Remove ads

Warhammer Fantasy: Divided Loyalties - an Advisor's Quest

Voted best in category in the Users' Choice awards.
Voting is open
Reader mode
Derpmind said:
It'll take three in-quest years to finish. Not ten.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
It'll take three years to install them. It'll take ten to see results. See quote

EDIT: Okay, bad misremembering of how that section went on my part. Three years, not a decade. That's a more reasonable turnaround time, given we have plans already laid out for 1-2 years.
 
Last edited:
Mopman43 said:
They also have Battle Altars powered by handfuls of powerstones, it's only the oldest Battle Altars that are exclusively fit for Orbs.

The Orb Flex is more about managing something no member of the Colleges ever has than changing the strategic situation on the scale of "turning Battle Altars from irreplaceable to replaceable".
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
All right, so I'm seeing two lines of arguments that are not necessarily shared by everyone on the pro withholding orbs side:

1: Demand for orbs is satisfied and thus they have no immediate use (see Deathbybunnies)
2: Orbs are redundant with powerstone arrays and thus are of limited use. (see quoted post above.)

So, presuming I understand these arguments correctly, to the rest the thread at large:

Both of these are effectively saying that the colleges won't benefit that much from having some earlier, to which I can only say hogwash. The entire premise of the orbflex is that orbs of sorcery are actually a big deal, and the colleges are distinctly uninterested in applications of magic without clear financial or military applications.

Boney has said that magical feats you can use an orb for can also be done with an array of powerstones - this is rather distinct from saying that they can be replicated in the same conditions, or that they do not come with engineering or performance compromises.

And even that is distinct from saying that lives will not be saved by activating another 8 orb of sorcery-powered altars. It is implausible to me that there are not some sitting in storage somewhere ready to go when any of them would be artifacts worthy of study, and likewise implausible that taking their main component from irreplaceable to replaceable would not change the calculus of risk for how they are used...

...not that that calculus would prohibit their use anyways if we accept the idea that they're redundant.

I do not think Mathilde's prestige is worth withholding 8 battlefield-shaping assets from the empire for half a year... nor do I think her prestige would be helped on net by the revelation she did so simply so she could present it in tandem with the book on AV.

Wherever anyone reading this falls on the spectrum of "Asset too valuable to field" and "redundant with powerstone-based equivalents", the orbs are a big deal as a practical matter, not just an academic one. It does not make sense to withhold them.
 
Last edited:
Prime 2.0 said:
All right, so I'm seeing two lines of arguments that are not necessarily shared by everyone on the pro withholding orbs side:

1: Demand for orbs is satisfied and thus they have no immediate use (see Deathbybunnies)
2: Orbs are redundant with powerstone arrays and thus are of limited use. (see quoted post above.)

So, presuming I understand these arguments correctly, to the rest the thread at large:

Both of these are effectively saying that the colleges won't benefit that much from having some earlier, to which I can only say hogwash. The entire premise of the orbflex is that orbs of sorcery are actually a big deal, and the colleges are distinctly uninterested in applications of magic without clear financial or military applications.

Boney has said that magical feats you can use an orb for can also be done with an array of powerstones - this is rather distinct from saying that they can be replicated in the same conditions, or that they do not come with engineering or performance compromises.

And even that is distinct from saying that lives will not be saved by activating another 8 orb of sorcery-powered altars. It is implausible to me that there are not some sitting in storage somewhere ready to go when any of them would be artifacts worthy of study, and likewise implausible that taking their main component from irreplaceable to replaceable would not change the calculus of risk for how they are used...

...not that that calculus would prohibit their use anyways if we accept the idea that they're redundant.

I do not think Mathilde's prestige is worth withholding 8 battlefield-shaping assets from the empire for half a year... nor do I think her prestige would be helped on net by the revelation she did so simply so she could present it in tandem with the book on AV.

Wherever anyone reading this falls on the spectrum of "Asset too valuable to field" and "redundant with powerstone-based equivalents", the orbs are a big deal as a practical matter, not just an academic one. It does not make sense to withhold them.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

We should both make and submit the Orbs next turn. We should also write up our AV book and submit it next turn. Creating the Orbs is a slow process, so we can submit them concurrently without artificially "holding back" anything - just put Max on writing the AV book, or use both a personal and a Serenity action on it.
 
Prime 2.0 said:
All right, so I'm seeing two lines of arguments that are not necessarily shared by everyone on the pro withholding orbs side:

1: Demand for orbs is satisfied and thus they have no immediate use (see Deathbybunnies)
2: Orbs are redundant with powerstone arrays and thus are of limited use. (see quoted post above.)

So, presuming I understand these arguments correctly, to the rest the thread at large:

Both of these are effectively saying that the colleges won't benefit that much from having some earlier, to which I can only say hogwash. The entire premise of the orbflex is that orbs of sorcery are actually a big deal, and the colleges are distinctly uninterested in applications of magic without clear financial or military applications.

Boney has said that magical feats you can use an orb for can also be done with an array of powerstones - this is rather distinct from saying that they can be replicated in the same conditions, or that they do not come with engineering or performance compromises.

And even that is distinct from saying that lives will not be saved by activating another 8 orb of sorcery-powered altars. It is implausible to me that there are not some sitting in storage somewhere ready to go when any of them would be artifacts worthy of study, and likewise implausible that taking their main component from irreplaceable to replaceable would not change the calculus of risk for how they are used...

...not that that calculus would prohibit their use anyways if we accept the idea that they're redundant.

I do not think Mathilde's prestige is worth withholding 8 battlefield-shaping assets from the empire for half a year... nor do I think her prestige would be helped on net by the revelation she did so simply so she could present it in tandem with the book on AV.

Wherever anyone reading this falls on the spectrum of "Asset too valuable to field" and "redundant with powerstone-based equivalents", the orbs are a big deal as a practical matter, not just an academic one. It does not make sense to withhold them.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Counter point. This is a quest to have fun in. And dropping everything at once seems like absolutely the most fun to have (to me).

My measurement for having to drop the orbs asap is a pressing need for their fielding. This need has not been demonstrated through any threat we know off. Would it be more useful to have them 6 months early? Probably but the payout isn't big enough to actually stress about it.

(The empire is actually in a pretty stable position as far as actual military conflict is concerned, right now. )
 
Prime 2.0 said:
All right, so I'm seeing two lines of arguments that are not necessarily shared by everyone on the pro withholding orbs side:

1: Demand for orbs is satisfied and thus they have no immediate use (see Deathbybunnies)
2: Orbs are redundant with powerstone arrays and thus are of limited use. (see quoted post above.)

So, presuming I understand these arguments correctly, to the rest the thread at large:

Both of these are effectively saying that the colleges won't benefit that much from having some earlier, to which I can only say hogwash. The entire premise of the orbflex is that orbs of sorcery are actually a big deal, and the colleges are distinctly uninterested in applications of magic without clear financial or military applications.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
The point isn't that they aren't valuable, it's that they aren't in active use except when the Empire is having critical, large-scale battles, the kind you muster the militaries of multiple entire provinces for, and not the constant low-level fighting going on everywhere.

We marched on Sylvania and destroyed Castle Drachenhof without a single one of these showing up. Not even the more modern ones, that use regular powerstones! I don't think the Empire's fought a larger battle in the entire history of the quest since!

I promise that if EverchosenBowl kicks off in exactly that 6-month period, we'll happily vote to bring the Orbs in early - and we'll have time to do so, because major military campaigns require some logistical run-up, even when it's an emergency. Mathilde can bring the Orbs then if required. Otherwise, they will straight-up not be used in those 6 months.
 
Deathbybunnies said:
I don't think the Empire's fought a larger battle in the entire history of the quest since!
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
The main contenders I can think of are Middenland and Laurelorn teaming up against Khazrak's Warhorde, the trouble Ostland had with the Yhetees, and the two invasions into Skaven undercities in Ubersreik and Nuln.

Though the 1st one was fairly sudden, 2nd was probably more of a dispersed extermination campaign than a battle, and the last two were underground.
 
By the time we learn about whatever is marching towards the empire, lot of plans will already have been made.
Colleges having, and knowing about, extra set of orbs of sorcery would potentially change those plans, and give more time to get ready.

That said, i don't think there is any real odds anything that bad will happen in the next year or so in quest so it's not terrible if we decide to wait a turn and do a mega drop with orbs + book in one go.
 
Last edited:
Mopman43 said:
The main contenders I can think of are Middenland and Laurelorn teaming up against Khazrak's Warhorde, the trouble Ostland had with the Yhetees, and the two invasions into Skaven undercities in Ubersreik and Nuln.

Though the 1st one was fairly sudden, 2nd was probably more of a dispersed extermination campaign than a battle, and the last two were underground.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
That's fair. The skaven undercities had the P/Matriarchs helping out too, so it's not infeasible that they brought out some of the modern battle altars. I'd bet a great deal that they didn't bring out all of the altars fuelled by regular powerstones, though.

If I'm wrong about that - I don't think I am, but it's certainly possible - that'd be, like, one turn in the entire quest thus far where having more Orbs available might have changed deployment decisions. And if another 1/42 chance (again, assuming they did deploy every modern battle altar, which I doubt) arrives, then Mathilde can drop the Orbs early, during the turn.
Because if they have time to plan and break out the Altars, Mathilde "Adela, fly me across the map" Weber can bring them some more Orbs in plenty of time. Logistics takes time.

We'd be compromising our Gigaflex on a shadow of a shadow of something not actually going wrong.
 
Last edited:
I guess the advantage of putting Max on a writing action is that it maxes (*fingerguns*) our book quality, with the disadvantage being that it slightly reduces our flex credit of having just our name on the book. Even though it doesn't detract from our CF income, because he's our employee, he's still credited if he did the writing, as looking over our publication history readily shows.

...that said, it occurs to me that the ship may have already sailed when it comes to lone authorship. Boney, when you have the chance: if Mathilde were writing the book right now, with only the experiments we've already done before this turn, what names would be on it? My prediction is two: hers and Thorek's, because we'd be writing up the Anvil of Doom results that we found with his assistance.

If that's the case, then probably having Max be credited for the writing doesn't compromise our smugness: the jump from two authors to three authors is smaller, both literally and metaphorically, than the jump from sole authorship to dual. And there's definitely an argument to be made that the gain in smugness from writing it ourself is not worth the reduction in smugness by having it be lower-quality.

(I will point out, though, that for proponents, not just of the AV gigaflex, but of the Maximum Overflex wherein we also prototype Waystones on the same turn as we do our other absurd bullshit, that depending on how Foundations goes this turn, even if "successful" there's a chance that success unlocks a Foundations prototyping action we have to take before we can take the Waystone action, the way that Tributary Study and Tributary Prototyping were distinct actions. So possibly we'd be able to drop the Waystone no sooner than T44.)
 
Redshirt Army said:
It would take ten wizard-years of effort to build them.

We put three Journeyman Wizards on the case, so it'll be done in three and a third years.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

Agreed.

We don't really have any guesses on how long it will take to show results though- tributaries are the slow and simple way to bulk up the network, so if there's enough built up Dhar it might take a decade to reduce it enough for people to see appreciable impacts.

Might be worth trying to get someone to track things after the journeymen pass through?

Tobtorp said:
(The empire is actually in a pretty stable position as far as actual military conflict is concerned, right now. )
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

And this delicate and desirable state of affairs is antithetical to the whi
Ole Warhammer world's premise, so let's savor it while it lasts.
 
Last edited:
Having Thorek, the second greatest Runelord alive, beside our name in a research paper, would not really reduce credit in my opinion.
At that level, i would expect that to have convinced a runelord of that magnitide to work with us, and give us access, no matter how controlled or brief, to an Anvil of Doom, would enhance our prestige, not reduce it.

Max, as great as he is, is not at that level.
 
If there was a true emergency, we could do better than dropping one set of Orbs. We have 20 gallons currently, while a single set each set only takes 8 gallons. If there was a Chaos army on the march or similar, we could easily requisition as many powerstones as we have AV gallons left more powerstones and give the Colleges about 20 16 new orbs.... rather rapidly? A quick check shows making the Orbs may only take "a number of days" which doesn't specify how many days. But in keeping with our AP system I'd put it as taking no more than a month. And 20 16 is a lot more Orbs than just 8. Edit:
Boney said:
Over a number of days, eight power stones plus eight gallons of Vitae should result in something the Colleges thought impossible: the creation of entirely new Orbs of Sorcery.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
 
Last edited:
Valmond said:
Having Thorek, the second greatest Runelord alive, beside our name in a research paper, would not really reduce credit in my opinion.
At that level, i would expect that to have convinced a runelord of that magnitide to work with us, and give us access, no matter how controlled or brief, to an Anvil of Doom, would enhance our prestige, not reduce it.

Max, as great as he is, is not at that level.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

Sure, but what we lose in sharing credit, we make up for by having the AV Book be better written and take fewer actions.
 
Tobtorp said:
Counter point. This is a quest to have fun in. And dropping everything at once seems like absolutely the most fun to have (to me).

My measurement for having to drop the orbs asap is a pressing need for their fielding. This need has not been demonstrated through any threat we know off. Would it be more useful to have them 6 months early? Probably but the payout isn't big enough to actually stress about it.

(The empire is actually in a pretty stable position as far as actual military conflict is concerned, right now. )
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
To add to this, I want to drop orbs and book on T44 for 2 fun related reasons. One is that we can drop them and then leave before questions. The second is that if we wait for T44 we can drop them on 2 gifts day.

I am not that concerned about dropping orbs ASAP because I agree that in most situations we could bring them via gyrocopter and even that need is unlikely. Meanwhile max orbflex is something we can only do once.
 
Personally I'm ok with max writing the damn thing. Iirc boney did specify that the way max gets credited for the books he writes for us makes it clear he only did transcription and doesn't diminish the sheer awesomeness we achieved.

Also yes, Thorek is definitely not a detractor to the credit...
 
Last edited:
Derpmind said:
If there was a true emergency, we could do better than dropping one set of Orbs. We have 20 gallons currently, while a single set only takes 8 gallons. If there was a Chaos army on the march or similar, we could easily requisition as many powerstones as we have AV gallons left and give the Colleges about 20 new orbs.... rather rapidly? A quick check shows making the Orbs may only take "a number of days" which doesn't specify how many days. But in keeping with our AP system I'd put it as taking no more than a month. And 20 is a lot more Orbs than just 8. Edit:
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
We can only do it in multiples of 8.

Mathilde calculated 8 gallons worth to make 8 Orbs, but you can't make 4 orbs with 4 gallons because each gallon of AV is made up of an equal ratio of Winds (or proto-Winds)
 
Redshirt Army said:
Sure, but what we lose in sharing credit, we make up for by having the AV Book be better written and take fewer actions.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
I don't actually care if we share credit with Max or not.
Just making a point about how having extra name on a paper is not necessarily a demerit, if it is the right name.
Like, if we somehow manage to wrangle Teclis into co authoring a paper during elfcation, nobody will care that we did not write it solo.
 
picklepikkl said:
If that's the case, then probably having Max be credited for the writing doesn't compromise our smugness: the jump from two authors to three authors is smaller, both literally and metaphorically, than the jump from sole authorship to dual.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

On the flip side Thorek's contribution can be very specifically delineated in the text - he's the Runelord that only worked on Rune stuff as is right and proper.

With Max the boundaries of his contribution won't be so clear (narratively speaking).


Valmond said:
Like, if we somehow manage to wrangle Teclis into co authoring a paper during elfcation, nobody will care that we did not write it solo.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

It depends if it is the right paper.

If Mathilde collaborated on the Orbs with Teclis then they'd be a lot less impressive than if she makes them solo.
 
Zero Gravitas said:
It depends if it is the right paper.

If Mathilde collaborated on the Orbs with Teclis then they'd be a lot less impressive than if she makes them solo.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
We manage to collaborate with Teclis, nobody will give a fuck that we did not do it solo.
Because at that point the subject is irrelevant next to the fact that we collaborated with Teclis.
The whole "managed to wrangle some knowledge out efldad" would make Mathilde possibly most famous and celebrated imperial magister alive.
 
Valmond said:
We manage to collaborate with Teclis, nobody will give a fuck that we did not do it solo.
Because at that point the subject is irrelevant next to the fact that we collaborated with Teclis.
The whole "managed to wrangle some knowledge out efldad" would make Mathilde possibly most famous and celebrated imperial magister alive.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Would it? I think it would be 15 minutes of fame at best.

Altough it begs to question of what has Teclis been doing since he left the Empire anyway.
 
Tasoli said:
Would it? I think it would be 15 minutes of fame at best.

Altough it begs to question of what has Teclis been doing since he left the Empire anyway.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
He was made the High Loremaster of the White Tower of Hoeth.

Probably a lot of it is rather similar to what Dragomas does, just he's speaking Eltharin while he's doing it rather than Reikspiel.
 
Reader mode
You must login or register to reply here.
Voting is open
Remove ads
Back
Top