Yeah, if we can avoid a bowl of petunias moment, that'll be great.
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.
Yeah, if we can avoid a bowl of petunias moment, that'll be great.
Just imagine the research opportunities if we could figure out why Mathilde thought "not again!" After Transformation!
Yeah, but at the same time the thread did show it to Thorek. So maybe something similar for an elf (or maybe a Grey Lord directly) to see what they can give us for it.
Plus their contributions about how it can be used and its nature could be interesting.
Possible but I think it's also partially that when a dwarf tells you he will keep it a secret you can trust that promise pretty implicitly. If a elf told us that I'd be more cautious.
If people are aiming to do the mist road next turn, could I interest anyone in also making a push to translate the notes on the Von Carestein ring?
Both of these are significant enchanting actions, and so I feel like there is a certain synergy that might help us advance our knowledge in the area significantly - Especially helpful if we intend to make a Staff with Drycha's legs at some point.
As a bonus more nehkaran language familiarity might make a slightly better coin book at the end of that chain for those who are wanting to do that down the line.
Both of these are significant enchanting actions, and so I feel like there is a certain synergy that might help us advance our knowledge in the area significantly - Especially helpful if we intend to make a Staff with Drycha's legs at some point.
As a bonus more nehkaran language familiarity might make a slightly better coin book at the end of that chain for those who are wanting to do that down the line.
Mopman43
Mountain-Hermit of Nitpeak
- Location
- Vermont
That'd require sharing the notes with the translator.
When possession of the notes is probably a burnable offense.
Either we learn High Nehekharan or I don't think we're reading it.
We need to know nehekaran or buy translation guides for the ring. Both things that either take a extra action (learning the language) or have downsides (using only books to translate might lead to wrong conclusions through sloppy translations.)
So it's more like 2 AP which is generally a harder sell. Though we have been talking about languages more recently.
I think it makes more sense if AV is purely undifferentiated magic. We know it converts in the presence of differentiated magic to match that magic and that's true for non wind magic.
- Location
- Outside the Box
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Curiously enough, the only thing that went through the mind of Dr. Gordon Freeman as he grabbed his crowbar was "Oh no, not again."
Sure but at the same time I don't think they'd have a reason to share it since there would be nothing for them to gain and if we discover it then we can just say we aren't going to give any to them.
Besides we're planning on writing a book about it so I don't it'd matter that much.
Maybe we could try to learn High Nehekaran as part of a WEBMAT action with the compromise of putting it to use next turn by going to map the Nehekaran Network (so kind of important to understand old magical writings there and if we have to talk to any Tomb King.).
Parabola
Divided Loyalties Librarian
- Location
- The Destination of Fate
- Pronouns
- She/Her
IIRC Boney did say we could split the actions between learning spoken and written Nehekharan, rather than learning bits of both at the same time.
So we could... Do a personal action to learn written Nehekharan, then learn spoken Nehekharan as a WEB-MAT action with Egrimm, in preparation for asking about Nehekhara's network the next turn.
But that would probably be quite some time into the future. I would really rather finish AV, and we already have people pushing to start on the Apparition-binding initiative.
Besides, we have no books on Nehekhara's culture, gods or geography, or have explored the other networks of the Project's members.
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- Location
- Chicago
- Pronouns
- She/They
Wondering if there's anyone who would be pushed into being hostile to us with the revelation that we are eternally torturing a wisdom's asp to not-quite-death in order to source reagents for our magical experiments.
Seems like the kind of thing most SV questors would try to kill Mathilde over if she was an NPC and they thought the asp was or could be sentient. There might be characters or there in the world who feel the same way.
Seems like the kind of thing most SV questors would try to kill Mathilde over if she was an NPC and they thought the asp was or could be sentient. There might be characters or there in the world who feel the same way.
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- Pronouns
- He
Shallayans, maybe? They're either non-violent or focused on other things, though.
Or maybe one of those artist-cults Abelhelm mentioned, though the Asps are just as likely to eat them as anything else. People just aren't concerned much with the suffering of animals, much less never-born beasts from the Warp.
- Location
- New Brunswick, NJ
- Pronouns
- He/Him/His
Me: Hmmm, I reflexively have a negative reaction to this line of discussion. Is it because I think it's definitely wrong, or because my self-image as a moral actor is threatened by the implication that I'm OK with torture under some circumstances? Even if the Thorned One isn't sapient, surely this is at least analogous to animal cruelty, which brings up interesting moral questions about under what circumstances it is permissible for the suffering of an animal to be tolerated on consequentialist grounds, a subject on which I know I occupy a fairly extreme stance but which other people whose moral intuitions I respect hold the opposite stance on. Are we playing with the devil's toys and being brought by degrees to wield his sword? In any event, I should make sure to treat this topic with the gravity it deserves.
Also me: The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelasp
Probably not, or at least not for torturing the pseudo-daemons, more for having anything to do with it. Though most of those who would have the power and the inclination to do so (Sigmarites) would be stumped by 'dwarfs are cool with it'. This is the empire, the Scrolls of Kadon are a thing and SV would have way more of a problem with enslaved dragons.
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Nah. The Asp is a murderous Warp apparition - they rank well below greenskins, skaven and beastmen (which the Empire is fine having a default kill on sight policy for).
Some Shallayans might be technically against the Asp's treatment out of principle; but there's so many unknowns (are Asps sapient? do they feel pain?) and esoteric stuff in the situation (does the Asp feel anything in its Schrodinger like state?) that I suspect they'd just peg the whole situation as a weird magic thing.
Parabola
Divided Loyalties Librarian
- Location
- The Destination of Fate
- Pronouns
- She/Her
This is rather unrelated, but I'm inevitably reminded of how The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas very arguably isn't a story about a city whose happiness depends on one person's abject misery, but a story about how readers can't seem to accept that there can be happiness without misery and the suffering of someone else, some great evil to point to.
And after the description of the child in misery:
It is a great irony and perhaps even injustice that Omelas is thus remembered more as an archetypal 'shining city with a dark secret' than it is a general commentary on the idea of people needing a scapegoat to justify happiness being credible.
With the knowledge that Earthbound magic inherits a nature from the material it resides within, AV retaining a memory of what it's bled from doesn't seem that dubious. Obviously there is a difference between AV and Earthbound magic and just because that's how Earthbound magic works, it doesn't mean AV works the same way.
With that said, a possible test would be to bring AV up to a mirror and push it through, either physically or 'willfully'. If AV retains a memory of the nature of a Wisdom's Asp then it should become apparent when involving mirrors. Of course with a positive result Mathilde would have to acquire AV from something else and perform this mirror test just to be sure it's AV from a Wisdom's Asp and not just a property AV has.
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- Location
- Actually pretty lost
I could talk about warp entities as being portrayed as p-zombies in several works, but I think we've had this discussion and Boney's asked it not be brought up on the past.
- Location
- Canada
Most people in universe would sooner be troubled by the idea of Mathilde messing with a Warp entity on the account of the Asp's "Not a Daemon I swear" status, than the fact it's trapped in mirror snake hell
... For the record there is actual weight to the position that Apparitions are not Daemons, due to evidence such as
But it's still an edge case
And it's not recommended to bring the matter up to Witch Hunters on account of it being hard to sit down and explain it all before they start stacking firewood around you
Both in and out of Universe it's an open question whether Apparitions are even sentient, and thus capable of suffering
They're theorized to be mere myths and legends that circulate amongst spellcasters, fears and boogeymen given life by the caster
Which is why the same type of apparition can vary greatly depending on the person perceiving it, and why often it seems like only the victim can perceive them at all, because they are literally just what the caster expects to see and nothing else
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Mopman43
Mountain-Hermit of Nitpeak
- Location
- Vermont
Huh, in a sense Apparition-based magics are literally caging your nightmares and throwing them at your foes.
Or, given that you can't bind one that hunts your magic, caging somebody else's nightmares.
- Location
- Chicago
- Pronouns
- She/They
I always read it as a reductio ad absurdum of most economic systems, and a sub-rosa endorsement of socialism.
If we accept that it is uncomfortable that some people suffer so we can live in comfort, can we make it more acceptable if it's reduced to only one person suffering for *everyone* else's sake?
Options are to accept suffering, or to work towards a system where no one suffers. One is considered callous, the other naively delusional. But the idea that there's a third option, which lets us be good people without changing the system, is called out for the lie it is.
No ethical consumption under capitalism and all that.
I think the in-universe equivalent would be 'no magic without use of demonic powers'.
- Location
- Hiding in the walls.
- Pronouns
- She/Her
I've been agitating for us to get Eike out there under controlled conditions, at least; I think some other people were also on board with that?
On that note - the spellbook describes Shadow Magics as "The true arts of Ulgu, not taught until one becomes a Journey(wo)man."
Is that a formal policy of the college, or just the standard progression due to the average magic stats of an apprentice, which has since become a cultural norm? Purely with regards to her skill at manipulating Ulgu, Eike is at the point where we could start teaching her Relatively Simple spells already, and is going to be at the point where she can reliably cast Relatively Simple and it's reasonable for her to start in on Moderately Complex soon, so it seems like something to check.
Given the discussion on the nature of apparition binding there's potentially an argument to be made that it's not analogous; apparitions seem to function more like very complicated programming structures rather than beings with internality, and while I'd be skeptical of that information if we'd gotten it from an IC perspective (it's literally an argument that was advanced for why animal cruelty was okay in the real world), I'm okay with taking it as factual since we got it OOC.
My understanding was that was specifically in regards to "Is apparition binding slavery?", but I readily admit that I could be wrong in that regard.