Warhammer Fantasy: Divided Loyalties - an Advisor's Quest
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Mopman43
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Supposedly the Black Pillar got dropped in later, around the time of the Great War Against Chaos.
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The Horned Rat intervened to stop the Second Skaven Civil War by dropping the Pillar in Skavenblight and telling the leaders of the Clans to touch it. Those who weren't worthy would be reduced to ash, whereas those who were got the Horned Rat's approval and could sit in the Council. Twelve people survived and they formed the Council, and they're supposed to be still sitting in the Council to date. I'm not sure how the Third Civil War changed things.
For all that skaven society is an absolute clusterfuck of legendary proportions, I will always appreciate the Horned Rat's willingness to step in and do things like piledrive an uber pillar of warpstone into the heart of his mortal empire to prevent a complete implosion.
Well. That sounds like quite an event lol. But yeah, the Horned Rat does come across as a fairly active god. Which might be because grimderp means evil gods get more leeway to engage in shenanigans.
I mean, that was after the second civil war that nearly tore his empire apart. He didn't really have that much of a choice.
Showing up to prevent the complete collapse of their polity is actually pretty standard for warhammer gods. All the gods showed up for Magnus, there's Valten for Sigmar in the End Times, the dwarfs have Grombrindal, the Lady is actually super active in general, and Myrmida did it once too.
The elves are actually a bit of an exception here. Asuryan sure tried, but his preventative measures failed and kind of started the whole process of tearing the elven empire apart, and after the first attempt he didn't seem to give it another shot.
I was going to comment that it's weird that the Empire has so many powerful, active and conflicting gods, and that surely one of them should have established dominance over the Empire like the Lady and Bretonnia or something by now—and then I remembered that there was literally a one thousand year civil war over that.
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To be fair, that war was started by individual people who felt they had the right to the throne and used the support of their particular god as a justification for why they should be in charge. Mandate of Heaven kind shit. It's less the Gods having a hissy fit and more of a bunch of power hungry people using them as justification.
But it's also not like they went "cut that shit out", so they clearly weren't too bothered until it became necessary.
I applied some critical thought to the problem, attempted to work through all contradicting points, applied critical thought to the alternatives (crossing fingers and praying everything we've worked for the past twenty five turns and multiple real life years doesn't disappear due to a drunk gold wizards or elf saboteurs getting to sharey around dwarves) and decided that an imperfect plan was better than none.
As for going against QM? Boney has the "No." to pull anytime he deems necessary and I'm a firm believer in honest debate over pandering to authority. If I was convinced of inaction or differing action from boney or another I'd change my tune.
I think it's a good idea because taking a break from all the serious stuff and doing a magic dwarven ancestor art piece seems fun and even with it's problems and difficulties seems to have interesting potential positives.
On a lighter note, want to try and get Laurelorn to let Asarnil and Deathfang to make a tarouir mercenary company that can have an exception to the no leaving rule and run around the old world fighting to proactively protect Laurelorn and making alliances. (helping us with waystone reconquests)
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Mopman43
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Boney is generally reluctant to outright tell someone to stop, but that's not an invitation to continue a conversation ad-nauseum when his tone (and everyone else's) would suggest that you aren't making any headway.
the problem is that your... not.... if anything it seems that you generally come from the view that 'the outcome that I most want is the outcome most likely.' and work backwards from there in your plans and ideas.
if everyone and their grandma thinks there are real problems with your idea, maybe there might be real problems with the idea, rather than you being the only one able to think critically.
if this sounds a bit mean, its because its a bit mean, but no one likes passive-aggressive 'everyone but me is dumb, only I can see the truth!' arguments.
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It's also not the first time. Like, at this point I read the idea and was like "Oh it's that guy, yeah that sounds like an idea that guy would have". That's not a good thing. I would suggest you try to think through the problems with your ideas further, and listen to what they tell you. And if you just like the mental image, say so. I really like the idea of Mathilde becoming the draconic goddess of magic, finally getting together with Cython and also inventing the Ulgu version of necromancy (that one Dreamer omake is hella sweet). Awesome athestic, but I don't think it'll ever happen.
This one isn't all that bad. It's got it's problems, but there is a neat idea, and it's conceivable.
Getting Asarnil involved would mainly be about selling him on how this would really spite the Phoenix King. But leading a force of elves again could probably qualify, so that's relatively easy.
The question then is: How do you sell it to Lorelorn, specifically the city dwellers? The whole leaving rule exists because it serves those in power, because it's one of the key ways how they retain their power. And by the existing rules, they could already sent out military forces if they wanted. So the mercenary aspect would be of interest to those who A) want to make a lot of money, B) want to use it as a fig leaf to cover military deployments officially doing so, or C) who have political disagreements with the current politics, but not enough to actually leave the city. Because those who are hungry for adventure and want to see the world would leave the city and do so.
Now, Group A we don't really want running around. They'd end up fighting for Marienburg or something terrible. B) is not something we, as an agent of the empire, generally approve of. It's also not something the elves are all that interested in. They're rather isolationist. It's not impossible for this to come up, but it would require pretty specific circumstances. C) has the problem that the people in power don't really have any reason to grant an exception. It would only apply to those who don't care enough to leave, so they're not the type to make problems. There's already a release valve after all.
So, city dwellers aren't a good target for recruitment. Not impossible, but not favorable. On the other hand, the faniour look a lot better. They're less materially well off, so they've got more to gain. They're more likely to have a suitable mentality, and they don't need a special permission to leave. They're also the ones with the most interest in proactive defense, because they're the first to bleed.
Mopman43
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That's easy, just tell him he'll prove how superior he is to Finubar by how much more the Eonir like him.
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The Gods are complicit in a ton of atrocities, and yet they continue to fail at stopping them despite their followers instigating it. If we judged the gods by the bad actors acting in their name then Shallya would be considered a callous Goddess in favor of burning the sick to save the rest of society.
I don't honestly understand how and when the Gods decide to interfere in mortal affairs, because they're astonishingly inconsistent about it.
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It is a problem, but I think it's largely one of narrative creation. That there are evil gods heading up the 'enemy' factions seems pretty clear; they have personalities and grudges and objectives. So there is a need for an equally powerful counterweight on the 'hero' side. But the hero gods can't have very much agency, or there's no room for the main characters to direct events and outcomes.
Basically it's a problem of trying to write man vs god stories in a place where the sides are actually quite well balanced.
Basically it's a problem of trying to write man vs god stories in a place where the sides are actually quite well balanced.
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This policy of yours is bad. I speak this from experience.
AzrielIlluminare
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Plus there are less Gods on the Evil side, which means it's more focused... I guess? On the good side you have a bunch of different Gods or the same Gods but under different names. Where as the Evil side basically has the Four, the Horned Rat etc. And even then within the Evil factions it's even more concentrated, the Skaven have the Horned Rat, Chaos has the Four...
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That is the conclusion I came up with, that this is a Doylist equation and not a Watsonian one. The Gods interfere when the author deems it so, and while that is true for frankly any narrative device, this is an impactful one that has no definite rules behind it because there are too many interpretations of the settings done by many writers of who many weren't on the same page. It's easy to justify the involvement of the Chaos God because they have the privilege of being powerful enough that the audience handwaves their actions without much scrutiny, but the good guys don't have that privilege.
However, I found that dismissing the concern as purely authorial was not entirely in the spirit of the thread as we often try to find ways in which these things fit in-universe, sometimes for the best when it can be salvaged.
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Sir_Travelsalot
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I think it ultimately comes down to a difference in how far the divine side of Order is willing to escalate their attentions and displays of power. Ultimately the reason why their miracles are manifested by trained priests rather than by their own will is because doing so would flood the world with more magic, which as has been said before is already straining against the current amounts from the damage to the Waystone Network. Chaos Gods don't mind doing that, because expanding the Wastes is a net positive for them. And so, barring instances where the fate of the entire world is credibly at stake and their mortal adherents aren't getting the job done, they're willing to leave the priests to use their best judgment on when to apply their power, with the limits from the strictures ensuring that, even if their acts are not good, at least are in line with their domain/interests.
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pucflek
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Sure, but i think so far every godly intervention was mostly in-universe justified pretty well. Even if some of it is very retrospective.
I mean yeah, its a mystery that Gods don't simply burn out the branches of their cult they don't necessarily find palatable out of existence by direct intervention, but my guess is that Godly actions are a zero sum game and there are typically more burning causes to spend them on than getting rid of semi-heretics that don't act out too much every half century.
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I wonder, then, if we can explain it in terms of information rather than authoritarial fiat.
Proposed:
The chaos gods have much better information available to them, making the world more visible, and situations where they might step in more evident.
We know that gods can't pay attention to everything, or even most things.
We know that the direct attention of a god does introduce it's own particular flavor of energy into the time/place of it's attention.
Indirect attention seems broad enough to capture all or most prayer/ritual/totem flags regardless of location.
The chaos gods appear much more sensitive to having their attention drawn, with the large number of numbers, icons, words, gestures, etc known to pull it, while even major hero gods like sigmar occasionally miss things like, oh, old Abel dying.
So I posit the hedge/veil is mostly opaque in both directions. Gods exist outside of it, so have a very hard time seeing in.
The main point of having cults, then, is to better push information through from this side, so they can see where applying their power happens, and it's results.
The chaos gods, then, would have better proxies: vast numbers of demons with their own attention spans each looking, Dhar to "persuade" all sorts of things to help, worshippers and beastmen to chant info back.
I like when analysis of stuff like this is done well. I remember first seeing the third star wars movie and wondering why the clones would turn on the generals they fought beside for years. I think the out of universe explanation was 'George Lucas wrote that the Jedi died through betrayal.' but then they tried to find a valid explanation that worked and that led to the clone wars t.v. series. I don't like the turn off your brain so it works explanation for story things, especially when overanalyzing can lead to such cool stories to explain previously perceived inconsistencies.
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The Empire civil war period lasted much longer, but the Gods only intervened when an outside threat came. And even then they collectively did it more subtly, essentially just giving one smart and successful dude their obvious stamp of approval. Granted, the Empire gods shared a worshipper base and might have actually taken sides in the civil wars until a sufficiently scary Everchosen made them get their act together. Bretonnia's supreme deity seems just as interventionist as the Horned Rat.