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Warhammer Fantasy: Divided Loyalties - an Advisor's Quest

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SinisterPorpoise said:
This would be because Hags explicitly have access to a spell that can flat-out remove mutations, and the slavery is more or less "payment for services rendered".
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That's certainly not how it's presented in Realm of the Ice Queen.

Page 43:
Almost everyone assumes that the wise women kill the tainted, so their corrupted spirits cannot come back to haunt the living. The wise women encourage this belief, but it is far from the truth.

Rather, the tainted are taken to remote, hidden communities, where they are enslaved and forced to lend their assistance to the hags for whatever sinister purpose they might have. Most tainted do meet their end quickly through brutal torture or the exhaustion of their life energy for some ritual or another. Those with the stamina to endure the hag's cruel caress are eventually sent north to find their deaths fighting in the Chaos Wastes. The wise women justify their actions with the excuse that the only way a tainted soul can be purified is to fight against the forces that inspired the corruption, and so they instruct the tainted to fight and die for Kislev.
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Nothing in there saying 'those that survive are cleansed with bear piss'.

Yes, the Hags do have the spell to do it, but they don't seem to employ it here. It's worth noting that Cleanse Soul doesn't completely remove mutations- they'll reappear any time the target fails a Toughness test by a sufficiently wide margin (so, in RL terms, they'd probably fail it through, say, sufficiently difficult physical labor).
 
Mopman43 said:
That's certainly not how it's presented in Realm of the Ice Queen.

Page 43:

Nothing in there saying 'those that survive are cleansed with bear piss'.

Yes, the Hags do have the spell to do it, but they don't seem to employ it here. It's worth noting that Cleanse Soul doesn't completely remove mutations- they'll reappear any time the target fails a Toughness test by a sufficiently wide margin (so, in RL terms, they'd probably fail it through, say, sufficiently difficult physical labor).
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I mean they could cure some of them, but that spell has a high casting number, many do not even know it and odds are even those who do are not inclined to use them lightly.
 
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Wiggy said:
Aren't Dragon Isle skinks feral or something? Or is that just empire propaganda.
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6th edition Lizardmen page 72 says that the Lizardmen of the Dragon Isles have gone completely feral without any Slann, with the Slann from outside either not bothering or not being able to exert control.

It also points to what the answer is for the linguistic drift:
Cut off from the wisdom of the most venerable of the Slann mage-priests of Lustria, the Lizardmen of the Southlands have fallen prey to their baser, animal instincts and only the younger (in relative terms) Slann, those of the fourth and fifth generations, remain in the Southlands to provide any guidance to the Lizardmen.
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Wiggy said:
It seems weird that lizardmen apparently just lose sapience if they're seperated from Slann for too long? Huh. That's some weird lore.
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I dont think its losing sapience, but having a culture (which given engineered beings may well be deeply in-built) where the majority are suppsoed to just follow orders without much decision making or creative thinking, and then the decision maker/thinker caste getting largely erased, will lead to some de-volution of society over time.
 
Wiggy said:
It seems weird that lizardmen apparently just lose sapience if they're seperated from Slann for too long? Huh. That's some weird lore.
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it's more, lizardmen have a heirarchy of discipline and control with those higher up the chain being able to control and direct those lower on it.

big'uns, your normal warrior, have the least discpline and control on their own. they go into bloodrages, they are irritable, they struggle to stay on task. but follow commands absolutely and literally.

skink are a step up, they serve as foreman and coordinators for those lower down the chain and can instill their inbuilt control and patience into their workers.

slann are a further step up, beings of immense patience and knowledge that give that same patience and wider view to their skink priests along with explicit directions to follow. with each generation back being another step up, until you get to Kroak.


skinks without a slann, are warriors without a skink. no direction, no greater plan, no overarching purpose. left to follow incomplete instinct that only work when the system is functioning as it should.
 
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Looking back...
Boney said:
You nod unabashedly. "I have contacts in the other Orders so I could help her to some extent wherever she ends up, but I could do orders of magnitude more for her in the Grey Order than anywhere else."

She considers that, and nods. "Otherwise I might say the Alchemists or the Seers, but you're right, patronage would make all the difference. And if she is a Grey Wizard... well, it's going to disrupt her education, but if she can do the things you can do..."
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One day the Gold Order will find out how close they came to getting an alchemical prodigy and weep quicksilver tears.

Though, can someone remind me the sorts of things non-Chamon alchemists can get to do or make? I'm having a hard time remembering.
 
That might also be a know flaw. The lizardmen were the first(on this planet at least) of the enginnered Old ones bio-creatures. If the lizardmen were that superiour to all other races, they wouldn't have bothered trying to create human, elves etc.

A case where lizardmen do fall into stupour without guidance might been one of the reasons why the old ones didn't just spam a ton of Slann en-masse against Chaos, despite lizardmen being generally superiour to most other races.
 
Boney said:
The writings you acquired at Uzkulak, once unjumbled and read through by yourself, Max and Eike, prove to be those of a Chracian apiarist and adventurer by the name of Lathruai, documenting her journeys and studies through the jungles of the southern continents. Rather than being all the same set of notes as you originally assumed, it proves to be two sets of notes entirely, plus the book published as a result of the first set. That book lays down the theory that the Lizardmen of Lustria, rather than being a bizarrely unified confederation of different reptilian species, represent a single polyphenic species with a single reproductive caste, the rare and magically powerful Queens, and multiple nonreproductive worker castes - Goblin-sized Minors for fine dexterity, larger, man-size Medians for combat, and Ogre-sized Majors for brute strength and carrying capacity. This posits that the temple-cities of Lustria, rather than being ruins by some long-extinct race, are hives erected by the Lizardmen for the protection of their spawning chambers.
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You know, this is actually pretty close to the way lizardman society actually works, apart from the fact that the slann aren't needed to operate the spawning pools.

During her second set of adventures, she discovers that adorning herself with a specific species of grub apparently confused whatever sense the Lizardmen used to tell each other apart from outsiders. After 'grooming' the grubs from her they did not prevent her from moving throughout the outskirts of their hives, though they still reacted with alarm and aggression if she attempted to move further in,
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Of course, we, knowing the lizardmen are sapient, can imagine this as a case of the lizardmen going "okay, fine, if she wants to slather herself in ixti grubs and draw pictures of things that's cool, albeit weird. Warmbloods gonna warmblood, I guess."

The collected results seem to be trending towards a confirmation of the idea that they'd become separated, as the carvings for the same purpose show clear deviation between the two, but the writer was still seeking out samples when her story came to an abrupt end at the hands of Druchii Corsairs.

Fate is not neat enough to have left a final line trailing ominously off. The notes simply end, on a day that only stands out for the lack of a next one.
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Awwwh. :(

You know, it's actually possible that in this setting the lizardmen don't really communicate much and that their temple-cities have undergone some linguistic drift over the millennia.

As it turns out, it is. It so very much is that it might even cast doubt on the premise of Lathruai's published work, unless the buzzing of bees and the chittering of ants is subject to the exact same transformative forces and trends as the words of man and Dwarf and Elf. The dialectical drift between Lustrian and Southlands is incredibly slow, if Lathruai's estimates of the age of the various plaques are accurate, but unmistakable, with the Lustrian runes remaining unchanged over time while the Southlands ones become simpler and more angular. There is something keeping the Lustrian dialect static, or perhaps some external force imposing linguistic mutability upon the Southlands dialect.
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Innnnteresting.

From what we know OOC, the lizardmen of Zlatlan ARE out of contact with those of Lustria, while the Lustrian lizardmen have more slann in a larger group that's more likely to keep careful, rigorous precision in their choice of script and so on. And the Lustrians would have more direct Old One legacies as exemplars. So the handwriting shifts in the glyphs of Zlatlan undergoing cultural drift seems plausible.

An extreme possibility is that the Zlatlan lizardmen have no slann left and the skink-priests and oldbloods are just kind of winging it. I know that's contrary to canon, but if it were true in this quest's continuity I wouldn't complain.

Mopman43 said:
Skink Chief Skep'tic: This warmblood covered themself in Itxi grubs and appears to be trying to enter the city.
Skink Priest De'la'gator: So they are mad?
Skep'tic: That's the only thing I could think of. Possibly touched by the Enemy?
De'la'gator: Lord Snoz'but'tin remains asleep, let them wander the city without harm until he wakes up, just keep them outside the main temples. I will let him decide matters.
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These characters are now canonized to me over in Respect Your Elders. We need them.
 
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Parabola said:
Looking back...

One day the Gold Order will find out how close they came to getting an alchemical prodigy and weep quicksilver tears.

Though, can someone remind me the sorts of things non-Chamon alchemists can get to do or make? I'm having a hard time remembering.
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That is a long list mate. The elixir of life, true transmutation, medicine, pesticides, purifiers, soap, explosives, combustions, and the list goes on.

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Alchemy

The physical world is a world of tangible things. The magical world is a world of pure energies. We call the application of the application of magical energies upon tangible objects 'sorcery'. Some use and manipulate magical energies for trivial purposes without joining in the search for...
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Parabola said:
Looking back...

One day the Gold Order will find out how close they came to getting an alchemical prodigy and weep quicksilver tears.

Though, can someone remind me the sorts of things non-Chamon alchemists can get to do or make? I'm having a hard time remembering.
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From what I can tell, the vast majority of Alchemy doesn't require Chamon specifically ,any magic will do, but the Gold Order's mindset and their other spell list outside of alchemy mean it's something they're suited towards.
That and the order's founders were alchemists so the college has maintained a focus on it the others lack.
 
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Has there ever been a consideration for building rooms of serenity for some of the empires bigwigs?
Maybe even just the emperor himself as i can think of few people more likely to be in AP hell.
 
Chipsy_21 said:
Has there ever been a consideration for building rooms of serenity for some of the empires bigwigs?
Maybe even just the emperor himself as i can think of few people more likely to be in AP hell.
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That would probably be tricky, because it's not just about having a comfortable place to concentrate. Mathilde just happens to be the right kind of workaholic to benefit from having the right environment, allowing her to make use of all those random bits of spare time.
 
Chipsy_21 said:
Has there ever been a consideration for building rooms of serenity for some of the empires bigwigs?
Maybe even just the emperor himself as i can think of few people more likely to be in AP hell.
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Generally the Empire Bigwigs can afford to make their own studies. Especially the Emperor. It's much like the suggestion of bringing small gifts like casks of ale when we talk with Elector Counts - if they wanted it they'd already have it and better.

Ours isn't magical, really. Just comfy and with conveniences installed. It's a kind abstraction on Boney's part to let us slowly-but-steadily accrue CF without setting aside AP for it, and a method of revisiting old plot threads for nostalgia, clarification, or summarising.

Otherwise, we'd probably let most papers fade then spam a bunch in one short burst whenever we needed something specific from the colleges. And while mechanically that works, it would make for some boring turns of nothing but paper-writing come crunch-time.
 
Page 43:

Nothing in there saying 'those that survive are cleansed with bear piss'.

Yes, the Hags do have the spell to do it, but they don't seem to employ it here. It's worth noting that Cleanse Soul doesn't completely remove mutations- they'll reappear any time the target fails a Toughness test by a sufficiently wide margin (so, in RL terms, they'd probably fail it through, say, sufficiently difficult physical labor).
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Given the way in-universe POVs tend to demonize outsiders to an unfair degree, I can actually see this as being re-interpreted as almost a series of hidden villages where hags are trained and mutants live in peace, all centered around massive rituals done as a calendar to preserve the rest of the country from chaos, on behalf of our in support of the widow.

Same way the not!Gaels were added to the great vortex as hidden but crucial support.

And then all of a sudden you've got a classic protagonist's home village: hidden, magical, peaceful, home of a bunch of hidden high level talent that doesn't show itself to the neighbors.
 
Gavin Prince said:
Ours isn't magical, really. Just comfy and with conveniences installed.
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It is magically comfy. There's runes for heating water unless I remember wrongly - that's the sort of luxury that's bound to be rare even for fairly high ranking Dawi let alone humans.

Also available dragon skulls large enough to be made into hammocks are bound to be rare.


That's not to say that Luitpold couldn't afford it - just that the luxury combo is sufficiently restrictive that even he might not have gotten everything.
 
SinisterPorpoise said:
This would be because Hags explicitly have access to a spell that can flat-out remove mutations, and the slavery is more or less "payment for services rendered".
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That's... not what the Hags do to the mutants.

Almost everyone assumes that the wise women kill the tainted, so their corrupted spirits cannot come back to haunt the living. The wise women encourage this belief, but it is far from the truth.

Rather, the tainted are taken to remote, hidden communities, where they are enslaved and forced to lend their assistance to the hags for whatever sinister purpose they might have. Most tainted do meet their end quickly through brutal torture or the exhaustion of their life energy for some ritual or another. Those with the stamina to endure the hag's cruel caress are eventually sent north to find their deaths fighting in the Chaos Wastes. The wise women justify their actions with the excuse that the only way a tainted soul can be purified is to fight against the forces that inspired the corruption, and so they instruct the tainted to fight and die for Kislev.
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-Realm of the Ice Queen pg.43

They torture them, use them as human sacrifices to fuel their rituals, and use them as slave soldiers against Chaos.
 
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You know I've been thinking if Teclis sent off to the Embassy in Altdorf for them so find what they can on the person running the Waystone project what would he get?

There's the Asarnil link, they are aware of our knowledge with Waaagh Magic, the Druuchi we turned over.

Those are all the things they know off the top of their heads, There's also public knowledge but there would be a lot of rumor there.
Our other publically available papers?
 
Glau said:
Given the way in-universe POVs tend to demonize outsiders to an unfair degree, I can actually see this as being re-interpreted as almost a series of hidden villages where hags are trained and mutants live in peace, all centered around massive rituals done as a calendar to preserve the rest of the country from chaos, on behalf of our in support of the widow.

Same way the not!Gaels were added to the great vortex as hidden but crucial support.

And then all of a sudden you've got a classic protagonist's home village: hidden, magical, peaceful, home of a bunch of hidden high level talent that doesn't show itself to the neighbors.
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Small problem with that is Realms of the Ice Queen is told to us no no small part from a Kislevite perspective. I mean the Bretonian source book Knights of the Grail does not go on about how the missing male magicians of Bretonia are enslaved in the woods does it? Instead it just says they go missing, which is as far as we can tell from other sources factually correct. Sometimes even the good guys in Warhammer are assholes about specific matters and that is OK, because narratively if they were not it means the bad guys really are one dimensional caricatures. Morally grey goes both ways.
 
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