Remove ads

Warhammer Fantasy: Divided Loyalties - an Advisor's Quest

Voted best in category in the Users' Choice awards.
Voting is open
Reader mode
Anyways, Branarhune is amazing, especially against higher skill opponents on the defensive- which, due to Mathilde's ability and habit of attacking from ambush, happens rather a lot. Just as one significant example;

Boney said:
[Alkharad's readiness to receive guests: 38]
[Mathilde vs Alkharad: Martial, 88+23=101 vs 87+28=105]

You'd pictured him leading another assassination attempt on Roswita, but even if preparations were required that would only take a fraction of the Vampire's time. He's currently hunched over a lectern, muttering to himself as he peruses the book, and you make your decision in an instant. There's unlikely to be a better scenario than this. You approach to within a meter of him but between the swing and the impact he moves, and he hisses in surprise as three of his fingertips fly across the room from his attempt at parrying your blade. "You're not-" he begins, then interrupts himself. "A Grey? But..." His eyes flick down to your belt, and then to your sword. "The famous Mathilde Weber."
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

If Mathilde had had that trait here, she would have had an effective additional +28 over Aklharad and its pretty damn likely that he would have started the fight crippled- if there was even a fight at all.

For another (and iirc one of the things that triggered our desire for Guard Bypass to begin with)-

Boney said:
[Instant reinforcements: Req 50, Learning, 45+28=73.]
[Swing: Martial, 4+23=27 vs 39+40-30(Unaware)-10(Wounded)=39.]

You could picture it so perfectly in your mind: you appear standing on Deathfang's neck, sword already mid-swing, and you take the Daemon's head neatly off its shoulders. You save Deathfang, Asarnil pledges eternal friendship, Deathfang shares some juicy dragon secrets, happy ending for everyone but the Tempter. The Daemon has other ideas. In an instant its talons are out of Deathfang's neck and catching Branulhune in mid-air, and though daemonic ichor spills forth, it manages to arrest the swing of the runic blade. It catches your gaze in its own, and in a moment you know that it was capable of offering you any pleasure imaginable and some that weren't, but all it was willing to grant you was pain.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

Even with the terrible roll on Mathilde's part here, the Greater Daemon would have would up with a total of -1 and Mathilde's fantasy might have actually happened. :V
 
Last edited:
Garlak said:
Maybe it's hard to figure out in the first place; but then, once you've figured out, it's easy to spread that knowledge because you've solved-the-problem? Like how figuring out the First Secret of Dhar, or figuring out the concept of zero, is hard but once you know it the knowledge can easily be spread.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

That does seem reasonable, it is how most skills work. I mean if someone told you to make a bow going off a description it would be hard, but at the same time a trained bowyer who knows how to make one can teach the skill properly.
 
Last edited:
Thanks for the update @Boney.

My truncated reaction to this update. I'm so proud of my boy, no, my man Johann. I'm so happy that his very peculiar relationship to the Winds, which had caused him so much grief over the years, has reached the point of impressing even a Grey Lord. About time he gets the respect he deserves from the Elves.

On Eike, I'm really loving the dynamic building between her and Mathilde. It's so cute. They're already starting to form a connection, although I suppose it's been years in the making, it just didn't have a time to solidify until now. From not knowing how to deal with Eike to fretting over her like a mother hen, Mathilde went a long way.

I sort of wonder what would have happened if we didn't take up Eike as an apprentice. She already seemed to have In Awe of Mathilde before we took her up, and she trained in Greatswording because Mathilde did in the College, so it may have been the case that not taking her would have... I won't say disappointed Eike. Possibly made her feel bad. Or maybe I'm thinking too much into it.

In regards to the research aspects of the update, lots of good stuff. I might go into more detailed reaction there later.
 
notanautomaton said:
From a more modern perspective I'm a bit leery of potentially just dumping Dhar in the ocean, so here's hoping we come up with a way to link the river-leylines to the original network. But aside from that potential future wrinkle, this has been a shockingly good turn.

@Boney Thorek mentioned that the Rune-cap is apprentice work, but do we know how hard the flower is to make in comparison?
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
I mean, all coasts connect to Ulthuan. The vortex is on a floating island in the middle of the ocean. How much do you want to bet that Dhar dumped into the ocean finds it's way to the vortex sooner or later?

Ether that or thousands of thousands of years of steady warpstone dust from the poles has rendered the deep ocean a horror realm of chaos and mutation and a little more isn't going to hurt.
 
Last edited:
notanautomaton said:
From a more modern perspective I'm a bit leery of potentially just dumping Dhar in the ocean, so here's hoping we come up with a way to link the river-leylines to the original network. But aside from that potential future wrinkle, this has been a shockingly good turn.

@Boney Thorek mentioned that the Rune-cap is apprentice work, but do we know how hard the flower is to make in comparison?
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Based on what Mathilde knows of high magic, it probably takes more than 30 years to get "a sliver of ability" with High Magic.
 
MossPiglet said:
So did Hatalath exxegerate his rank so that Lord Turuquar even considers working with him or did Lord Turuquar assume he was of that rank because Johann helped him figure something out he couldn't solve himself?
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

He's trying his best to adapt to a world where his rolodex needs a section for humans. He didn't remember which strange foreign rank the shiny guy was, so he went for the fancier one he remembers saying recently.

Ambit said:
I'm honestly not sure if Xeno-Affinity counts as a trait or a skill since it's under skills.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

It's a valid possibility.

notanautomaton said:
@Boney Thorek mentioned that the Rune-cap is apprentice work, but do we know how hard the flower is to make in comparison?
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

It requires High Magic, and learning High Magic begins only after mastering all eight Winds. So it'd be limited to the Grey Lords and the most powerful Mages of the Eonir.
 
DragonParadox said:
That does seem reasonable, it is how most skills work. I mean if someone told you to make a bow going off a description it would be hard, but at the same time a trained bowyer who knows how to make one can teach the skill properly.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Well I mean, one of the options in the update is described as something like "Try to get Waystone passwords out of Ulthuan/Naggaroth."

Passwords.

Passwords are things that are hard to figure out. But trivial to share once you do. Which is why you keep them secret. So, yeah...

Of course, passwords are changeable too. Buuut... that may require a bit of finagling that is inconvenient in some way. (Also, maybe if you know some of the mechanisms or logics behind one password set, it becomes a bit easier to understand the system, to.)
 
GrimTheMad said:
Anyways, Branarhune is amazing, especially against higher skill opponents on the defensive- which, due to Mathilde's ability and habit of attacking from ambush, happens rather a lot. Just as one significant example;



If Mathilde had had that trait here, she would have had an effective additional +28 over Aklharad and its pretty damn likely that he would have started the fight crippled- if there was even a fight at all.

For another (and iirc one of the things that triggered our desire for Guard Bypass to begin with)-



Even with the terrible roll on Mathilde's part here, the Greater Daemon would have would up with a total of -1 and Mathilde's fantasy might have actually happened. :V
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
I actually think greater daemons are immune to this new trait. Too Big is still a problem.
 
Ohh, I'm so excited. The Project is making a lot of progress, and Eike is cute. I kind of want to see her thoughts on learning a magic sword style. Smug obviously, since she's grey, but what flavor?

I'm also glad the non-baba humans are doing so well. They've been pretty productive, all around. And the elves losing out to a bunch of rocks of different flavors was also great. I'm pretty happy with how the river action turned out. Also shoutout to Johan showing of the power of hyperspecialization, with assist from the dwarfs. A victory for cooperation.

As a general note, I'm really happy the quest is updating again. Not only because the story itself is great (that's a given), but because I really enjoy the DL community. It didn't really go away during the hiatus, but there was a real slowdown. Seeing this renewed energy and excitement is great.

And there's still like half the turn to come! I'm really eager for the BOOK and ROW.
Sinsystems said:
So that is a potential benefit of the river method, namely creating a location where the Empire's wizards could access a lot of magic. Would certainly go well with the idea of Mannfred being the Wizard Count.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Altdorf is already built on a nexus and intensly magical. It doesn't have constant or euclidean geometry.
 
Last edited:
Alectai said:
Gosh, it's really starting to look less like Teclis said not to do it because it's hard and we'd fuck it up, but because it's actually not hard and the consequences of propagating the knowledge means it's more likely to reach bad actors.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Or more charitably because there was a war on and a project designed to crash build Battle Wizards probably shouldn't be concerning itself with long term magical infrastructure and he might have intended give more context as soon as he's back from this quick thing in Uluthan.

Less charitably but still somewhat charitable: it's cultural blindness- look at the Eonir's contributions in this update and how completely overcomplex and unscalable many of them are. Then compare it to the Hedgewise's bunch of pebbles. From Telcis' perspective maybe it is a lot of complex magical engineering that a bunch of Chisel-hands would struggle with.... except the traditions can be a lot better at certain things he doesn't expect.

Being less familiar with Telcis' lore specificially but it also seemsquite possible that Telcis - Magical Genius he might be - was just out of his field of expertise and didn't know more than the basics on waystone engineering. Maybe he could reinvent this entire area of research and repackage it for people who react to magic in a different way from his entire race. But he didn't really know much more than he gave and would have to go back to Uluthan and get a lot more context and has a thousand other demands on his time in setting up the colleges so stuck to the basics he had to hand.
 
Garlak said:
Well I mean, one of the options in the update is described as something like "Try to get Waystone passwords out of Ulthuan/Naggaroth."

Passwords.

Passwords are things that are hard to figure out. But trivial to share once you do. Which is why you keep them secret. So, yeah...

Of course, passwords are changeable too. Buuut... that may require a bit of finagling that is inconvenient in some way. (Also, maybe if you know some of the mechanisms or logics behind one password set, it becomes a bit easier to understand the system, to.)
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

The 'passwords' seem to be asking Caledor to do things. If someone he doesn't want to help out asks, he can just ignore their request, as he did to Mathilde and co before.

There's no system or mechanism here, but a sapient operator in charge you can talk to.
 
Fouredged Sword said:
I mean, all coasts connect to Ulthuan. The vortex is on a floating island in the middle of the ocean. How much do you want to bet that Dhar dumped into the ocean finds it's way to the vortex sooner or later?

Ether that or thousands of thousands of years of steady warpstone dust from the poles has rendered the deep ocean a horror realm of chaos and mutation and a little more isn't going to hurt.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Well we know that there is a dark parallel to the vortex called the Maelstrom that showed up in the Dreadfleet game/novella, basically it was a Dhar whirlpool used by the big bad.
 
So. Here's a thing.

Why are the other Grey Lords and great houses becoming more invested/active in the project than they were previously?

DragonParadox said:
First Secret of Dhar?😈 :V
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Hopefully Second Secret of Dhar.

'cuz that means she gets the First for free :p
----
Edit: I'm glad Askel had something for the rivers.
I would also like to ask magic people 'what happens to dhar when it reaches the ocean'
---
Maybe also do a social action asking some Eoinr why there is more assistance being given to the project from Grey Lords/Great Houses that Mathilde isn't being asked to pay for.
 
Last edited:
By the way, the Grey Lord names we know now has increased. Hatalath, Harathi, Lords Thanan (twins), Sarumar, Turuquar, Mal, Elrithish and Seliph. That's 9 of the 12 Lords.

Thanan loves to visit the outside world but always go back at night. Hatalath is Hatalath. Harathi is Marrisith's uncle, renowned Druchii hater. Sarumar knew the Dwarfs did something with the Waystones so he probably has some feelers or perceptive abilities, and he may or may not have a Palintir. Turuquar is the metal obsessed Lord who studied the secrets of Ithilmar and was kicked out for it, and also helped construct that showy artifact. Lord Mal helped him on this. Elrithish and Seliph made the Stone Flower.

That's about it for the Grey Lord report.
 
Boney said:
Greatsword, Master: Your foundation of Empire Greatsword and Dwarven Gazulite techniques has been further honed by the research, training, and practice involved in your own invention of an entirely new style. +4 Martial
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
We're doing very, very, very well for ourselves. We might be one of the greatest swordsmen in the history of the colleges.
I do wonder if we'll end up with people seeking to train with us from that fact alone.
Boney said:
In Awe of Mathilde: Every story Eike grew up hearing about Mathilde has convinced her to make the most of the opportunity to learn from her directly. This will be replaced by one of Mathilde's traits at some point during her Apprenticeship.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
We clearly are the Best Auntie 'Tilde ever.
Boney said:
Eike has learned:
Fitness: Beneath her robes lies the muscle of a warrior rather than the soft flesh of a typical wizard. +2 Martial
Greatsword, Advanced (1/3)
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
And Eike is devouring our knowledge like a sponge. She's going to be quite the the sight when she comes home for her evaluation
Boney said:
"Good question," Hatalath says after some thought. "Lord Turuquar can come here."
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Senior Mage GET!
Boney said:
"Those are two different metals," Johann points out.
---
"It's Titan-metal," Johann reports to a reconvened table. "It shows up in Ogre weapons from time to time."

"Samples recovered by Karak Azorn Rangers two thousand years ago confirmed the Titan Holds as the source of the metals, hence the name," Thorek says.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Johann keeps being best metallurgist around. That would've been a mess if we had continued to study the gold without realizing that it's so different.
Boney said:
"No, use the rivers themselves. The..." He frowns, and says a few words in Was Jutonian. "World habit? These are old rivers, there's been constant movement of water along those paths for thousands of years. You sort of," he makes an indecipherable motion with his hands, "tie it onto that."
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Hah! Ingenious. They're using the concept of the river flowing from X to Y to load it up with winds for transport without actually using the river.
Now they just need to build the equivalent of a conceptual net or lightning rod to channel it out from the river at the destination.
 
Glad to see some runic possibilities there. I doubt that the dwarves will want anything that doesn't involve runes at least a bit and this should help them accept whatever ends up being developed.
 
Reader mode
You must login or register to reply here.
Voting is open
Remove ads
Back
Top