Mopman43
Mountain-Hermit of Nitpeak
- Location
- Vermont
Though I imagine the Elves probably don't keep apparitions in jars, specifically.
Warhammer Fantasy: Divided Loyalties - an Advisor's Quest
- Thread starter Boney
- Start date
- Fantasy Users' Choice!
-
- Tags
- warhammer warhammer fantasy fantasy be gay do crimes (gay) female protagonist pansexual protagonist ck2 quest divided loyalties mountain vietnam ranald is real this is a dwarf quest (dwarfs) this is maybe an elf quest this is not a vampire quest this is not an empire quest try it and find out open voting
Voted best in category in the Users' Choice awards.
The empire tribes did it with the "Luigi wins by doing absolutly nothing" method, which is also not very impressive.
- Location
- Hiding in the walls.
- Pronouns
- She/Her
It's also possible that Elf!Gehenna was just batshit insane by Asur standards. Humans tend to take what the Asur would consider dangerous shortcuts and may have some degree of biological difference in outlook, but the Asur have been at this long enough to produce some people who deviate from the orthodoxy in that regard.
- Pronouns
- He/Him
I mean, if the WHFB rules are anything to go by, Gehenna's Golden Hounds (and the other apparition-based spells) are as common among Elven Battle Mages as any other spells of the Wind in question. So the creator being odd, while possible, doesn't in and of itself explain or justify how common the spell is among them.
- Location
- A Pit Of My Own Making
- Pronouns
- He/Him
You've captured the spirit of the quest very well
- Location
- being near locations is my passion.
Assuming that we do well with the Visual Servioscope this turn - and we put choose Max on the AV book next turn, then I also want to work with Egrimm on the Auditory Servioscope as part of WEB-MAT, as the auditory method was his idea and it'd have a significant impact on the Empire if it turns out good.
----
Boney, I'm not asking to try and get a game-mechanical bonus, but is there any way narratively we could tap Adela's engineering skills for the Auditory Servioscope as part of the action?
Here's the wonky thing though [I feel this question might be 'how do hoomans work' more than a game thing]: I'd like to have her name on the project, but... is there any way to bring her in from the start that doesn't carry the implication to Egrimm that Mathilde thinks that the two of them can't do it?
[The rebuttal being that while Egrimm and Mathilde are smart and could probably come up with something workable/good, Adela is an engineer and has a lot more direct experience with pipes and moving parts and is highly likely to help them come up with something better].
----
Game-mechanically, if we do decide to bring her into the action, either from the start or for a second attempt if Egrimm and Mathilde roll poorly, would we:
1. pay her with College Favour for that action like hiring an external college wizard, and still have it count as 'WEB-MAT' for AP purposes?
2. offer her shared credit for the design and follow-up papers, i.e. she gets a 'cut' of the College Favour that would be generated, and still have it count as 'WEB-MAT' for AP purposes?
I know I posed the above as 'how would we pay her', but I really want to know the optimal way of having her name on the project as the engineering-design-person [and still have it count as 'WEB-MAT' for AP purposes
]
----
Boney, I'm not asking to try and get a game-mechanical bonus, but is there any way narratively we could tap Adela's engineering skills for the Auditory Servioscope as part of the action?
Here's the wonky thing though [I feel this question might be 'how do hoomans work' more than a game thing]: I'd like to have her name on the project, but... is there any way to bring her in from the start that doesn't carry the implication to Egrimm that Mathilde thinks that the two of them can't do it?
[The rebuttal being that while Egrimm and Mathilde are smart and could probably come up with something workable/good, Adela is an engineer and has a lot more direct experience with pipes and moving parts and is highly likely to help them come up with something better].
----
Game-mechanically, if we do decide to bring her into the action, either from the start or for a second attempt if Egrimm and Mathilde roll poorly, would we:
1. pay her with College Favour for that action like hiring an external college wizard, and still have it count as 'WEB-MAT' for AP purposes?
2. offer her shared credit for the design and follow-up papers, i.e. she gets a 'cut' of the College Favour that would be generated, and still have it count as 'WEB-MAT' for AP purposes?
I know I posed the above as 'how would we pay her', but I really want to know the optimal way of having her name on the project as the engineering-design-person [and still have it count as 'WEB-MAT' for AP purposes
]
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Mopman43
Mountain-Hermit of Nitpeak
- Location
- Vermont
In theory, we could have both Johann and Egrimm?
Johann knows some engineering and would have Gold Order contacts for the materials.
I reckon that Mathilde will automatically tap Adela's expertise should it be needed, we don't need to micromanage it. Remember when we were investigating the golden arm, and Mathilde grabbed Max to do material analysis on it?
I dunno. To really capture the spirit, it should be either an argument about something incredibly specific and unlikely to happen, or a concern someone just invented from musing about random shit.
Or the Thing We Argue About When The Thread Is Slow And Sometimes When It Is Not Slow. Like the Book, or the Boon, or the Tongs, or Apparitions, or the Vow.
- Location
- being near locations is my passion.
He knows some, and if we can't get Adela I'd like to include him; even if we can get Adela he might be worth involving.
But my post was really about how we might get our little engineer duckling a really cool and useful engineering thingy to be able to stick her name on.
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I don't think explicitly including Johann in the action would impact the materials aspect though, I think Mathilde's set of relationships with Johann/Max and the the Gold College as a whole are good enough that she can just ask for a basic array of wind reactive materials to experiment with.
Anything Johann could get that Mathilde couldn't, is something that probably isn't suitable for mass-production.
That's a good point on getting people involved, but I was a bit more focused on getting Adela's name on the project, at least with regard to the mechanical/sound creating bits.
Egrimm and Mathilde would explicitly get the credit for the idea/windherding/detecting bits, because as I type this I am wary that if we do bring in Adela we might start a pattern of taking stuff Egrimm contributed to and then spreading out some of the credit for that to other people.
Which is not the same as 'Mathilde taking Egrimm's credit like Alric did', but a similar 'Egrimm might feel he's not getting all the credit he deserves for his contributions'.
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Given that it was a Thorfrim nega quest, perhaps concocting increasingly convoluted schemes to slow/stop/reverse the decline of runic knowledge?
- Location
- being near locations is my passion.
On another topic. someone pointed out seismographs and I was rather captured by the idea, but one thing that occurs to me is the cost/unavailability of paper.
The three workarounds I have come up with so far are:
- Only a few seismographs are actually made and placed in the most useful location
- The scribbling only starts when a certain threshold of winds is met, and stops when it falls below that threshold, and some sort of clever clockwork timer mechanism is used print a sequence of symbols that denote either the time and date or how many [time units] since the mechanism was wound up and started.
- Maybe rather than paper, use thin but long sheets of copper rolled around a tube. This might not be possible/technological viable in terms of labour needed. I don't know anything about making thin sheets of metal.
The point of the thin copper sheet is that I'm imagining that it can be flattened down/smoothed over [somehow] after it is written to capacity for re-use.
----
Also, there's Kalazid speech-to-text runes available, so maybe there's also runes that can precisely and densely record simple one dimensional 'magnitude' inputs into a closed book or something a bit more 3d than a sheet of paper.
Or at least record the useful information a lot more densely than how I picture a typical[?] seismograph does so.
It's just... they use a lot of paper.
Edit: The above post was just me imagining how we might implement such a thing because I enjoy those sorts of puzzles, I know that these considerations are below the level of abstraction of the quest.
The three workarounds I have come up with so far are:
- Only a few seismographs are actually made and placed in the most useful location
- The scribbling only starts when a certain threshold of winds is met, and stops when it falls below that threshold, and some sort of clever clockwork timer mechanism is used print a sequence of symbols that denote either the time and date or how many [time units] since the mechanism was wound up and started.
- Maybe rather than paper, use thin but long sheets of copper rolled around a tube. This might not be possible/technological viable in terms of labour needed. I don't know anything about making thin sheets of metal.
Like this, but it's attached to another cylinder, like a vhs/casette tape, those turn when the seismograph is activated, and something makes tiny scores denoting the detected wind strength at a given moment. The aim would be for dense data storage, but it might be very vulnerable to damage from jostling.
----
Also, there's Kalazid speech-to-text runes available, so maybe there's also runes that can precisely and densely record simple one dimensional 'magnitude' inputs into a closed book or something a bit more 3d than a sheet of paper.
Or at least record the useful information a lot more densely than how I picture a typical[?] seismograph does so.
It's just... they use a lot of paper.
Edit: The above post was just me imagining how we might implement such a thing because I enjoy those sorts of puzzles, I know that these considerations are below the level of abstraction of the quest.
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Blackout
Fed By Comments
- Location
- Who knows?
The obvious counterargument is that tabletop also has elven wizards and Slann mage-priests using Melkoth's Mystifying Miasma, which indicates it should probably be considered a human-centric abstraction.
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Boney, I'm not asking trying to get a game-mechanical bonus, but is there any way narratively we could tap Adela's engineering skills for the Auditory Servioscope as part of the action?
Here's the wonky thing though [I feel this question might be 'how do hoomans work' more than a game thing]: I'd like to have her name on the project, but... is there any way to bring her in from the start that doesn't carry the implication to Egrimm that Mathilde thinks that the two of them can't do it?
[The rebuttal being that while Egrimm and Mathilde are smart and could probably come up with something workable/good, Adela is an engineer and has a lot more direct experience with pipes and moving parts and is highly likely to help them come up with something better].
----
Game-mechanically, if we do decid to bring her into the action, either from the start or for a second attempt if Egrimm and Mathilde roll poorly, would we:
1. pay her with College Favour for that action like hiring an external college wizard, and still have it count as 'WEB-MAT' for AP purposes?
2. offer her shared credit for the design and follow-up papers, i.e. she gets a 'cut' of the College Favour that would be generated, and still have it count as 'WEB-MAT' for AP purposes?
I know I posed the above as 'how would we pay her', but I really want to know the optimal way of having her name on the project as the engineering-design-person [and still have it count as 'WEB-MAT' for AP purposes
If it becomes necessary to bring in someone else, Adela would be one of those considered.
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Or that they have an equivalent spell, likely by a different name. But yeah, there's definitely a reason I prefaced that statement with an 'if'...whether the WHFB rules are a good barometer for what spells Elves have available is definitely an open question.
One of these recurring themes is obviously Bok.
Mopman43
Mountain-Hermit of Nitpeak
- Location
- Vermont
With the situation that everyone from Ogres to Chaos Dwarfs to Elves all having the exact same spells for each lore, then either you take that as pure game simplification and they all actually have different spells, or that using the different Winds will naturally cause a wizard to develop spells that do all these things. Like there's a built-in conceptual space in the Winds for these specific spells and all cultures just get there on their own.
Maybe Ogres who cast from Azyr have a spell that does what Comet of Cassandora does, but they definitely wouldn't call it Comet of Cassandora.
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Just had a weird thought: Do you guys remember this:
A moon-shrine errected by a steppe dwelling tribe far from the ocean. Call be crazy but I do not think they are worshiping the god of the sea. So what other Moon Gods are there? Ones that Kurgans and other Scythian descendants may have come into contact with? Well there is that moon lady who married a dragon.
*glances at sidestory post*
It might be a shrine to Moon Empress likely Old One, maybe the only Old One on the planet with a more or less intact silver ship.
There might be more to look into that than idle curiosity assuming we want to poke non-Old World paradigms for information about the Geomantic Web, especially since we took Faith if She notices us messing with one of her Altars we might be in a position to ask for some clue or hint.
A moon-shrine errected by a steppe dwelling tribe far from the ocean. Call be crazy but I do not think they are worshiping the god of the sea. So what other Moon Gods are there? Ones that Kurgans and other Scythian descendants may have come into contact with? Well there is that moon lady who married a dragon.
*glances at sidestory post*
It might be a shrine to Moon Empress likely Old One, maybe the only Old One on the planet with a more or less intact silver ship.
There might be more to look into that than idle curiosity assuming we want to poke non-Old World paradigms for information about the Geomantic Web, especially since we took Faith if She notices us messing with one of her Altars we might be in a position to ask for some clue or hint.
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- Location
- being near locations is my passion.
Yeah, that's fair.
I guess I'm just really excited at the thought of reading your 'Bright Wizard Engineer quest' while also reading your 'Divided Loyalties' quest, while also reading your first five books of 'A Very Condensed History of Dwarven Ale, years 1893-1897', because you have 60 hours in a day or something.
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- Location
- Hiding in the walls.
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Sadly, Boney is not secretly Melkoth writing this quest in the time between time.
- Location
- The Surface Of A Hostile Planet
To address a few concerns I've seen:
• Using the Cult of Kalita on a Father Turn
Yep, makes sense, I'm willing to shuffle around EIC actions to do that.
• Recruiting Bretonnia:
I'm of the opinion that even if Damsels contribute precisely zero (0) to the project, having Bretonnia's buy-in as a polity is still valuable in the coming turns.
Having a semi-united Old World is a rare occurrence, even on a singular topic like Waystones, and the mere appearance of such is going to severely constrain Ulthuan's options when it comes to shutting things down, since they'll have very limited abilities to leverage us against each other.
But, of course, I don't expect zero contributions. If we already have the foundation and prototype ready when we talk with the Damsels? Great, we can bargain with Bretonnia with a strong hand. If we hit a stumbling block? Also fine, having extra insights to overcome that stumbling block before we talk to Ulthuan is worth getting a worse deal with Bretonnia.
• Druchii Negotiations
The Druchii aren't going to jump to backstabbing us the second they get any kind of deal going - their endgame here is to personally profit as individuals, which is harder to do when you end a deal as soon as it starts.
Insofar as there is a polity-level plan happening here (if only to justify what they're doing to their superiors), they're here to try to peel away a number of the Old World polities from Ulthuan, which is again better served by sticking to the deals at least to start.
They're also going to be putting their best foot forward here - "the first one's free" and all that, since they know they aren't trusted. Unfortunately for them, they don't know that we're really here to pressure Ulthuan into giving us the Waystone passphrases.
I doubt these particular Druchii traders have that info and wouldn't trust it even if they did, so they just aren't offering what we want - but what they can provide is the appearance of being willing to reach out to the Druchii if Ulthuan doesn't play nicely.
In that context, the specific deal we make with the Druchii barely matters. We can probably find something that doesn't offend our sensibilities somewhere - give them info they can get elsewhere in exchange for a heads-up on Druchii raids that help destroy their rivals or whatever.
What matters is the implication - that we made any deal with the Druchii at all is something that Ulthuan will need to keep in mind when they show up, since if they overplay their hand and try to lean on the stick instead of the carrot... well. We have options, yeah?
• Using the Cult of Kalita on a Father Turn
Yep, makes sense, I'm willing to shuffle around EIC actions to do that.
• Recruiting Bretonnia:
I'm of the opinion that even if Damsels contribute precisely zero (0) to the project, having Bretonnia's buy-in as a polity is still valuable in the coming turns.
Having a semi-united Old World is a rare occurrence, even on a singular topic like Waystones, and the mere appearance of such is going to severely constrain Ulthuan's options when it comes to shutting things down, since they'll have very limited abilities to leverage us against each other.
But, of course, I don't expect zero contributions. If we already have the foundation and prototype ready when we talk with the Damsels? Great, we can bargain with Bretonnia with a strong hand. If we hit a stumbling block? Also fine, having extra insights to overcome that stumbling block before we talk to Ulthuan is worth getting a worse deal with Bretonnia.
• Druchii Negotiations
The Druchii aren't going to jump to backstabbing us the second they get any kind of deal going - their endgame here is to personally profit as individuals, which is harder to do when you end a deal as soon as it starts.
Insofar as there is a polity-level plan happening here (if only to justify what they're doing to their superiors), they're here to try to peel away a number of the Old World polities from Ulthuan, which is again better served by sticking to the deals at least to start.
They're also going to be putting their best foot forward here - "the first one's free" and all that, since they know they aren't trusted. Unfortunately for them, they don't know that we're really here to pressure Ulthuan into giving us the Waystone passphrases.
I doubt these particular Druchii traders have that info and wouldn't trust it even if they did, so they just aren't offering what we want - but what they can provide is the appearance of being willing to reach out to the Druchii if Ulthuan doesn't play nicely.
In that context, the specific deal we make with the Druchii barely matters. We can probably find something that doesn't offend our sensibilities somewhere - give them info they can get elsewhere in exchange for a heads-up on Druchii raids that help destroy their rivals or whatever.
What matters is the implication - that we made any deal with the Druchii at all is something that Ulthuan will need to keep in mind when they show up, since if they overplay their hand and try to lean on the stick instead of the carrot... well. We have options, yeah?
I don't believe the idea is either to make major trade deals with Naggaroth or to get one over any of the druchii. It's closer to spy games and political pressure with the druchii scoring minor wins in exchange for the Empire getting major wins.
From what I understand there are two different goals we currently want/are being offered.
The first is getting waystone codes.
The problem with trying to get these codes is that Ulthuan are unlikely to give these codes to us and are unlikely to even consider granting us the codes. The only other group that we suspect has the codes is the Naggarothi though and they absolutely hate Ulthuan and will go out of their way to screw them (which is good for us in this negotiation).
So we go to Ulthuan and say: Hey can we have these codes we have money.
We expect Ulthuan to reply: No.
So we go over to Naggaroth reps and ask them for the codes and find out what they want for them.
Then we go to Ulthuan and all of a sudden Ulthuan finds out not only can we get the codes, we might even be paying Naggaroth for them. So they can come to the table or let the Empire make a deal with Naggaroth.
We go back and forth between them and then hopefully get the codes, preferably from Ulthuan.
The Empire wins by getting the codes.
Naggaroth wins by pissing off Ulthuan.
Ulthuan hopefully doesn't lose by going ahead and making a deal with the Empire.
The second is playing factions of druchii against each other.
We were given this offer way earlier but basically faction 1 will gives us intel on faction 2 so they can screw over a rival. We're not getting one over on them, and arguably the Empire is being used as a tool to enrich a bunch of evil assholes. However, it prevents raids so it's a win for the Empire too. The only losers are some druchii pirates we don't care about.
There's a third offer for spells and stuff that I feel obligated to include.
There's also a third offer for giving us magic knowledge that's on the table. I don't think I've seen the thread care much about this though and I'm personally not too enthused. I guess if we can get it really cheap (a new spell for a book on spider biology?) it's worth it as long as it doesn't require to go out of the way (spend AP) but probably not something we'll actually spend effort on.
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chocolote12
A Penguin Flailing Against The Keyboard Of Life.
That is actually something I vaguely thought about (without coming up with an answer for it). I think having a big roll of copper foil would let us put into the machine a lot of relatively common and durable material that can be made with existing technology.
Then the recordings could be transferred to something more dense after the day or week is over, and the copper flattened for reuse, changing the record keeping from big mountains of paper to a copper roll and a ledger.
That would mean that it'd be far more feasible to do that recording in uncomfortable places that aren't good for paper, like anywhere in the field, or with an army on the march.
- Location
- Australia
What stick would they be leaning on?
