Warhammer Fantasy: Divided Loyalties - an Advisor's Quest
- Thread starter Boney
- Start date
- Fantasy Users' Choice!
Voted best in category in the Users' Choice awards.
14. Born in 75, joined the Grey Order in 86.
- Location
- Norway
There's a difference between having the institution be secular, with individual religious members, and the institution being religious with some secular members.
If I have understood the situation correctly, I don't think Mathilde or Panoramia favor the colleges becoming staunchly atheist, but rather that it shouldn't have an official religion. The Jade College seems like it has a religious leadership, and that affects how it operates, the Grey College doesn't seem to care about who people worship, but there are a lot of Ranaldites in it afaik. The Grey College seems a lot more functional, so it seems like a secular system is better, but that might be because we are an outsider looking in through the perspective of a disgruntled member.
But that's secondary to the point of the paper. The paper doesn't ask them to worship Ghyran, it points out that what they already worship is Ghyran and that that's ok. And while that very well might be the case I can't imagine being told "your faith is just this other thing" is any easier to stomach now than back when Teclis tried it.
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- Location
- on the way to the fire.
- Pronouns
- He
Mathilde is absolutely one to argue on Panoramia favor. All through the quest her internal monologue put a very distinct difference between her being a wizard and her being a follower of Ranald. Whatever she casted, she always relied on her skills as a wizard. She might have put out a prayer to Ranald, but not in regard to her ability to bent Ulgu itself. only in the larger situation or for some nebulous hope for success. At no point she relied on him to aid her in shaping Ulgu.
She is the model of what Panoramia is expounding, a way for someone to be both a wizard of a wind and also follow a god. Pan doesn't dislike the earth mother by herself, or at least her theory doesn't. It dislike reliance on the earth mother in her capacity for being a Jade wizard.
Now if Ranald the Magician spun out, it would have been a very curios development on that front.
second point is completely valid, but that the price of playing politics.
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- Location
- Germany
Okay, even before getting into the apprentice-countermove (good one by the way), I have to disagree with this.
We know from this quest's canon that you have to exert absolute control over the Wind when you try to cast the real powerful shit, the Battlemagic.
The Wind does not play nice, no matter how you prepared, how much you are in tune with it, how fitting the surroundings and tools are.
The Wind will explode in your hands (or brain) and do chaotic stuff.
Now it is understandable that Panoramia wouldn't take that far into consideration, since she never used Battle Magic, she never felt the Wind she thought she understood and that she considered an ally turn against her.
But that is where the major difference comes from for me, since priests can give themselves up in trust to their gods, while Wizards must always remain in control.
And the upper tier, the leadership of the Colleges, will always know that face of the Winds, since they are traditionally all powerful mages capable of wielding the highest tiers of magic, so it makes sense that their perspective is a very different one from Panoramia.
- Location
- Chicago
- Pronouns
- She/They
In an equally valid alternate view, they sent the kid to a place where she's going to get the best available care.
The assumption of misuse or abuse of authority depends rather entirely on the existence of better solutions that were ignored for political reasons.
You need to demonstrate there were better options for the apprentice if you want this line of argument to be valid.
I think this misunderstands Panoramia's arguement. It isn't about whether gods have a place in a mage's life. It's about whether the thing that the jade order actually does worship is a god. They aren't adherents of Rhya or Isha- they worship a "goddess" that is, as Panoramia argues, just the wind of magic. So it's about challenging the idea that the jade wind has a personality and an agenda the way other gods do.
Attaching a personality and agenda to mindless phenomenona is a very human thing to do. It's also going to lead you to some really bad conclusions: like the idea that the phenomenon has preferences and a memory, and can therefore be cultivated and influenced.
I'm entirely on Pan's side, as you may have guessed.
- Location
- Earth
Missing an "s" here.
NSMS
Probably evil, unfortunately.
- Location
- A rapidly widening tear in the fabric of reality
Whoo! Great to have you back, @Boney!
I really liked the little bit with Max at the start, and how it shows how much he's grown and how far he's come from his days as an prickly journeyman. Also, nice to see Pan laying down the gauntlet and her terms with her mother, and finally receiving her well-deserved promotion. Though I admit, I don't see how the existence of the magic-addicted apprentice is supposed to prove her wrong- there's plenty of in-universe examples of people taking worship of traditional gods too far and becoming warped or insane because of it.
I really liked the little bit with Max at the start, and how it shows how much he's grown and how far he's come from his days as an prickly journeyman. Also, nice to see Pan laying down the gauntlet and her terms with her mother, and finally receiving her well-deserved promotion. Though I admit, I don't see how the existence of the magic-addicted apprentice is supposed to prove her wrong- there's plenty of in-universe examples of people taking worship of traditional gods too far and becoming warped or insane because of it.
- Location
- Moscow
Not quite. Ranaldian faith has its magical priesthood and lore of divine spells which is similar yet distinct from Ulgu magic. Ulgu doesn't make you a better appraiser or help you find a good bargain, and it certainly can't help you achieve Perfect Empathy.
The conversion of Druids into Jades went relatively smoothly presumably because they didn't lose any functionality of their magic from it.
If the best care this apprentice can get is a new made-magister who has never had an apprentice before and who has a political axe to grind related to her condition, something is seriously wrong with the Jade College. Even if we assume they know nothing about Magic addiction and there is no solution in their paradigm it makes sense to give someone with this kind of serious issue to an experienced educator so they can at least have an easier time with other aspects of Sophia's education
Ghyan does have a personality though, it just does not have intelligence... probably, that the Imperials can tell. The Kurgans worship the Winds. Are they just stupid barbarians or is Panoramia stuck on semantics?
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NSMS
Probably evil, unfortunately.
- Location
- A rapidly widening tear in the fabric of reality
Based on what she says at the end, I think Pan's thesis was less an attempt to end the schism in her college, or even necessarily something she truly believes, and more of an attempt to slap her mother (and the other jades) across the face with the fact that she doesn't freaking care about their arguments and sides and politics.
- Location
- Earth
Personally, I think the traditionalists might have a point in the Earth Mother not just being Ghyran and that the old faith may hold knowledge that can't be reached under the Teclisean model, but Panoramia has a point in them being too pushy with those traditions and forcing people to follow them even when they just want to use Ghyran.
If that is the case she is very bad at expressing herself, because she definitely choose a side, it's just the side opposite her mother.
I think Tochter's contributions to the project are going to become a complicated point in the debate within the Jade College once they become widely known. The fact that we managed to create Belthani tributaries only by using intelligent agents to substitute for the Earth Mother does at least suggest that the Old Faith worshipped something. But the myraid intelligences we used - and the fact that Tochter failed to create a Druidic tributary - still leave the debate mostly open. A Goddess? Forest spirits? The forests themselves? All of those options seem possible considering the tributaries we developed.
I also suspect that there's going to be a fight between the various factions in the Jade College regarding the Reikland nexus (if the Jades end up the ones in charge of it) basically around the question of "is it going to be an aracheolgy site or sacred grounds".
NSMS
Probably evil, unfortunately.
- Location
- A rapidly widening tear in the fabric of reality
She's on the opposite side to her mother, but she's also on the opposite side to the secular college hierarchy. Her thesis doesn't say 'we shouldn't worship the earth mother', it says 'of course we should worship something- and that thing's ghyran'.
- Location
- Germany
Otherwise this would be the meme about competing standards.
There are two ways to view religion in the Jade College.
Panoramia: "That's ridicolous, we can unify both views in a single thesis"
There are three ways to view religion in the Jade College.
Luckily it's much more effective at just arguing with her mother.
I think it's more subtle than that. She's saying there is something to worship, and that something is Ghyran itself.
I think she's agreeing with the Kurgan by saying that the Wind is something that can be worshipped.
Phenomena don't need to be anthropomorphised for people to worship them.
Elves have a widespread cultural belief that any monomania is unhealthy, so it's hard to say if the warnings against obsession with magic use is an extension of that or a separate phenomenon akin to magical addiction.
The Belthani standing stones make reference to spirits like naiads, so they could easily have used them just like the Hag Witch ritual does[
They'd probably consider it to be someone over-focusing on the Hekartian aspects of their character just as the witch elves focus too much on the Khainite, and see it as the same kind of phenomena, to my mind.
Nicholas
No longer teaching battlethings on a battleship
- Location
- Ashore again
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Huzzah, DL is back!
Max is freaking adorable, Marienburg had a whole lot of stuff suddenly snap into place, and the butterflies and references keep on flapping with Pan's new mini-me.
On a related note, however, hoo, boy. Seems Panoramia has taken a liking to her girlfriend's habit of chucking boulders into magical paradigms and decided to indulge a bit herself. All in all looks like fun times ahead. Should be interesting to see what Thorek has been up to, as well.
Max is freaking adorable, Marienburg had a whole lot of stuff suddenly snap into place, and the butterflies and references keep on flapping with Pan's new mini-me.
On a related note, however, hoo, boy. Seems Panoramia has taken a liking to her girlfriend's habit of chucking boulders into magical paradigms and decided to indulge a bit herself. All in all looks like fun times ahead. Should be interesting to see what Thorek has been up to, as well.
- Location
- Chicago
- Pronouns
- She/They
Ok. So you are assume that such a person exists and is available to take a new apprentice.
That's what I mean by not demonstrating a better solution. You*assume* one must exist and therefore not using it is abuse of authority.
I do not have such faith in institutions.