exists as a pattern in the Aethyr.

Some gods could have been engineered de novo by the old ones, others shaped to fit the template of mortal belief, and yet others have grown from the seed of a or multiple mortal souls.

They could all currently be the same class of entity at the moment however they came into existence.

There could also be other entities that mortals worship as gods that don't currently fit that category, even if they once did or might do so in future.
 
To be honest, my working hypothesis for a god is "an entity comprised, in full or in part, of aether that has been transformed into the embodiment of a concept, identity, personality, philosophical idea, psychological construct, or similar".

Of course, the big problem with this definition is that Mathilde and Cython both qualify as gods.

It's too broad and virtually useless as a definition.
 
Nerdasaurus Rex said:
To be honest, my working hypothesis for a god is "an entity comprised, in full or in part, of aether that has been transformed into the embodiment of a concept, identity, personality, philosophical idea, psychological construct, or similar".

Of course, the big problem with this definition is that Mathilde and Cython both qualify as gods.

It's too broad and virtually useless as a definition.
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The mention of domains in Borek's account may be important. Having a domain may be a necessary part of being a god. Neither Cython nor Mathilde need a domain to keep existing, their body in the material world is sufficient their Aethyric existence. Gods may be too big for that to be enough to bear their metaphysical weight/complexity, or some may not have a body at all.

That would explain why gods want worshippers, either dedicated as human gods now prefer or a timeshare as the elven gods mostly do. It's because one body isn't enough to support an entity that big, so they partially rely on those worshippers to spread the load between them.
 
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Nerdasaurus Rex said:
To be honest, my working hypothesis for a god is "an entity comprised, in full or in part, of aether that has been transformed into the embodiment of a concept, identity, personality, philosophical idea, psychological construct, or similar".

Of course, the big problem with this definition is that Mathilde and Cython both qualify as gods.

It's too broad and virtually useless as a definition.
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What some people consider to be gods is not considered to be so elsewhere. What Kislev would call spirits the Empire considers to be minor gods. It's a matter of perspective at times.
 
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Johann's Big Adventure, Pt 1
  • Apocrypha
    • Johann's Big Adventure, Pt 1

    In which our hero awakens to find an important trophy stolen, his friend distraught, and thus a gold-plated excuse to have a jolly romp through Laurelorn.

    "Hey {little/young/novel} {gold/true/ignorant of true value}! Wake up!"

    Johann didn't open his eyes. Nonetheless, he awoke with a start, disoriented. Ghur and ghyran flowed around him, casting most of the world in two-tone pressures. The pet name Kadoh had come up for him, which he chose to translate as New Gold (archly ignoring the affectionately diminutive connotations) and further abbreviate in his mental narration as NG. Yes, he had a mental narration. No, he was not taking questions about it. It was his mental narration.

    "NG wake up! There's a problem, and we need to be moving! Three day pack in five minutes or I'll have to leave you behind!"

    Shaking off the last of the dream, he focused. Five minutes didn't give him time to ask questions.

    "Grimnir's teeth!" He swore in khalazid as he rolled out of his wonderfully soft and almost sinfully luxurious elven bed, some part of him appreciating the appropriately elven layers to that, some parts of him continuing to swear, and the majority scrambling for his robes, staff, pack, boots, water skin, and... Nope, he was good, claws covered for knives and gun. Out his door within two minutes, out to the street a half a minute later.

    There was a band of six elves in eclectic wargear on horses, with himself and Kadoh (who turned with a smile) on foot. The champion had chosen today to adorn himself with gilded leather pauldrons (high contrast ghur and chamon picking out the design nicely, the leather must have been from something he had hunted), from which sloped paired baldrics across a bare, chiseled chest (that pressed a shimmer of different winds against his senses), leading down to quivers of javelins hanging against loose silk pants. The smile on his face was visible in the Aqshy that pulsed behind his teeth, joviality concealing anger.

    "There's been a {robbery/transgression/breathtaking display of fashion}! One of the torches used in the opening rites- one qualified to carry phoenix flame- has been stolen from the temple. Such a thing is a strike against the games themselves! Come, we ride seeking clues!"

    Johann blinked, then grinned back.

    "Our activities appear to have real stakes today. Very well, where to?"

    "First, we head towards your country folk in Nordland," Kadoh replied as they began to run, "because the patrol that was meant to be next in the route through the reclaimed lands was delayed due to the theft, and that may be what they counted on to escape. Hurry, time is short, we must catch them before they flee across the river!"

    Johann considered this. His experience with Mathilde suggested it was possible, thieves utilizing the chaos of their theft to distract attention, but he wasn't sold on it. There weren't enough explosions. He was, nevertheless, already in motion, so he decided to just go with it. After all, the champion would know better than he what sorts of nefarious sneak thieves would target a holy ritual at the center of this elven culture, right? He obviously couldn't be just running off on a whim and a hunch. Right?


    Part 2: In which our hero is chased by beasts, stumbles onto a sinister plot, and has a tall drink of water. (Coming soon!)


    A/N- was kicking around what I could write, settled on Johann and muscle-elf having a buddy-cop romp. Pushing the first bit out now, going to do this in smaller snips.
     
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  • Apocrypha
    • @Glau I loved the little snippet. It's got a lot of layers I enjoyed, from the way you portrayed the double meaning nature of Eltharin and Johann's inexperience towards it, Kadoh's direct and yet still somewhat condescending tone towards a person he doesn't quite see as a peer yet still finds interesting enough to consider a comrade, and your general portrayal of the way that Johann percieves reality through his magical senses. It maintains your style while remaining distinct from the Soizic diaries. I'm looking forward to whatever you cook up next.

    Sincerely, your biggest fan.
     
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