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Warhammer Fantasy: Divided Loyalties - an Advisor's Quest

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DragonParadox said:
I would not trust an elementalist with knowledge of the stuff, though the point it moot as they would run screaming from Mathilde before she could open her mouth.
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No they wouldn't? Running away screaming doesn't make the Grey Wizard go away. It makes them annoyed they have to chase you down.

Tobtorp said:
We might not even need an elementalist. What we need is an apprentice with windsight but without much casting having been done.
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How would such an apprentice know what it is that they have to look out for? Until Mathilde got the entire corpus of the Elementalist library, nobody in the colleges could tell what the hell they were doing.
 
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DragonParadox said:
You do and you get to vote on that opinion, indeed you do not have to justify your vote at all, you can just vote. When it comes to persuading other people what I am pointing out is that said opinion is based on your judgement of how actual other people wold have voted which is in my opinion a lot more iffy than anything diegetic since people are complicated. I am not telling you that you are not entitled to your own oppinion and apologies if it came out that way, I am pointing out to other voters using myself as an example why I do not think that is a strong argument.
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I mean, you pointed out, at length, something I had already implicitly acknowledged in my original post.

Then you pointed it out again once I explicitly acknowledged it.

So I'm not sure I actually understand your concerns? It feels like I'm missing a thing and getting frustrated by it.
 
Gavin Prince said:
Well, let's go ahead and assume that playing hide-and-seek with AV is a given, because there's never a box too small to be left unticked in this tech tree before the book can be written.

Is it worth spending some funds to hire an elementalist to oversee the action? The nature of AV beyond "undifferentiated warpstuff we got from SOMEWHERE" doesn't have to be revealed, but an expert opinion would maximise the possibility of getting something workable out of this very marginal use of an AP.
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Assuming we do take that route, I'd support hiring an elementalist; that might also give us someone with whom we could co-write a paper on the interactions between Wind use and Elementalism, which I know there's been interest in. Maybe even (in the very long term) lead in to convincing them to set up a branch college in Karak Eight-Peaks for the same reason as the Halflings and the Gunnery School.
 
Gavin Prince said:
Even with the best possible result from the hide-and-seek AV action—that in Mathilde's absence it takes on the qualities of whatever it's splashed on—what do we...do with that, given the effect would fade as soon as Mathilde walked back in, so it's of no personal use? At best it makes it appealing to the Elementalists. Do we particularly need anything from the elementalists that we'd give up gallons of AV for, now that we've already got their library?
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Well, given what we know so far about how the Aetheric Vitae acts when it explodes with no outside mystical influence, we'd presumably make TARDIS'es :V

More seriously, the core idea for that action sounds as much like the initial research action on AV as anything: Spending a month finding not only the point of removal from magical influence where the Aetheric Vitae explodes into spacetime, but also and all possible points between that event and the point where it explodes into the winds. Basically making a phase diagram.



But, you know, with magic. Learning at which point it explodes into Sevir, which point it explodes into reality, and what happens right on the edge of both.

Personally, even as someone who'd vote for it, I'm happy leaving that line of inquiry for a sequel to this line of research and the Tome of Aetheric Vitae.

The actions we have now seem like a natural cutoff point and seem thematically resonant with an arc investigating the primordial winds in general.
 
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As the person who thought up the idea of av and elementalists principal I think I'll publicly state that I have no problem leaving this specific detail on the road. It's very insignificant and can be done by someone who cares...
 
Tobtorp said:
He wouldn't, but we could have him record what happens when Mathilde leaves and comes back. What the "difference" is so to speak.
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The idea that an untrained apprentice from the Colleges would be better than a trained Elementalist in the latter's field of expertise is the kind of arrogance that ensured the Colleges still don't really know what the Elementalists are doing even after checking their work for centuries.
 
Gavin Prince said:
The idea that an untrained apprentice from the Colleges would be better than a trained Elementalist in the latter's field of expertise is the kind of arrogance that ensured the Colleges still don't really know what the Elementalists are doing even after checking their work for centuries.
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But do we care enough about what the elementalists are doing now that we know it's completely incompatible with the colleges? We can never learn their way of casting and it falls apart if we sneeze too hard so who cares!
 
Glau said:
I mean, you pointed out, at length, something I had already implicitly acknowledged in my original post.

Then you pointed it out again once I explicitly acknowledged it.

So I'm not sure I actually understand your concerns? It feels like I'm missing a thing and getting frustrated by it.
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The last post was literally me explaining that I think you are entitled to your opinion and apologizing for any mistaken impression I may have given in that regard while at the same time making the distinction of why I do not think it is that well founded (again). The reason I made it was because your last post gave the impression such an apology and clarification was required.
 
DragonParadox said:
I would not trust an elementalist with knowledge of the stuff, though the point it moot as they would run screaming from Mathilde before she could open her mouth.
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Between our Shadowsteed and Aethyric Armour we can outpace and outlast them.

Deathbybunnies said:
This is an extremely profound truth about magic in this setting. An assumption underpinning everything we'd known about magic up until this point, that the winds are fundamentally borne of Chaos and are ultimately beholden to it, was disproven. This is an extraordinary discovery, an insight into the deepest cosmology of the setting that we might not have used yet, but that I fully expect to be critical in some future Deep Magics.
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The AV book plus the Orbs will be an immense contribution to the Colleges both in practical terms and in theoretical advancement.

Coupled with the Waystone research and well... it is hard to beat Volans in terms of overall impact but we'd be getting mighty close.
 
DragonParadox said:
The last post was literally me explaining that I think you are entitled to your opinion and apologizing for any mistaken impression I may have given in that regard while at the same time making the distinction of why I do not think it is that well founded (again). The reason I made it was because your last post gave the impression such an apology and clarification was required.
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My bad then, please accept my apology for stringing this out.
 
Tobtorp said:
But do we care enough about what the elementalists are doing now that we know it's completely incompatible with the colleges? We can never learn their way of casting and it falls apart if we sneeze too hard so who cares!
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If we don't care about Earthbound Magics, then we don't take the AV+Earthbound Magics action. I'd be perfectly happy with that; I mostly just want to see the questline tied off at this point.

If we do care about that interaction, getting the foremost expert from the College dedicated to the subject to check our work rather than Wolfgang, the Averlander Amber College apprentice who four months ago had been a cowherd before his Windsight manifested, seems sensible.
 
Could be that AV in Mathilde's or a Wizard's presence strips it of any nature it might have retained from being Wisdom's Asp blood. AV when in the presence of Wizards, Wisdom's Asp blood when in the presence of non-wizards.
 
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Ideally I think we could show the AV to Hatalath, although that feels like it'd be more "see what the Grey Lords give us for AV", so what about showing it to Sarvoi? He's an expert in elven magical theory and his presence shouldn't alter the AV (as he doesn't stuff his soul with Ulgu or other winds), finally Mathilde had already worked with him so she should have a measure of how trustworthy he is.
 
Gavin Prince said:
The idea that an untrained apprentice from the Colleges would be better than a trained Elementalist in the latter's field of expertise is the kind of arrogance that ensured the Colleges still don't really know what the Elementalists are doing even after checking their work for centuries.
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Small correction here, it is not centuries, it's about 70 years. The colleges themselves have only existed for 180 years.
 
Zero Gravitas said:
Pretty sure it remained AV in Thorek's presence and he's about the furthest one can get from a wizard - besides Kragg.
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Could be that AV and Wisdom's Asp blood share many qualities such as turning into Winds when disrupted. What would really show if there's any differences is if Wisdom's Asp blood shows special qualities when it interacts with mirrors and AV does not.
 
Jyn Ryvia said:
I consider everything past Orbs and realms to be 'advanced study' and can be done by us or someone else after we publish the AV book.
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>>.>>

Honestly, a big part of me just wants to see what Gold Magister Maximilian "I love non-magical materials analysis" de Gaynesford makes of it. I've wanted to see what he'd think of the Aetheric Vitae for a while, and actions that come up after we finally publish mean it's no longer our baby. Especially an action as far into his wheelhouse as this.
 
If it's still open past elfcation, I gotta say going High Priest of Ranald in Kislev would help a lot with diplo here in Nordland/Middenheim with respect to religion, as we get to go to the Grand Conclave (yes, even though we are technically Kislev's high priest of Ranald, we still get to go, it was specified in the option way back when). We'd have major pull with both the Ulricans and the Sigmarites (from our 'technically being a dwarf' and 'retook two Karags, what have you done?' getting shoved down their throat at every opportunity). We also get along decently with the Taalites as well.

We could use this to try to rein in the coming split in the Ulrican faith by ensuring that it doesn't end up with the Elves in the middle of the problem, and that the Sigmarites aren't causing this problem. Especially given that the elves are technically coreligionists with Loec.

In addition, we could use our diplo to get the hedgewise more of an exemption as technically priests.

As for if the position is open, I really don't know. I know we are the worlds most publicly open Ranaldite, given the Dwarf announcement, so while we wouldn't lose much to being a high priest, I'd guess a lot of other possible high priests would (like Heidi). From that logic, it might still be open? I really don't know.
 
While I've seen some arguments against the Ilithmar action dismissing it as just giving us more work, I'd like to counter and say that the purpose of money, in general, is to solve problems rather than make them. We are under no obligation to spend that money to increase our backlog, and may in fact choose to spend that money instead to do things that would otherwise take more time and resources.

For example - many college services can be purchased with gold instead of CF, including classes for Eike. For another, there has been some rumblings about attempting to secure a nexus in otherwise hostile territory. Might be easier with some mercenaries! Elsewhere, time and time again, we find ourselves stretched thin trying to decide what books to buy. Would be cool to just drop some fat stacks on declaring "all of the above", certainly.

Meanwhile, our having broken the Dawi favor system has been some ups and downs, hasn't it? Some things we can just get for free if it's in their interest, but a lot of others we need a boon or AV for where some plentiful favor expenditure could have done before - certainly if those things are mostly for our own personal interest. But could we perhaps use our status to get in the door, and then compensate Dawi workers and craftsman for personal projects the old fashioned way, with a sack of gold at "friend of the dwarves" discount rate?

...well not if we don't have the cash we can't. I think Eike could use some top shelf personal safety equipment, don't you? Whether that's a cool belt or a cooler gun, well, who knows what's possible!
 
Abhorsen said:
If it's still open past elfcation, I gotta say going High Priest of Ranald in Kislev would help a lot with diplo here in Nordland/Middenheim with respect to religion, as we get to go to the Grand Conclave (yes, even though we are technically Kislev's high priest of Ranald, we still get to go, it was specified in the option way back when). We'd have major pull with both the Ulricans and the Sigmarites (from our 'technically being a dwarf' and 'retook two Karags, what have you done?' getting shoved down their throat at every opportunity). We also get along decently with the Taalites as well.

We could use this to try to rein in the coming split in the Ulrican faith by ensuring that it doesn't end up with the Elves in the middle of the problem, and that the Sigmarites aren't causing this problem. Especially given that the elves are technically coreligionists with Loec.

In addition, we could use our diplo to get the hedgewise more of an exemption as technically priests.

As for if the position is open, I really don't know. I know we are the worlds most publicly open Ranaldite, given the Dwarf announcement, so while we wouldn't lose much to being a high priest, I'd guess a lot of other possible high priests would (like Heidi). From that logic, it might still be open? I really don't know.
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I feel it'd have to be after the Waystone Project ends.

That said personally I'd like Mathilde to take some sabbatical. Right now we have a magical institute for research and a library so I'd like for Mathilde to focus on what she had instead of working under another employer.
 
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