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Warhammer Fantasy: Divided Loyalties - an Advisor's Quest

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I think the main reason Chaos hasn't appeared super threatening in this quest is that we haven't actually dealt with them that much, and when we have? It's been mostly on our own terms. In Stirland everything was all necromancers and vampires, in K8P it was mostly skaven and orcs, and since then we've had a secure base with no immediate threats nipping at it. The only times we've encountered Chaos, outside of the AV incident, have been when we've gone specifically looking for it- and on those occasions we had significant advantages working in our favour. Against big-arm we had the support of our former master and an entire city hunting him down, and on the Dum Expedition we had Arsenil and Deathfang, a half-dozen landships, and a spell that let us speedrun the whole mission before Chaos could really muster a response.

The one time we did go in against Chaos underprepared- the Za Goblet, where we thought it would be a heist instead of a bearicane- we got the attention of a Khornate champion with the active support of Khorne, and Mathilde came within what looked very much like a single roll of dying. Chaos can be plenty threatening, we just haven't been in many situations where we were facing it in even neutral conditions (even the big demon army we fought got fucked over by the transition back to reality and infighting).
 
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Wiggy said:
I'm sure knowing our lord tzeentch had our back with the magic would make the people worried about miscasting battlemagic so relieved.
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Oh yeah, just one WEB-MAT action with our pal Egrimm to get some thingy with a little bit of Tzeentchian sorcery, and that +20 to spellcasting would make battlemagic A-OK.

I even bet that "??? when spellcasting in the presence of Tzeentchian sorcery" helps with miscast mitigation, and in the worst case a feathery friend will be waiting for us in the warp to show us the way out. :V
 
The thing with the LoC is that it is very easy to file the whole thing under "occupational hazard".

We miscast and attracted the attentions of a Greater Demon. Which is a thing that can happen whenever we cast a spell. It could have happened with creating Rite of Way, it could have happened when fighting Drycha, it could have happened whilst windherding with Egrimm.

It could happen again. Laws of probability suggest that it probably will.

And whilst the message it had for us is deeply concerning—that the chaos gods have their eyes on us and want to turn us into their champion—again, just an occupational hazard of being a wizard. We're both a high priority target for corruption, and shockingly vulnerable to it. The Chaos Gods would have to be idiots to not even attempt it.

Now that I've laid out that the whole thing is kinda inevitable, what do we do about it? Aside from not casting magic, that is. Some people want to stop the liminal realm research because they think it's a key component in being visited by a demon, but honestly I believe that anything we do could have resulted in that. It's just poor luck that it happened on the liminal realm action.

The best thing we can do is to be mentally prepared for the possibility, take reasonable risks, and if worst comes to the worst, make sure we go down fighting.

Which is all stuff we were doing beforehand, so there's nothing further to really do in response. That's not inaction, or a lack of concern. It just means that we don't think there's any further practical and realistic ways to be more prepared for it.
 
Glau said:
Disagree. Chaos in this quest has been, basically, a tough sub-boss. Dangerous obstacle on our path, must be overcome to proceed, etc. But no one ever builds a game narrative with the option that a player fails to kill a boss and the story proceeds anyways.

There's a difference between being scared because the fight you choose to get into has a chance of RNG ending you, and a threat that will counter your plans with plans of their own, threaten your power base and loved ones, and feels like you could win a fight and still lose the war.

Chaos in this quest has been a miniboss, not a threat, so far. I have hopes.



Y.E.P.

100% expectation that if we do nothing wrong then nothing will go wrong, and the response to 'hey we know the bad thing can happen because it already has' is 'we rolled a natural one last time'.

I'm curious though: Codex expressed a doyalist opinion, and a bunch of people jumped in trying to push back on it with watsonian arguments. Like, why does it matter what Drycha's in-story information and characterization was, when the thing you are trying to push back on was 'it felt like drycha died like a chump and there never really felt like there was any chance of longer-term reprecussions'?

It becomes a way of invalidating opinions about the story by implying that the only valid arguments are from the perspective of someone inside the story.

"This is why all the characters did as they did" is not a response to "the characters doing this lacked tension".
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Fair enough. I am convinced. Thank you.
I will now relax and vote for more Chaos-tempting options because we'll be fine :p

(More seriously, I also "have hopes", and I'm sure when the Everchosen happens it'll be harder and scarier)
 
Glau said:
I'm curious though: Codex expressed a doyalist opinion, and a bunch of people jumped in trying to push back on it with watsonian arguments. Like, why does it matter what Drycha's in-story information and characterization was, when the thing you are trying to push back on was 'it felt like drycha died like a chump and there never really felt like there was any chance of longer-term reprecussions'?
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Chaos is an endboss. If they could reliably win without self destructing or sabotaging without the Everchosen, narratively they wouldn't need an Everchosen.


Until one comes around, they get clowned on and Worfed just like any CRPG escalating enemy where you don't face their true form until you either hit level 20 or speed run the main quest to the end with no grinding.
 
Baffled by the take that Chaos isn't scary, tbh. That Khornate Champion is the closest the quest has ever come to ending. We straight-up lost that fight, and got bailed out by Ljiliana's intervention roll.

Alberich was tearing through the Unfahigers just fine until we intervened, despite being openly mutated, because he could ensorcel people not to notice.

Drycha was a credible threat who rolled badly. If you're going to say that only Doylist arguments are valid, well, that's the reason that all of the Watsonian answers were tip-toeing around: Drycha rolled very badly, and Kislev rolled very well. If you can't take that into account and adjust expectations accordingly, I can't say you're outright wrong because subjectivity is, well, subjective. But I can't lend your opinion much weight, either.
 
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Deathbybunnies said:
Baffled by the take that Chaos isn't scary, tbh. That Khornate Champion is the closest the quest has ever come to ending. We straight-up lost that fight, and got bailed out by Ljiliana's intervention roll.
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A random bunch of orcs also almost killed us, that is not really the mark of 'scary'. 'This enemy might conceivably kill us' which is all the Khornite managed to prove, just puts them in line with all the other enemies. As for Alberich he was... er *checks notes* killing disgraced nobles Mathilde had reason to hate anyway. the fact that he used his own livery that last night just made him look like a clown. This is of course because he was a clown, Slaanesh's sad clown, but it is worth keeping in mind Pennywise was a clown as well
 
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"chaos not actually that scary" factoid actualy just statistical error. average person should be very scared of chaos. Murders Mathilde, who lives in Karak & foils over 10,000 chaos plots each day, is an outlier adn should not have been counted
 
WHFRP and Warhammer have two separate takes on Chaos that kind of obfuscate each other.

On the grand scale, they're basically just another country with bad foreign policies and lots of infiltrators. They're gross and bad. They're gross, but in the sense that you don't feel bad about putting them all to the sword. They're bad, but in the sense that an RTS AI has to cheat to keep up with you.

On the fantasy roleplay scale - on the personal scale - their main source of horror comes from the part where they're corrosive to your character, to everyone's characters, just by existing. Where looking at them can drive you mad, and surviving their attacks can mutate you. Where sometimes they don't need to do that, because you have already been broken, and they're just picking up the pieces.

On the roleplay scale, a greater daemon destroys your city months in advance of its arrival. Not through cults, but by the foul emanation of its passage into reality, a twisted echo of the greater horrors to come. Artists go wild with inspiration, and then start painting with blood. Everybody falls into each other without boundaries, and the children are born blonde and beautiful and heartless. The air takes on a heat haze, and the matter of the world seems to lose its edge and become soft and sensual except where it's been shaped into hooks and blades.

People's eyes glaze over when you say "Greater Daemon". They're just so easy to categorize into an emotionless box. "Oh, these are the ones for the big kids to fight, I'll toss a couple in to show that they mean business".

Roleplay Chaos is an entirely different genre of enemy. The issue comes when interacting personally with the impersonal guys ('meh, they're chumps') or impersonally with the personal guys ('this is so grimdark; they're only winning because they're the author's pets').

But, roleplay Chaos is compelling because if you've become attached to your character you can't tune it out or treat it like a video game. Madness is debilitating. Mutations are a cause for the contemplation of suicide. Roleplay Chaos is designed to hurt you the player, and make you fear for your character's soul, and it's good at that, if your gamemaster is willing to give it its nights on the stage.

We have touched Roleplay Chaos maybe once? It was the Spicy Cheeto equivalent, but close enough to get the idea across. A bird said hello and everybody ran around doom posting.

Spicy is a good comparison. People eat that stuff because it's tasty, you know. I used to doom post about Chaos too, here and in other threads, but these days I feel like they have a place at the end of it all, and maybe beyond. They're the bad guy that cares about you, specifically.
 
Boney said:
"chaos not actually that scary" factoid actualy just statistical error. average person should be very scared of chaos. Murders Mathilde, who lives in Karak & foils over 10,000 chaos plots each day, is an outlier adn should not have been counted
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I mean, Mathilde is cetificably crazy. She wanted to use the Dark Flames of the Dwarf-God of the Underworld to fertilize the fields and seriously considered dating a Dragon. She managed to become kinda-friends with a Skaven and was briefly possessed by the Orc God of Cunning and Magic.

At this point the daemons are the ones who should be scared of her.
 
The Khornate Champion has a special place in my memories of the quest. I originally caught up to the quest around the time of that update - somewhere on the Frozen Sea, two or three updates after the battle at the Kul camp, though it would be a while before I would actually make an account and delurk. At the time I was deliberately trying not to see how much pubilshed story is left, IIRC I was going through reader mode while occasionally switching to the thread to read a bit of the discussion, all the while trying not to look at the page numbers too much, but obviously I had some idea of how much story is left and by then I knew I was nearing the end.

So I get to this fight and Mathilde starts losing and at the back of my mind I know that there's not a ton of pages left and I'm thinking to myself 'how many pages were left in reader mode? One? Was I at the last one? A few updates ago I noticed that the date was current year, so it could be that I just caught up, right? Right?' And as I was slowly scrolling down thinking that at any moment I might see a line telling me that the quest is over and the epilogue will soon follow or something I get to the last roll Mathilde made, which I don't know if you remember but Mathilde actually lost that roll by 10, it was Ranald who won by like 20 or so, and I freeze for like 10 seconds before I finally find the courage to scroll the rest of the way done, and as we all know Ranald and the Kislev pantheon came through at the end and bailed us out but man for a moment there I thought it was curtains for Mathilde.
 
DragonParadox said:
A random bunch of orcs also almost killed us, that is not really the mark of 'scary'. 'This enemy might conceivably kill us' which is all the Khornite managed to prove, just puts them in line with all the other enemies. As for Alberich he was... er *checks notes* killing disgraced nobles Mathilde had reason to hate anyway. the fact that he used his own livery that last night just made him look like a clown. This is of course because he was a clown, Slaanesh's sad clown, but it is worth keeping in mind Pennywise was a clown as well
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Yeah, but the Orcs nearly killed us quite a while ago, through being caught out in screwing up an exfiltration, through sheer weight of numbers, and Mathilde's gotten significantly more lethal since then. The Khornate was effectively a single guy who almost killed us at nearly Mathilde's peak killiness, and frankly wouldn't have been affected by our fancy new swordstyle, as the antimagic effect would shut down the sword-flickering it relies on.
 
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NSMS said:
Specifically, this is what Boney said after the battle:
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The part about information is what makes me sorta regret we didn't take General of Fog. Regardless, I think there's a fairly self aggrandizing paper in how we pitted enemies against each other in K8P, probably combining with Skaven Numerology and how to exploit it.
 
Deathbybunnies said:
Yeah, but the Orcs nearly killed us quite a while ago, through being caught out in screwing up an exfiltration, through sheer weight of numbers, and Mathilde's gotten significantly more killy since then. The Khornate was effectively a single guy who almost killed us at nearly Mathilde's peak killiiness, and frankly wouldn't have been affected by our fancy new swordstyle, as the antimagic effect would shut down the sword-flickering it relies on.
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Look at it from his perspective.

*trains for hundreds of years to be the peak of martial skill, obtains boons of dark glory specifically designed to kill magicians*
*only gets close to killing a wizard in the good graces of the god of thieves and liars a fraction of his age because he gets lucky*

We were only in that position because we choose not to run, that was not even a botched exfiltration, it was us rolling an effective 0 for exfiltration.

Frankly I think those orcs have more to brag about when they meet Gork and Mork :V
 
Don't forget that we very nearly drank from the sippy cup of doom.

Boney said:
You head right for a pile of chests and crates and push hurriedly through them, spilling precious metals and ornamented weapons across the silk floor until you find the case that glows with malign light, and before you realize what your fingers are doing you've opened the clasps and thrown the lid open.

[Bewitchment again: Piety, 15+26+20(Windsage)-10(Again)=51.]

You stare at the deep red liquid that bubbles softly within the embrace of the chalice, suddenly thirstier than you've ever been in your life. It seems to whisper to you, speaking of the gradual transformation that began twenty-five years ago when you first channelled Ulgu into your soul, and how much it could accelerate your ascension. If your Magesight wasn't quite so potent, if your soul wasn't already claimed, you might already be drinking. As it is you stand transfixed, torn between two equally overpowering urges: to embrace and to reject the Chaos Gods from whom your magic ultimately flowed.
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Had the Kurgan not interrupted us moments later, we might be playing as Demon Prince Mathilde right now.
 
DragonParadox said:
A random bunch of orcs also almost killed us, that is not really the mark of 'scary'.
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In addition to the fact that the Mathilde that almost died to the orcs was an extremely different person from the Mathilde that almost died to the Champion, to the point that the comparison is useless-
Boney said:
Alright, class," you begin as you lead the group through the caldera, picking your way through the burned remains of greenskin shanties. "I'm winding the cheekiness down to background levels for this. It's far too easy to underestimate the Orcs. They're usually dim, sometimes seem cowardly, prone to infighting, easy to bait, and often consider strategy to be a form of cowardice. But the greenskins destroyed Solland, were partly responsible for the destruction of Drakwald, and they came close enough to destroying the Moot that now there's Halflings all the way down here. They roll through the Border Princes so often that not a single power in the Old World wants to bother with it, and it's about two provinces worth of marginal-to-okay farmland, huge amounts of timber, and a number of prime mineral deposits. If the Empire is ever destroyed, and pray to your God of choice that it never occurs, I give it one in four odds it's the greenskins that do it. So put your serious faces on and make foremost in your mind the possibility that you're about to encounter large amounts of creatures that could individually easily kill you." Grave silence meets your words, and you'd smile in pride if the topic wasn't deadly serious. "Consider," you continue, "what it would take to convince you to charge a fortified Dwarven position. Orcs do so routinely. Before your arrival, they did so multiple times and came uncomfortably close to succeeding in battles that pitched their weaknesses against Dwarven strengths. Right, Johann?"
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Orcs are, themselves, pretty fucking scary.
 
Nerdasaurus Rex said:
Don't forget that we very nearly drank from the sippy cup of doom.



Had the Kurgan not interrupted us moments later, we might be playing as Demon Prince Mathilde right now.
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That was a roll of 15 on the unmodified dice and it still was not low enough, we would have had to roll 13 or lower and even if we did we have no idea how the cup would have reacted to the anti-Chaos properties of our belt. Not to say that we should take up drinking from Chaos goblets to test it, but still that was not our last shot IMO.
 
I feel like, if people say they weren't that impressed by the showings of Chaos, either the daemons or everchosen candidates, that's fine. In a sense, yes, the chaos-aligned forces we've fought haven't been that impressive. Could they be impressive in the future? Absolutely. We could fight a Keeper Of Secrets without the help of a dragon, we could find out the Changeling's been massively fucking with the Waystone project, we could find an Everchosen candidate whose threat isn't primarily intrigue-based within human society and thus the perfect foe for Mathilde/doesn't roll absolute dogshit, but we haven't. Well, aside from the Khornate champion, but we're already seeing the justifications here.
DragonParadox said:
*trains for hundreds of years to be the peak of martial skill, obtains boons of dark glory specifically designed to kill magicians*
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...was he centuries old? Chaos Champions usually aren't that old, they generally get to where they are in a human lifespan, and I wouldn't think a champion in a relatively modest camp would be more than 40ish. It's the really scary ones that crack centuries.
 
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GrimTheMad said:
In addition to the fact that the Mathilde that almost died to the orcs was an extremely different person from the Mathilde that almost died to the Champion, to the point that the comparison is useless-


Orcs are, themselves, pretty fucking scary.
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Sure, but the point was comparative, not absolute. It's not 'there are no scary enemies in Warhammer', but rather 'Chaos isn't the scariest thing out there'.
 
DragonParadox said:
That was a roll of 15 on the unmodified dice and it still was not low enough, we would have had to roll 13 or lower and even if we did we have no idea how the cup would have reacted to the anti-Chaos properties of our belt. Not to say that we should take up drinking from Chaos goblets to test it, but still that was not our last shot IMO.
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Sure, the whole thing was weighted in our favour because Piety builds are OP, but still, a ~10% chance to instantly fall to chaos is kind of a big deal.
 
DragonParadox said:
We were in the Wastes, that is where the arbitrarily old and powerful ones live and fight eternal for the glory of their dark gods
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Yeah? Just because champions like that do fight there doesn't mean every champion there is centuries old. Generally speaking, more will be young than there will be old ones. Like, do you think we went blow for blow with an equal to Wulfrik?
 
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