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Warhammer Fantasy: Divided Loyalties - an Advisor's Quest

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deathofrats0808 said:
The Empire is about two and a half thousand years old. And there's way more places than Egypt that match that. Hell, Egypt is older. The Great Sphinx is something like four and half thousand years old. There's traces of human settlement in Egypt dating to the 6th millennium BCE. Now, what is absolutely rubbish is the single form of government over that time, you're right, but settlement being around that long? Sure.
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I'm thinking the difference between being inhabited for thousands of years, being continually inhabited for thousands of years, and having the same nation with roughly the same self-identity and borders exist for thousands of years. Egypt is the only one I know of in the last category. China would be close, but even there they've had long periods of being many different kingdoms. Egypt separated into upper and lower for a while?

And yeah, this stuff can be handwaved with magic or gods, but why force that sort of handwaviness for a lazy "this is WAY bigger than earth!' declaration that is nothing but an obstacle to plausibility? It's like putting a bandaid on an injury you have yourself.
 
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Nerdasaurus Rex said:
Yeah, I think I remember raising a similar point beforehand. On the one hand, Teclisian tributaries are a solid win for the colleges, and have no legal difficulties. On the other, jolly cooperation.
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Another issue is the druidic tributary. Are we sure we really want to give people like Pan's mom more ammunition (and this totally will, even if Tochter gets more of the credit), when we already have the Belthani-style tributary ritual in the first place?
 
I think no teclisian tributaries is fine for now, but if we develop tributaries for every other represented tradition it becomes the sort of conspicuous absence that someone will ask questions about.
 
Orbmorb said:
I think no teclisian tributaries is fine for now, but if we develop tributaries for every other represented tradition it becomes the sort of conspicuous absence that someone will ask questions about.
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The problem is, the non-empire contributors won't quite like us making our own.

Not to the point they'd sabotage it, but they might not be very motivated, if assigned to this task.
They like us being reliant on their versions.
 
Glau said:
I'm thinking the difference between being inhabited for thousands of years, being continually inhabited for thousands of years, and having the same nation with roughly the same self-identity and borders exist for thousands of years. Egypt is the only one I know of in the last category. China would be close, but even there they've had long periods of being many different kingdoms. Egypt separated into upper and lower for a while?

And yeah, this stuff can be handwaved with magic or gods, but why force that sort of handwaviness for a lazy "this is WAY bigger than earth!' declaration that is nothing but an obstacle to plausibility? It's like putting a bandaid on an injury you have yourself.
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I mean, if you're just looking for "same Kingdom" Egypt was united in 3000 BCE, and remained united and independent so until conquered by the Achaemenid's in about 525 BCE. Although it had two periods of major upheaval, each lasting about 150 years (and the second leading to much of lower Egypt being under foreign rule for a century or so).

That said, how are you defining a nation with the same identity? Like, Germany is technically 150 years old, but it's not ahrd to argue that the area has identified as German for longer than that. Further, the concept of a state beign a nation is a relatively new one, so it's a little hard to judge IRL what counts as a continuous country.
 
Just to clear up something that seems to be missing from the current tributary discussion: the Belthani tributary creation process has two parts, designing a tributary and prototyping it:
Boney said:
[ ] Waystone: Tributary Design (select one or multiple: Ranaldian, Druidic, Ice Witch, Runesmith, Teclisean)
[ ] Waystone: Tributary Prototype (select one or multiple: Dreaming Wood tributary, Haléthan tributary, Bereginya tributary)
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You need to design a tributary before you can start prototyping. The reason we could prototype last turn at all is that we got three designs "for free" when Aksel and Cadaeth and Niedzwenka managed to come up with designs while studying the Belthani tributaries. Tochter and Zlata tried and failed so we don't have Druidic and Ice Witch designs, Mathilde was busy translating Belthani sex rituals so we don't have a teclisian design.

So we can't get those new tributaries in a turn. The best case scenario for developing new Belthani tributaries is that it takes two additional turns, one for designing and one for prototyping, and this assumes that the design stage actually bears fruit; it might be that the answer to the question "how can we adapt this Belthani ritual to this new paradigm" turns out to be "we can't", or that the answer means that those tributaries are far too costly and difficult to make, for example if the Teclisian tributary ends up requiring apparitions or something:
Boney said:
The only Teclisean means of doing something similar Mathilde knows of is Apparitions, which is not currently within the Grey Order wheelhouse, so it would be an unreasonable expectation.
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Also, remember that we still have the option looking into the Scythian tributaries and the Lornalim. The Lornalim in particular could be worth looking into since obviously a working tributary design already exists for them and it's known to one of our project members.
 
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Mopman43 said:
4e has been putting a lot more historical acceptance of magic in the Ulrican parts of the Empire during the Time of Three Emperors.

I don't expect that will be the case in-quest.
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To add a little clarification to this, I'm gonna pull up some sources.

Middenheim - City of the White Wolf, page 13
113 IC
The Temple of Ulric is completed. However, the nascent cult of Sigmar the God-Emperor is established by this point and quickly grows to rival that of Ulric. The two cults are mostly amiable and cooperative, but tensions between more zealous adherents rise. Graf Erich, desperately keen to enlist the aid of Wizards for the magical reinforcing of the city's defences, allows the magic users to establish Middenheim's Guild of Wizards.
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Winds of Magic, page 11
Magic and The Wolf Emperors
From the earliest days, the Teutogens had been more tolerant of magic, even allowing a Guild of Wizards to exist in Middenheim, albeit under heavy supervision from the Grafs.

In 1152 IC, the Empire entered an extended period of strife, turmoil, and fragmentation that made it nearly impossible to keep sorcery repressed. It began as it often does, with corruption: 'gifts' presented to officials to look the other way as nobles, guildsmen, and even priests thought themselves wiser than their predecessors, able to dabble safely where others had failed. By the Age of Three Emperors, the rival northern courts sanctioned sorcery in all but name to counter the power of Altdorf and Nuln. Even when Middenheim was wracked by the Wizards War of 1979 IC, the Grafs refused to suppress the wizards, deeming their power too useful. So instead they suppressed the scandal.
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WFRP 4e: Archives of the Empire 3, page 60
The Teutogens of Middenland worshipped Ulric, God of Wolves, Battle, and Winter. The values of the warrior god clashed with those who resorted to the tricksy ways of the Chieftain of Cats. They too came to distrust the hedge witches.

But it was when the worship of Sigmar spread throughout the Empire that hedge witches began to suffer true persecution. There are hedge witches who claim the trouble grew out of a form of professional jealousy, that Sigmarites were envious of the reputation hedge witches had earned for themselves as guardians of communities. Sigmarites, for their part, simply claim that hedge witches are true witches, twisted by Chaos, and that the wages of Witchcraft are to be burned at the stake. The genuine affection that many rural communities held towards practitioners of Hedgecraft stalled their persecution, but by the Age of Three Emperors in 1547 IC, hedge witches were regularly executed in areas of the Empire where Sigmar or Ulric held sway.

By the time of the Great War Against Chaos, witch hunters drew scant distinction between hedge witches and any other sorcerer. Even in Middenheim, where other wizards enjoyed a degree of freedom, hedge witches were persecuted, and across the Empire, Hedgecraft had degenerated into a forbidden, furtive practice.
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Ulrican parts of the Empire are and have always been more tolerant of magic, but that's really saying more about Sigmarites than Ulricans. Magicians are pretty much always distrusted because of their power and danger, and that very much includes Ulricans, it's just that the Cult of Sigmar is the most prejudiced of the cults by a significant degree, and so Ulrican parts of the Empire are more "accepting" only by sheer comparison.

In large part, Ulrican tolerance of magic comes from a desire to resist the power of the richer, more populous Sigmarite south. Tolerating magicians to counter the enemy without is the exact reason Magnus the Pious founded the Colleges of Magic, so the Ulricans aren't unique in pursuing that strategy. We actually see this exact form of Ulrican pragmatism within Divided Loyalties itself:
Boney said:
It is well known that Ulric does not approve of magic, but it is equally true that Ulric does not approve of gunpowder, and yet Middenheim bristles with cannon. In the South of the Empire, Ulric is often seen as a primitive and backwards God, but mainstream Ulrican belief is that Ulric's first commandment is survival.
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The one big except to Ulrican tolerance is hedgecraft, and that's because hedgecraft in the Ulrican parts of the Empire is Ranaldan.
 
Andres said:
"are and have always been" meaning within the history that 4e writes. I was clarifying what you said, not contradicting that things were different in earlier editions.
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I really took that paragraph in particular as arguing against my point.

If you're saying something is only the case in 4e, you really need to include that when you say 'are and have always been'.

(I feel the need to again point out that any of this actually being quest-canon is entirely up to Boney and is in no way guaranteed to be the case, however many times in pops up in 4e)
 
Mopman43 said:
I really took that paragraph in particular as arguing against my point.

If you're saying something is only the case in 4e, you really need to include that when you say 'are and have always been'.

(I feel the need to again point out that any of this actually being quest-canon is entirely up to Boney and is in no way guaranteed to be the case, however many times in pops up in 4e)
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I apologise for the confusion.

As for Divided Loyalties, I believe it's using the old lore of Ulricans and Sigmarites hating magicians equally as much, regardless of that whole survival thing.
 
I've gone back and ensured that the initial DL post has the 9th Anniversary reaction.

It's deeply unfortunate there is no 6th Anniversary react, since it already has the 7th and 8th and that would have given Boney the full Chaos Undivided. :3
 
It's been a while since I did the deep dive into it, but I recall reaching a conclusion that the oft-repeated fact that the Warhammer setting's planet is about twice the size of earth is the product of one person having added up the width of various maps in wildly different sources and reached that diameter, and then having posted those results on a forum somewhere, and it's been repeated as absolute fact in every corner of the internet ever since. I believe that when I did the same thing myself, I reached a result only slightly larger than Earth, rather than twice its size.
 
K von Carstein said:
Now I'm curious to know why🤔 It's true that character sucks, but honestly he's very nice in the movie :V
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HanChenYou said:
Have you asked Raven why?
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The length of the face and how high up the mouth is. Half of his face is his chin, it creates an uncanny valley effect.
Nerdasaurus Rex said:
Yeah, the scale thing annoys me from time to time. The Roman Empire lasted 2000 years (if you include the kingdom, the republic, and the Byzantines), but no one would claim the Romans of 800 BC and the Romans of 1400 ad were the same people.

That said, with the age of the Empire, I just mentally assume that the Gods are providing common, unchanging cultural touchstones that maintain a level of continuation through their priests and worshippers over millennia and then try not to think about it too much.
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I assume that the Empire was distinctly different 2500 years ago in comparison to the modern Empire culturally, but the fact that the majority of material is focused on the modern imperial era and the vague details of how things used to be, we just assume that the Empire is mainly contiguous.

It's only recently that GW have decided to actually explore a different time period in depth in the form of the Old World looking into the very end of the Era of Three Emperors. And I mean, let's not forget that the Empire wasn't an actual united entity for 1000 years of its 2500 year history. It's hard to say that the Empire has every mtaintained a consistent culture, especially considering how fragmented its provincial nature tends to make their culture in the first place. It often feels like the Empire is ten nations held together by a thread at times.
 
The 'Empire' of Sigmar's time was a bronze-age tribal confederation, which evolved technologically and politically over time into its largest and most united form around 900 or so after the 'Drive to the Frontiers' - a time of unity and expansion that the 'modern' Empire still has not reached. After that is a time of decline from poor leadership within and new threats without - Averland loses an army adventuring in Nehekhara, Drakwald is destroyed by Beastmen, the Moot is carved out of Averland and Stirland, the Norse sack Marienburg, the Skaven make open war upon the Empire, the Black Plague tears through the Empire and Necromancy rises in its wake, and a dozen other cumulative disasters. It's significant that we have basically no idea who ruled between Mandred Skavenslayer in the 1100s and Ottillia in the 1300s. The Three Emperors declared themselves as such not so much in rebellion against an existing Emperor, but as a declaration that they intended to restore the Empire from its fragmented state.

It is entirely possible to argue that Magnus did not so much restore the Empire as he created it, as all that was left for him to work with from the past was dreams and legends.
 
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Magnus's Imperial Restoration School

"So you want to unite and restore the dream of a long-faded Empire?"
"Well that's fine indeed. A new kind of Emperor to save Humanity from the Old Foe."
"But most of you will fall to infighting within, like, a day, so I'll get to the point.
Your best bet is to be undeniably Anointed by Gods old and new.
That worked for me, so that's my advice."
"Oh, and try to make sure you've got an Everchosen at the gates to really focus minds."
"But what do you do if you're a regular Ottillian claimant in a centuries-long civil war?"
"Merely favoured by your primary regional deity? That's a bad strategy, plus it's schismatic.
Pass unharmed through Divine Flame, that's what I do, stick to that."
"I hope this was helpful."
 
Boney said:
Averland loses an army adventuring in Nehekhara, Drakwald is destroyed by Beastmen, the Moot is carved out of Averland and Stirland, the Norse sack Marienburg, the Skaven make open war upon the Empire, the Black Plague tears through the Empire and Necromancy rises in its wake, and a dozen other cumulative disasters.
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I believe all these events were mentioned before in this thread before except for the first one, so to those curious, it's from this excerpt from page 21 of the 8th Edition Tomb Kings book:

"ca. 1000 IC to Present - Count Schuvaltz of Averland hears hushed tales of treasures heaped in the ancient tombs of Nehekhara and he gathers together an army of mercenaries to march into the Land of the Dead. Schuvaltz's expedition is ambushed on its return to the Empire by legions of Skeletons that burst from the ground. Only a single bloodied soldier survives to make it back to the Empire. His ramblings of dead men walking are dismissed as desert-madness, but his mutterings of golden artefacts are spread far and wide. Thus begins centuries of unbridled greed, where countless armies, adventures and tomb robbers from across the world travel to Nehekhara to find their fortunes."
 
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