- Location
- A Pit Of My Own Making
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Might have been a lone practitioner
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.
dinomannitro6
all your gender is belong to us
- Location
- The Land Where The Sunflowers Bloom
They have master-apprentice chains, like the empire did pre-colleges. No capital t Traditions though.
Blackout
Fed By Comments
- Location
- Who knows?
3rd edition WFRP says that Estalia and Tilea used to have a bunch of homegrown hedge wizards, but since the Colleges were founded the locals just found it much easier to send them to Altdorf to get a proper education than deal with the hassle of trying to train them themselves.
Funny thing. Bees do have dialects. Different breeds of honeybee have different languages and it seems to be learned not genetic.
So yes. The languages of bees and ants DO undergo the same sort of drift as human languages.
Well, bees at least. Ants mostly communicate through scent and that IS genetic.
So yes. The languages of bees and ants DO undergo the same sort of drift as human languages.
Well, bees at least. Ants mostly communicate through scent and that IS genetic.
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- Location
- North Wales
- Pronouns
- He/Him/His
Potion-making is probably the most accessible Alchemy-alike craft to non-Chamon magicians. Same process of imbuing magic into materials for various effects.
Realms of Sorcery has a section on them and notably uses about three times the number of pages and rules-tables for describing how things can go wrong as it does on the actual intended effects. Some types of potion include:
Cosmetic potions
* Potion of Comeliness: for full-body makeover. But even if it goes right it makes you permanently less intelligent;
* Hair-tonic: Grows hair wherever you apply it. Don't drink it.
* Nectar of Beauty: Makes your face prettier, at the cost of photosensitivity;
* Slimming Liquor: Drains fat. Doesn't remove the resulting skin-folds.
* Boar-musk: An anti-cosmetic potion, makes imbiber smelly and sweaty. Used on romantic rivals
Medical potions
* Draught of Lizard Limbs: Regrows lost appendages. Not always in the correct place.
* Teeth Potion: Regrows missing/rotted teeth. Don't apply anywhere you don't want a tooth growing.
* Potion of Pain Denied: Absolute pain immunity for several hours.
* Debauch's Friend: Immunity to intoxication, hangover cure.
Combat potions
* Channelpath Potion: Makes channeling magic easier
* Draught of Power: +1 Magic. For about 10 seconds.
* God's Spit: Makes your fists tougher
* Lucidity Tonic: Improves clarity of thought for a day, at the cost of insomnia and a crash at the end.
* Potency Draught: Makes you stronger
* Potion of Perceptive Clarity: Doesn't improve the senses, but rather your attention for what you can already sense
____
EDIT: Additionally, by the RPG mechanics (which may differ from potential Quest mechanics), it costs 50gc-300gc in ingredients for one batch (1d10/2) of potions (with Draught of Power being 550gc) which is, uh, quite expensive. Compare with our ongoing expenses on books, at 50gc per permanent +1 bonus.
You also have to spend six hours a day for up to three months doing nothing but attending to the brew, which can at any time randomly set itself on fire or explode, destroying some portion of your 1000gc alchemical laboratory. Potions aren't shelf stable and if not drunk the same turn we make them, will go bad. With effects ranging from hallucinations to warts to permanent bone-softening to full-on Chaos mutation. They may go bad immediately even if we do everything correctly, with the only way of finding out being to drink the potion.
Sufficed to say, potions aren't really a great investment of time or money for us personally even if we really wanted to learn the process.
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Parabola
Divided Loyalties Librarian
- Location
- The Destination of Fate
- Pronouns
- She/Her
I went back through the thread to confirm and it seems like for quest purposes Boney takes the perspective that the magic skill most people think of as Alchemy is Gold-only:
While that does make Eike's trait somewhat unintuitive in name, 'mundane alchemy' seems to encompass chemistry and is presumably fair game for her:
...Unrelated, but I have to imagine the Jades in general would love having the Eonir's books on Flora of the Reik Basin and Medicine (assuming they don't fall under something that could be used for military purposes).
Parabola
Divided Loyalties Librarian
- Location
- The Destination of Fate
- Pronouns
- She/Her
I'm given to understand anyone can make potions, but Jades have an excellent advantage in securing ingredients due to being able to encourage the growth of plants and whatnot.
As would the Cult of Shallya and basically any physician in the Old World, I think. There's an Asur physician called Gaelen who wrote what's considered to be the most important medical book in the Old World, so I think elf medical knowledge would have some prestige simply by association.
- Location
- Aotearoa
Also in the 'surviving in the wilderness to find and gather them', see Journeymanling Panoramia finding Black Lotus along the Spider-Goblin infested forest Expedition stage. Which, as you say, she was then able to force-grow.
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- Location
- North Wales
- Pronouns
- He/Him/His
Any literate, trained magic user with access to an alchemical laboratory, anyway.
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Technically this would be +2 magic, the magic scale was doubled early in the quest for greater granularity. I still do not think it is worth it for any sane wizard to use them given the potential side effects and spoilage consequences, but at least it gives a decent umph for playing Russian roulette more than even battle magic.
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Mopman43
Mountain-Hermit of Nitpeak
- Location
- Vermont
Though, only in the 6th edition Warhammer Chronicles entry for her does she have Death (and Shadows), in the 5th edition book she had Battle Magic. Which in 5th edition was basically a general lore that basically everyone had access to and the Wind spells were an optional rule.
Magic in 4th and 5th was weird.
- Location
- Actually pretty lost
Are all of those temporary, or are some of them permanent?
The trait is specifically about a strong understanding of how the Winds affect the material world, so probably not.
Everything is temporary other than the horrible side effects, those tend to stick.
- Location
- Somewhere between the stars
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Recorded as being uttered before the Razing of Skavenblight.
Grey Seer Thanqoul: I've discovered a great plan, yes yes. Doose water supply with Debauch's friend to dwarf-things! genius plan, yes-yes. They will grow weak-frail.
- Location
- North Wales
- Pronouns
- He/Him/His
A few are permanent - the limb/tooth regrowth ones, the weight-loss, and the hair tonic. Which is why there's a recommendations to apply them with a barber-surgeon nearby, who can remove the newgrown bits if they come in wrong before a witch hunter spots you.
Pretty much all of the rest are temporary, their effects lasting minutes or hours (or seconds for the Draught of Power) depending on the type of potion. The side effects may be permanent, though.
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- Location
- Canada
Maybe in wfrp 2e potion making is restricted to mages (I'd have to check to be certain), but I know it isn't the case in 4e
And it may not be the case in quest
Potions in 4e are described as differing from herbal draughts in that the ingredients that go into making them are infused with magic
However they specifically can be brewed by those with no magic, because the Winds of Magic naturally coalesce and concentrate in different plants, animals and other materials
So it is entirely possible for someone with the right knowledge of how magic inhabits physical things to take an entirely mundane, scientific approach to potion making
Though it is harder for them
wfrp 2e generally takes precedence over 4e in this quest, however we already know for a fact that magic is similarly drawn to and inhabits physical materials in DL as well (windsoak mushrooms, Ixti grubs, the wording of Eike's alchemical trait, etc)
So we have reason to believe that in this case potion making is not limited to mages
4e's rules on potion brewing and spoilage also seem a bit more lenient than what you're describing of 2e
You only need to spend 3 hours a day tending to the brewing process and the longest creation time of the listed potions is 2 months
Some them only require a week or two, and the quickest a mere 2 days
Potion spoilage is also only risked after each season rather than a certainty, with well brewed potions being less likely to go bad
And potions never spoil on creation if made properly
If you roll a fumble then they can come out bad, but they'll never immediately spoil on a success, and an ordinary failure just wastes materials and time
Lab/cauldron explosions also only occur on a fumble and also vary in severity, from minor equipment damage to "you need a new lab"
All in all, I think we'd have to see what the potion brewing mechanics actually look like in DL before declaring it a complete waste
I kinda doubt it'd be as bad as what 2e seems to make it out as though, since I think it'd be wasted space for Boney to introduce potion brewing as an activity and then go "every time you make a potion regardless of success, I roll to see if it explodes, roll again to see if it goes immediately toxic despite the success and then have it go toxic at the end of the turn no matter what"
Might as well just not have potion brewing as an option at that point
The work of mundane Warhammer alchemists generally revolves around understanding the composition of base matter, breaking them down into their chemical elements, isolating those elements, and then recombining them to create different compounds
This generates a steady stream of academic papers explaining how the world works and expanding scientific knowledge, a lot of Gold Order Alchemists are involved in this field as well (in fact the Gold Order sponsors a lot of mundane alchemical institutions and also scouts them for magical talent)
If you're looking for more practical examples of what the work of mundane Warhammer alchemists looks like then some examples of mundane alchemy are things like the production of:
Various dyes
Gunpowder
Strong acids and akalis used in engineering or other alchemical projects
Various soaps
etc.
Gunpowder
Strong acids and akalis used in engineering or other alchemical projects
Various soaps
etc.
Alchemists also generally dabble in other fields in the course of their work in understanding the natural world
Which has lead to a basic understanding of things like magnetism and the invention of the compass
Or the development of higher quality optical lenses, mirrors and prisms
High Alchemy (the magical stuff) basically just takes normal alchemy and cranks it up by adding magic to the mix
Getting you stuff like Leonardo's Alchemical Powder, which is a super gunpowder that reacts explosively to air
Or magic compasses that point toward concentrations of magic
wfrp 4e once again lets ordinary, non-magical alchemists dabble in High Alchemy by using materials saturated in Winds to get around not being able to control magic themselves
Though in this case they do need to at least have Windsight
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dinomannitro6
all your gender is belong to us
- Location
- The Land Where The Sunflowers Bloom
From past WoB, for most of the colleges it works like 2e, but for the Golds and the Jades they can produce better results.
For Mathilde it basically wasn't an option as it wasn't worth it, there was a WoB to that affect. Maybe for Eike with her trait and being much earlier in her career it could be different
- Location
- Earth
We don't have the traits, and we're not a Jade/Gold, so it doesn't make sense for Mathilde.
Eike having the trait makes it more viable for her, but we still need to deal with:
- Location
- Canada
Yes
I'm saying that we'd have to see the mechanics of potion brewing properly to get a good idea of how worthwhile it is because we're in charge of Eike's education at the moment and she has a potion related trait
Mathilde isn't a potion brewer
She's an enchanter
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- Location
- Oklahoma
Eike's trait applies to enchanting and turning as well, so we can just teach her the things we do know about and leave it up to her if she wants to pursue the other fields available to her.
