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Warhammer Fantasy: Divided Loyalties - an Advisor's Quest

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Khorne claims to care only that the blood flows, but in practice dude is a massive hypocrite who only likes particular ways of making said blood flow.
 
Mathilde opens liminal realm.

Demon snatches Mathilde into liminal realm, closes the door.

Mathilde fights demon, wins, figures out how to open a portal to reality from inside.

Portal goes to a spot determined by dice.

Wacky 'on the road home' adventures ensue.
 
Andrensath said:
Khorne claims to care only that the blood flows, but in practice dude is a massive hypocrite who only likes particular ways of making said blood flow.
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iirc. it's more he wants quantity. the way doesn't actually matter, so long as it doesn't feed slaanesh, it's just certain ways get him more blood (or, to be more accurate, gets him more anger and hate. the blood is just one of those literal-metaphors the warp is so fond of). and so he encourages those specific ones and not others.

he's the blood god yes. but what he really is, that is the emotions that he is mostly formed of, is anger and hate iirc.

Khorne is hate, and spilt blood has very close ties to hate, so that gets him that connection. but also as the cause of hate is so often from betrayal, lies, and a lack of honour (yours or someone elses) he also hates those things more than most other things. he's made of material hate, and the most common things hated are things he too especially hates simply as a matter of his existence.

so, he won't lie to you. and he won't be the first to break a deal. but that doesn't mean he won't fuck you over, he'll just do it to your face.

nurgle also has a conceptual link to something that is usally considered to be his thing, decay, but really he is despair. decay and disease is just very closely linked to it like bloodshed and rage is to eachother.

all the chaos gods feed off of a primary emotion vital to sapient life, and are formed primarily of those emotions. it's why they are so powerful, everything feeds them to some extent. unless, iirc, you have a different god with a relevant enough portfolio run intereference. then you're mostly good for general living.

Hmm, this turned out quite rambly. but i am too tired to bring it into proper Order.
 
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Wiggy said:
Y'know, Tzeench probably gives every everchosen some degree of magic, I'm surprised that's not a dealbreaker for khorne.
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All of the four dislike the other three for one thing or another. The point of the everchosen is that they agree it's more entertaining to let this one guy go all out even if he uses the tools of their rivals.
 
Andrensath said:
If you prefer certain ways of making the blood flow, that is de facto a preference for whence it flows.
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not really, whence just means source. where does the blood come from? and khorns answer is 'preferably everybody' including his own daemons and himself, which is what his daemons are. so, bit redundant.

he doesn't care who bleeds, so long as someone is bleeding.
 
Boney said:
Instead of the expected response from the Library of the Grey College, the first response you get is sealed with a coat of arms you don't recognize, and find within a missive describing a battle in the Furdienst, a wetland of some sort just downstream of Altdorf, where an attempted colonization of it by Fimir was detected and destroyed by the Knights of Judgement with the assistance of a Grey Wizard attaché, without which it would have been impossible as the terrain there is apparently notoriously variable. The only time you've heard of such an order is in the context of the Night of a Thousand Arcane Duels, where it rode through the streets of Altdorf to assist the Grey Order. Learning that they still exist answers one question and raises many more, none of which are answered by the brief missive. Following soon after is a much more prosaic note from the Library confirming that the spell has been judged learnable and useful, and has been added to the corpus of the Grey Order's Battle Magic.
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I am impressed and surprised that someone learned the spell so fast. Did that gray wizard hear about the problem and then speed read his way through the scroll on the way to the battle?
Gavin Prince said:
All of the four dislike the other three for one thing or another. The point of the everchosen is that they agree it's more entertaining to let this one guy go all out even if he uses the tools of their rivals.
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There is a reason that you don't see new everchosen constantly. Getting chosen by all 4 chaos gods often has contradictory requirements and few have what it takes to thread the needle.

I mean there aren't many tricky wizards who prefer to fight in melee do everything to excess and are capable of making and leading diseased undead hordes. ;)
 
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Mopman43 said:
And what about any of that says that it must be because of a broken nexus, and specifically in the Fire Spire?
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Here:

Mopman43 said:
"Nie. Just her. Ice Witches eventually rejoin the winter, but Hag Witches get old quick and some stay old forever. She used to be worse, but still likes to interfere with Ice Witch business." She sighs. "Maybe that's why I was sent. If it was an older Witch, they wouldn't be able to help themselves, would keep trying to out-Witch her." She shrugs. "The leylines in Kislev are Ice Witch business, but anyone with Witchsight can see it and anyone with common sense can guess the rest. Ulthuan knows, Za knows, the Fire Spire knew."

You frown as you consider that. "What happens when one of the four falls?" Praag did during the Great War Against Chaos, and both Erengrad and Kislev City came close.

"That is why Castle Alexandronov was built. There used to be only three, the old cities of Norvard and Dorogo and Srebrograd, but if you have three and lose one it collapses. If you have four, you can lose one and fall back to the others and retake and rebuild later."
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Sorry this took so long, it was really late for me when we talked and I had gone to bed
 
Feim said:
not really, whence just means source. where does the blood come from? and khorns answer is 'preferably everybody' including his own daemons and himself, which is what his daemons are. so, bit redundant.

he doesn't care who bleeds, so long as someone is bleeding.
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He hates magic, which leads into him hating magic users, and he takes steps to make it easier for his followers/daemons to cause the blood of magic users to flow which he does not when it's Brawler McAxe. The preference for how blood flows leads into the preference for who it flows from.
 
DragonParadox said:
Here:



Sorry this took so long, it was really late for me when we talked and I had gone to bed
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It might have been broken, but it should be repaired now. the flow from Kislev went to Praag, and the city is slowly draining of magic.
Also while the Fire Spire may be the obvious magical place, I don't think we've been told the nexus is specifically there. That passage just says the mages of the Fire Spire were able to see and understand the leylines.
 
Gavin Prince said:
The group who actively discuss these things in-thread is a lot smaller than the group who drop in to cast votes and otherwise never talk.
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As a member of the latter group I just gonna say that all the debate is both entertaining and enlightening. Please go on.
The Lone badger said:
I suspect Tzeentch undermines and sabotages the Everchosen anyway.
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Tzeentch undermines and sabotages literally everyone and everything, himself included
 
Tzeentch doesn't have a monopoly on self-sabotage. All of the Four tend more towards 'this is really amusing to me' than 'this is the path to victory'. That is their nature.

I'm sure Khornate cults occasionally implode because they can't keep their swords in their scabbards and they stab each other to death, some Slaaneshi Magi draw excessive attention to their hedonistic or sensual shenanigans and the Witch Hunters get there quickly, and that some Nurglites take in too many diseases and die before managing to actually spread any.
 
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DragonParadox said:
Sorry this took so long, it was really late for me when we talked and I had gone to bed
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While interesting information, that doesn't say anything to indicate that there was a fallen Nexus in the Fire Spire. It might indicate that there was once a Nexus somewhere in Praag, but it seems to be inconclusive on the matter, and I think on the whole I incline against that reading.

The first part you're calling attention to simply indicates that the Fire Spire was aware of the Leylines. Zlata explicitly indicates anyone who has Witchsight can see them and that it's easy to guess the rest of it from seeing them, and goes on to list several other factions we know to not be involved in the management of Kislev's network. It would be more surprising if the Fire Spire didn't know about them.

The second part that you're highlighting does list Praag alongside two locations she mentions as Nexuses (if you dig into the history a bit and find that Norvard is Erengrad and Dorogo is Kislev City). On the other hand, Mathilde could easily just be listing off Kislevarin cities that were lost or came under serious threat without having any idea that two of them happened to be Nexuses until Zlata mentions it, and given that Zlata has to mention it, that even seems likely.

As regards the list itself, it's possible that she's referring to the state of the Kislevarin Network after Praag fell, but given that she says "originally" and then starts listing off names from before Kislev existed as Kislev, that seems unlikely. This is borne out by Praag's history; the fact that Praag has consistently pursued a foreign policy of making itself a cultural institution so that people cared about defending it because it wasn't considered a strategic one doesn't seem to match up with it housing a Nexus. And Srebrograd doesn't seem to have ever been an alternative name for Praag (which appears to have been around as Praag since before Norvard or Dorogo were settled).
 
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Andrensath said:
He hates magic, which leads into him hating magic users, and he takes steps to make it easier for his followers/daemons to cause the blood of magic users to flow which he does not when it's Brawler McAxe. The preference for how blood flows leads into the preference for who it flows from.
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Khornates also have the tradition of trophies. a worthy foe whose skull one offers up to khorne for greater boons. or just to please him.

iirc wizards are not usually considered good trophies. and so many khornates will focus on finding worthy combatants instead of hunting wizards, unless they need to.

so, wizards bleed easier, but khornates won't often pick them for their choice enemy.

they'll kill em if they find em, but they will go out of their way to find Brawler McAxe
 
I had an idea for an Eike study/teaching action. We can teach her to bluff through card games (or other bluffing games like Skull) at the Temple to Ranald the Gambler. When she was introduced she was described as "rather open and expressive about what she thinks" while we (supposedly) have a very good poker face that we have had to use on multiple occasions. This would let us train her diplomacy or intrigue, and possibly reveal her piety through conversation about Ranald. @Boney is this a viable Eike study or teaching action? Or maybe just a possible social action, with no effect on her stats? I am not completely sure if Eike's openness was because she rolled as weak on diplo, so I am not quite sure what this would help her with, if anything.
 
LawsOfRobotics said:
  • edit: @Boney what I am trying to specify with "Eike Study: Intrigue (Red Team against EIC)" is basically what Mathymancer suggested here. Is this a valid Eike study action, and if so, is that a good way to describe it on the turn plan?
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Eike spent a quarter of her life in the beating heart of the EIC, learning everything about it. She knows all the weak points and she knows what's been done to try to defend those weak points. If she puts her mind to trying to come up with plans that will kill it, those plans will kill it. There's limited lessons that can be learned from that sort of slaughter.

I know people are reflexively risk-averse from anything that might endanger what they see as a child, but since she has Aethyric Armour now's the time to start thinking about pointing her at actual threats instead of continuing to play pretend. If she's not blooded under careful supervision now, then it's going to be when she's on her own. If you want her to learn to dismantle, then find something that needs dismantling, point Mathilde or one of her employees at it, and sent Eike along on the adventure.

fictionfan said:
I am impressed and surprised that someone learned the spell so fast. Did that gray wizard hear about the problem and then speed read his way through the scroll on the way to the battle?
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Someone has to learn the spell to confirm that it's a learnable spell. It just so happened that this time the person that volunteered or was assigned the spell just so happened to have an immediate need for it.

LawsOfRobotics said:
I had an idea for an Eike study/teaching action. We can teach her to bluff through card games (or other bluffing games like Skull) at the Temple to Ranald the Gambler. When she was introduced she was described as "rather open and expressive about what she thinks" while we (supposedly) have a very good poker face that we have had to use on multiple occasions. This would let us train her diplomacy or intrigue, and possibly reveal her piety through conversation about Ranald. @Boney is this a viable Eike study or teaching action? Or maybe just a possible social action, with no effect on her stats?
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It's viable as either study or teaching, depending on whether you want Mathilde to just point her at it or to supervise the whole thing.

LawsOfRobotics said:
I am not completely sure if Eike's openness was because she rolled as weak on diplo, so I am not quite sure what this would help her with, if anything.
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From what she's learned about her, Mathilde would guess that Eike's openness isn't the cause of her relative weakness on diplo, but instead a coping mechanism to help mitigate the actual cause. She uses her desire to share her opinions and knowledge as a battering ram to get past the instinct to not draw attention.
 
Eike has Aethyric Armour and we can resurrect her if she dies, so going together to the Silver Road to kill orcs is an idea we can pursue.
 
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Boney said:
Eike spent a quarter of her life in the beating heart of the EIC, learning everything about it. She knows all the weak points and she knows what's been done to try to defend those weak points. If she puts her mind to trying to come up with plans that will kill it, those plans will kill it. There's limited lessons that can be learned from that sort of slaughter.

I know people are reflexively risk-averse from anything that might endanger what they see as a child, but since she has Aethyric Armour now's the time to start thinking about pointing her at actual threats instead of continuing to play pretend. If she's not blooded under careful supervision now, then it's going to be when she's on her own. If you want her to learn to dismantle, then find something that needs dismantling, point Mathilde or one of her employees at it, and sent Eike along on the adventure.
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So... what's an Eike scale threat she can actually be blooded against? It has been a long time since we have actually had to think about things like that...
  • Beastmen, go out into the woods with her and murder a bunch of them, maybe make friends with some Forestborn along the way. I still think we should supervise her. We supervised the Ducklings against skaven the first time
  • Goblins Send her out with some dwarf rangers out of K8P to learn scouting on the side
  • Sundry infiltrators See if the Hochalander can find anything for her to do. There have to be some attempts to mess with the EIC, although not as guaranteed to be anything you would need to get her blooded against in any single two month period
I do not think we should send her against anything subtle like Chaos Cults or vampires for a while yet.
 
Boney said:
I know people are reflexively risk-averse from anything that might endanger what they see as a child, but since she has Aethyric Armour now's the time to start thinking about pointing her at actual threats instead of continuing to play pretend. If she's not blooded under careful supervision now, then it's going to be when she's on her own. If you want her to learn to dismantle, then find something that needs dismantling, point Mathilde or one of her employees at it, and sent Eike along on the adventure.
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Okay, so we should start thinking about taking Eike on a fieldtrip somewhere, like we did the Ducklings. There's threats all over the place, does anyone have any good ideas for what we could hit up?

Maybe bring her along on Apparition hunting? Johann will be there, so it'll be safe-ish.

Andres said:
Eike has Aethyric Armour and we can resurrect her if she dies, so going to the Silver Road to kill orcs is an idea we can pursue.
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Whilst you are not wrong, being resurrected is a traumatic experience, so let's try to avoid needing to do that part.
 
I'd prefer some Skaven infiltration. Maybe we could even end up kidnapping another Skaven and assign Eike to extract information of him just like we did.
 
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