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Warhammer Fantasy: Divided Loyalties - an Advisor's Quest

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Nerdasaurus Rex said:
This is very weird to me, because whilst not every pub serves food, plenty do—hell, one of the largest pub chains in the UK, Weatherspoons, is well know for serving food. I would never describe Weatherspoons as a tavern. Most of the pubs in my village serve food too—mainly because their customer base is city people out for a jolly in the countryside, and having lunch and a drink at a pub is part of the experience.

Honestly, I'm not sure I'd describe any modern drinking establishment as a tavern—it's just not really a word that's used much in my experience.
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We have a number of self professed taverns in the US, at least in my home town of Athens GA. Though this begs the question if they are not actually taverns but rather pubs and restaurants with tavern in the name.
 
NexusEye said:
Just because Sylvania has Waystones that doesn't necessarily mean they're active, they may feed into somewhere other than Mordheim or they may have fed into Mordheim but where shut down after its destruction to prevent Dhar accumulation and the reason the Amethysts have a map of them might be to identify when an amateur Necromancer figures out that turning dormant Waystones back on would create a fantastic source of Dhar and eliminate them before they manage to fuck up Sylvania even more.
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Still, we apparently have a map, so-

Boney, did the Sylvanian Waystones feed into Mordheim? Are they still active feeding somewhere else?

Or is the map a map of where there were Waystones?
 
A tavern has a second floor, a pub has one. Basements don't count for this
 
Mystic Pentagram said:
Warhammer begin consistent abaout something? Are the End Times upon us?
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Cubicle 7 has a better track record in terms of consistency than its predecessors. I distinctly remember how information that you can read in Heirs of Sigmar in 2E is casually disregarded in another source material within the same edition, because the writers couldn't bother to get their info straight.
 
Mopman43 said:
Still, we apparently have a map, so-

Boney, did the Sylvanian Waystones feed into Mordheim? Are they still active feeding somewhere else?

Or is the map a map of where there were Waystones?
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Between Vanhel and von Carstein, Sylvania was ruled by human necromancer dynasties who built their manors and castles around functioning Waystones. (According to some histories they were already doing that before Vanhel, but there's no consensus on what they might have been getting up to before Vlad introduced Nagash's arts.) While they found it useful to have Dark Magic around, they were still live humans and so still needed to clear out enough room around them for them and their subjects and their cattle to live and their crops to grow. Some of those Waystones fed west into the Moot, others just fed into the magical realm of Not My Problem Any More. Vlad von Carstein maintained this when he came into power, but Mannfred didn't give a shit about Sylvania's long-term prospects and Konrad didn't even know what a long-term was. There would need to be a survey to follow up that map to check which are still there and how they all connect up. Chances are that somewhere from many to most of them aren't part of the network any more, they're making one place livable at the cost of making another place nasty even by Sylvania standards.
 
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Boney said:
Between Vanhel and von Carstein, Sylvania was ruled by human necromancer dynasties who built their manors and castles around functioning Waystones. (According to some histories they were already doing that before Vanhel, but there's no consensus on what they might have been getting up to before Vlad introduced Nagash's arts.) While they found it useful to have Dark Magic around, they were still live humans and so still needed to clear out enough room around them for them and their subjects and their cattle to live and their crops to grow. Some of those Waystones fed west into the Moot, others just fed into the magical realm of Not My Problem Any More. Vlad von Carstein maintained this when he came into power, but Mannfred didn't give a shit about Sylvania's long-term prospects and Konrad didn't even know what a long-term was. There would need to be a survey to follow up that map to check which are still there and how they all connect up. Chances are that somewhere from many to most of them aren't part of the network any more, they're making one place livable at the cost of making another place nasty even by Sylvania standards.
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So there are non-zero odds that if we do figure out how to make more waystones and plug them in, it might be relatively cheap time and resource wise to plug Sylvania back in? Provided the census turns out "well yeah maybe 5% of them still exist".
 
StormySky said:
Is that something we need to commit an AP to just for that, or is it bundled up with something else?
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Every province is going to need an archives delve and a series of surveys before new Waystones start going up. Sylvania's is probably just going to be particularly grim.

pucflek said:
So there are non-zero odds that if we do figure out how to make more waystones and plug them in, it might be relatively cheap time and resource wise to plug Sylvania back in? Provided the census turns out "well yeah maybe 5% of them still exist".
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Odds are that the new Waystones are not going to be as good as the old ones, so incorporating existing ones as much as possible is going to be the best way forward.
 
Boney said:
Every province is going to need an archives delve and a series of surveys before new Waystones start going up. Sylvania's is probably just going to be particularly grim.
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So it would be part of a 'The Waystone Project, Deployment' action if/when we start making and deploying waystones, not a 'survey a province's waystone network' action?
 
I'm wondering how the magical health of our fief is, and if there's any way we can use what we've learned during the project to specifically aid them.
 
Here's hoping that the Orbflex is enough to get the Colleges' accumulated knowledge and manpower to survey the Empire.
 
Huh, neat, I just got around to finding this updated spells idea list post.
LawsOfRobotics said:
As per my earlier post, I have made an updated list of Approved Spells because the previous list has not been updated in a while. I tried to organize the list a little by grouping similar spells and sorting by when ideas were suggested. Apologies if some formatting in the quotes got removed, I may try to fix that when I have more time.
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I'm pretty happy that some version of this↓ seems acceptable.
LawsOfRobotics said:
Reading some of the ideas for what battle magic spells we could create has inspired me to revisit an idea I had a week ago. While the original idea won't work, I am still interested in the idea of a spell that can cause our enemies to start fighting each other, this time based on Windherder. While the idea of a direct damage spell appeals, and I do want to develop the Rider in Red pokeball and a Cloudkill spell, I want to explore the idea for a spell that amplifies what Mathilde can achieve with infiltration ahead of a battle. Provoking infighting in our enemies is directly in Mathilde's bailiwick and has been very effective before.

The idea is that we could combine a scaled up Cloud of Confusion, and mulitcasted Choleric or Consuming Wrath from the Bright college. The general effect would be to confuse a group of enemies in their camp, making them more prone to violence (if possible the cloud would be tuned to make the targets unable to identify those around them), then incite that violence so that our enemies eliminate each other for us. I think this has a lot of potential when facing large armies that have been combined from several normally hostile groups, like those following the Everchosen.

The problem for this idea is where to source the Bright magic spell. We either need to help a bright wizard infiltrate the enemy camp with us, then make sure they aren't affected by Cloud of Confusion, or we need another source of Bright magic. @Boney can we do Windherder spell casting where the other magic is sourced from an enchanted item instead of directly from a Wizard? Also is the basic idea for this Windherding spell viable?

I will also note that while casting two mental magics on our enemies may cause Dhar to form in their brainmeats, I don't really consider that a probl
em.
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I had a similar idea at some point, but I don't remember whether I actually brought it up.
And putting a fairly lengthy effort into searching isn't bringing up any time where I actually asked Boney about my idea.

So spell ideas:
Could we do something similar to @LawsOfRobotics ideas, but with much of the complexity cut out and with just Ulgu?
(Complexity like trying to give it a discriminator so it only mentally afflicts enemies in an area for the first idea, or it needing to be a Windherder work to add in anger induction for the second idea.)

1st spell idea: A spell that just surrounds enemies with a fog that makes their senses basically useless for clear identification of whoever's moving around in the fog with them, combined with an Ulgu mental component prodding them to make a mistake and misidentify allies or nonhostiles as enemies?
Stretch goal is to have the 'induce a misidentification' component trigger very strongly in those afflicted that are feeling most uncertain about the identity of one of the unclear shapes moving in the fog near them, and for said 'misidentification' component to target whoever the afflicted is feeling most uncertain about, so it'll trigger when two formations that were at a distance close with eachother, or when messengers or disorganized troops try to move closer to an afflicted.
Mostly depends on warrior of fog trait to invent.

I'm not even sure it'd be better than lawofrobotics idea, as it could be less effective against forces in camp or forces prepared for mental trickery without a direct aggression-inducing component.
But if it works it'd be castable by other Grey Wizards, and would potentially be very useful as the enemy is marching onto a battlefield(if cast in the space in formation between two non-order groups who lack trust with eachother, or if cast on a camp in the immediate aftermath of a successful assassination)


My other spell idea is more relevant to current events.
If we go with a river magic transmission design we're going to need to check out the Great Mortis River in advance, and try to make sure we're not setting the Empire up to be vulnerable to the same kind of attack from Nagash.
So we go down to check Nehekhara out, study the river, maybe try to pry secrets/studies of the river out of the mortuary cult.
We might need yet another special dispensation to be able to study that river.
OOC we know that it may be possible to negotiate with a Tomb King, especially if it's about thwarting Nagash.
But IC we don't know that, and couldn't admit to having done such a thing if we actually did it. It'd make us seem incredibly suspicious.

We should be able to get a dispensation to study the river to stretch to sorting through stolen Nehekharan scrolls looking for anything on their own studies of what Nagash did to the river, and reading the relevant ones, but that still requires actually getting the Mummy scrolls without dying immediately, or dying afterwards as they hunt us down to get them back.
We would have to make some kind of copying or scroll/page photographing spell. Just to make it easy to get in and out, and to escape without letting them know we've successfully stolen their secret knowledge.

So 2nd spell idea. I imagine that Ulgu is slightly repelled from any text that contains meaning and isn't a rune of Ulgu.
We combine that with the MMAPP spell to create a spell that can record the positioning of where Ulgu is repelled by meaningful text.
Possibly by creating a MMAPP illusion of the rest of the scroll, and leaving the text out of said illusion.
We create a spell or enchanted item that can store a large number of these MMAPP illusion 'negatives' and we use it to photograph large amounts of text which we want to steal the content of without actually stealing the paper or papyrus.
Probably depends on our various language and paperwork traits to be invented, possibly also bibliothecagraphy if we get the final of three points required to develop it at some point during our current library construction side project.


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@Boney
Spell ideas TLDR summary/questions

1st spell idea: A spell that just surrounds enemies with a fog that makes their senses basically useless for clear identification of whoever's moving around in the fog with them, combined with an Ulgu mental component prodding them to make a mistake and misidentify allies or nonhostiles as enemies?
Stretch goal is to have the 'induce a misidentification' component trigger very strongly in those afflicted that are feeling most uncertain about the identity of one of the unclear shapes moving in the fog near them, and for said 'misidentification' component to target whoever the afflicted is feeling most uncertain about, so it'll trigger when two formations that were at a distance close with eachother, or when messengers or disorganized try to move closer to an afflicted.
Mostly depends on warrior of fog trait to invent.

1. Is this viable?

2nd spell idea, more relevant to near-future.
I imagine that Ulgu is slightly repelled from any text that contains meaning and isn't a rune of Ulgu.
We combine that with a variant on the MMAPP spell to create a spell that can record the positioning of where Ulgu is repelled by meaningful text.
Possibly by creating a MMAPP illusion of the rest of the scroll, and leaving the text out of said illusion.
We create a spell or enchanted item that can store a large number of these MMAPP illusion 'negatives' and we use it to photograph large amounts of text which we want to steal the content of without actually stealing the paper or papyrus.
Probably depends on our various language and paperwork traits to be invented, possibly also bibliothecagraphy if we get the final of three points required to develop it at some point during our current library construction side project.

2. Is this viable?
 
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To the thread: we are still at the point where even if we had a complete map we wouldn't be able to do anything with it until we get a full Waystone up and running, right? So all the mapping actions are just about making things easier AFTER the project itself succeeds?
 
Glau said:
To the thread: we are still at the point where even if we had a complete map we wouldn't be able to do anything with it until we get a full Waystone up and running, right? So all the mapping actions are just about making things easier AFTER the project itself succeeds?
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What is success?

No, seriously. Is success:
  1. when we walk away with stolen secrets and diplomatic ties, but no actual Waystones?
  2. when the project does not require Mathilde as the keystone keeping everyone else in the room?
  3. when we've deployed enough tributaries to fill in most of the gaps in the existing network?
  4. when we create a functional Waystone prototype?
  5. when we secure agreements between Kislev, the Empire, Laurelorn, and the Karaz Ankor to work together to build Waystones?
  6. when the corresponding alliance has successfully deployed Waystones and tributaries everywhere within their reach?
  7. when doing something with that magic other than sending it to the Vortex is an option?
Depending on where you draw that line, you'll get a different answer. Though if nothing else, doing the mapping actions means the Empire knows where to put new tributaries, and where they won't do any good.
 
Glau said:
To the thread: we are still at the point where even if we had a complete map we wouldn't be able to do anything with it until we get a full Waystone up and running, right? So all the mapping actions are just about making things easier AFTER the project itself succeeds?
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The thing Boney is talking about is separate from the mapping actions. Note that we've done the mapping action for the Empire; it was one of the first things we did in the Waystone Project. He's talking about how a specific survey of the exact locations of every Waystone and its connections is necessary as part of rollout of new Waystones. The value of the mapping actions has been in identifying general flow patterns and bottlenecks:
Boney said:
Despite recent tensions, Marienburg is a cosmopolitan trade city whose gates are open to all, so you have no trouble moving in and out of the city as you perform your mystical survey. Though it's hard to spot against the blinding torrents of energy flowing from Altdorf and on to Fort Solace, you're greatly relieved to find a trickle of outbound energy heading west-southwest, which must be heading towards the Gisoreux Gap and presumably onwards to Gisoreux itself. That still leaves Marienburg as a possible single point of failure, but it does mean that Fort Solace is not.

These three leylines also allow you triangulate the position of Marienburg's nexus to the fortress of Rijker's Isle, once the seat of the Elector Count of Westerland and, as the Directorate does not trust any one of their number to control such a symbolically and strategically important location, now a heavily-garrisoned prison.
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Here we determined the exact parameters of Marienburg's flow and localized its nexus to a specific spot.
Boney said:
"Next, east to Talabecland. I believe the Horn of Taal to be Talabheim's nexus, and I know it connects to Gross Selon in Ostermark, and we'll be checking it for any other incoming connections. From pre-War of Vengeance maps I've seen, the Elves used to have a string of colonies along the Wolf's Run, so I suspect a nexus in Hochland somewhere."

You're able to confirm that the stream from Altdorf disappears into the Taalgrunhaar forest that the Horn of Taal is somewhere within, and you leave it at that instead of investigating further and finding out for yourself how stringently modern Taalites follow the old tradition that any outsiders looking upon the Horn of Taal would have their eyes put out. You do a great lap of the Taalbaston and sure enough find a stream of energy coming in from the north, which you follow up the Wolf's Run to Hergig. Your first suspicion is the Hochland College of Sorcery, but you follow it instead all the way up to the ancient fortress of Hochergig at the heart of the city. The Hochlanders claim that in the time of Sigmar it withstood the assault of Nagash just as well as Taalaheim, Fauschlag, and Marburg did, and that the largest beastherd the continent has ever seen shattered upon its walls. In other provinces these are laughed off as the petty boasting of the Empire's smallest province, but standing at the foot of the ancient fortress you find it rather easier to believe.

Onwards from Hergig you cross the border and find yourself led to the unassuming barony of Kienbaum, whose single population centre is a town of the same name, centred by a modest castle. The guards on the keep find themselves rather alarmed to be presented with a bevy of Magisters, and you have no trouble talking your way into the central courtyard, which rather incongruously has a small, locked shed in its centre. Inside that - as the castle's steward has appeared and proves rather easy to browbeat into opening it - and covered by a sheet is a familiar shade of gold, the tip of a waystone that must have its foundations deep in the subbasements of the castle. Actually intruding on the castle itself would be more trouble than its worth, so you thank the locals for their time and move on.

The third and, it seems, final stop on this unexpected relay is Castle Lenkster, the fortification guarding both the border with Hochland and one of the larger valleys leading into the Middle Mountains. Local legend has it that this is where the Dwarves of Karaz Ghumzul left the Middle Mountains for the last time, and on the way through they laid a curse upon the mountains. This comes as something of a surprise to you, as you know for a fact that Karaz Ghumzul was abandoned four thousand years ago, and these curse-laying Dwarves must have been leaving just as the ancestors of the Empire were first arriving in these lands. The garrison of Castle Lenkster are state troops reporting directly to the Elector Count of Ostland so you refrain from trying to browbeat your way in, but you do a lap of the walls to confirm that this is the end of the line. Perhaps the fall of wherever was next in this chain of nexuses is either caused by or contributed to the abandonment of Karaz Ghumzul, and the 'curse' the locals remember was a severe uptick in nastiness crawling out of the Middle Mountains now that the ambient magic was no longer being drained away.
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Here we found three previously unknown nexuses within safe locations of the Empire itself.
Boney said:
"Ostermark I've already investigated and I don't fancy a trip into Mordheim without a lot more preparation, so next would be Wissenland. We find the nexus in Nuln - bets on the tower of the Dark Lady of Nuln? - and then we check for any other connections. I'm hoping that there's a way through the mountains, even if it means it goes through Athel bloody Loren."

Huh. Not the tower of Magister Matriarch Elspeth von Draken, but the Iron Isle, the place that the Elector Count Konstantin von Liebwitz offered you when he was trying to recruit you as his Spymaster. Had he known that and assumed you did too, or is it a coincidence? In any case, you do a lap and not only find a stream coming in from a direction that does heavily suggest Bugman's Brewery, but also one from exactly east. Had there been a nexus in Stirland the entire time and you'd failed to notice it? You consult a mental map - Franzen? Vigaun? and then put the matter out of your mind for now. One nexus at a time.
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Here we localized the nexus in Nuln.
Boney said:
As you circle the ruins of what was once the most renowned brewery in the known world and find a torrent of energy flowing in from the west-northwest, you begin to guess at the rest of the tale of Clan Dragonback. Why would part of their Royal Clan walk away from a place of honour in Karak Norn to build a brewery in the lowlands? For duty. Because atop Karak Norn, you now have no doubt, somewhere in that forested plateau upon which grows the finest wood of the Karaz Ankor, is a nexus. What would be the only nexus standing between the Empire and a slow slide into the realm of Chaos if the Rijker's Isle nexus was destroyed.
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Here we determined that Karak Norn has a nexus on it and is one of the two outbound flows for the Empire.
Boney said:
It's with some relief for your younger self that you cross from Stirland into the Moot, glad that the nexus at least wasn't literally in your backyard, and you find your path taking you to the Halfling capital of Eicheschatten. You spend some time staring at the towering stone maypole at the centre of the public green - 'the largest maypole in the Empire!', you remember being told when you spent a night in a tavern here - and smile.
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Locating another nexus.
Boney said:
There's a single other connection here, and you follow it just south of southwest into Averland, where, Aksel says, the Hedgewise claim direct descent from the Priest-Kings of the Brigundians. Your path leads you to the crossroads town of Heideck, somewhat famous for the extensive Dwarven catacombs it is built atop. Somewhere in it, is is said, are sealed chambers filled with riches. Usually the ones saying that are the ones selling 'authentic' maps to credulous visitors, but there's no denying the catacombs exist, as extensive research has been done by the sort of academic who would rather poke around an ancient ruin than go ask the Dwarves the questions they seek the answers to. Somewhere in there, you now have reason to believe, is a sealed chamber wherein one can find a nexus.

It would, it seems, be the last nexus in the chain, a fact that you triple-check before you accept, as Heideck's location seems ideal for a leyline to pass straight down Black Fire Pass from the Border Princes. Perhaps somewhere in the mountains is a destroyed or deactivated or incomplete nexus that once would have bridged north and south.
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One more and, interestingly, one that does not link further into the Border Princes, which has implications about the construction of the Waystone Network. Then she finds a few more nexuses in the Border Princes and finally this:
Boney said:
Looking at your map once more, you're once more struck by the absence of any link between the Empire and the Border Princes. If Karak Hirn had a nexus in the same way Karak Norn did, then it could link Matorca to Bugman's Brewery. Or if Barak Varr was, then it could bridge Matorca and a nexus on the southern end of Black Fire Pass. And then there'd be one more link between east and west, one step further from the Empire being cut off from the Great Vortex. The Border Princes is, you reflect, about as far as you can get from Ulthuan without leaving the continent entirely, both directly and by sea. Perhaps it's simply a matter of the network not being complete before the Sundering caused Ulthuan to withdraw from the Old World for centuries, or before the War of Vengeance ended the alliance between Ulthuan and the Karaz Ankor for good.

Or perhaps the Karaz Ankor and the rest of the network weren't always so separate. All this time staring at maps has resulted in a fair few observations on your part. Praag, according to your map, is exactly west of Karak Vlag. The Gross Selon runestones, likewise, are exactly west of Karak Ungor. Mordheim is exactly west of Karak Kadrin. Eicheschatten is exactly northwest of Karak Varn. Matorca is exactly west of Barak Varr.

Perhaps the Karaz Ankor network was not built entirely separately. Perhaps it was once connected. That the Eonir noticed Karak Eight Peaks reconnecting would suggest that at least a ghost of a connection between the two still lingers. Perhaps it was severed long ago, perhaps out of spite, perhaps out of caution, and perhaps the Dwarves found that once the rubble had been cleared and the bodies buried from the Time of Woes, they no longer knew how to reconnect it.
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So, in summary, the value of the mapping action wasn't in localizing each and every Waystone within the Border Princes and the Empire, which is not a task that could be done in a month, but rather identifying all the internal nexuses that control the flow of the Network, finding links between them, and, most importantly, finding where the vulnerabilities are. We now know where the bottlenecks are, as well as discovering various spots on the map that the Empire needs to protect even more than they otherwise would. This has important strategic implications, which was part of our presentation to the Emperor. And, finally, we have some grounds for speculation into the way the Network used to work.

I agree with you that this does not seem to be immediately-actionable information, but the mapping actions are still valuable insofar as we care about the strategic implications of the path of nexuses that takes magic out of the Old World and sends it to Ulthuan, and are entirely separate from the detailed surveys that will need to be part of any future rollouts. How much do we care about knowing the nexus flows of the areas we have yet to map? Well, that's something to be discussed when we consider mapping the remaining areas. But it's not valueless, even before we have Waystones of our own.
 
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As pickle says, there's a difference between our currently-available mapping actions and what Boney was just talking about (which are presumably going to be called "survey" actions when the time comes).

picklepikkl said:
So, in summary, the value of the mapping action wasn't in localizing each and every Waystone within the Border Princes and the Empire, which is not a task that could be done in a month, but rather identifying all the internal nexuses that control the flow of the Network, finding links between them, and, most importantly, finding where the vulnerabilities are. We now know where the bottlenecks are, as well as discovering various spots on the map that the Empire needs to protect even more than they otherwise would. This has important strategic implications, which was part of our presentation to the Emperor. And, finally, we have some grounds for speculation into the way the Network used to work.

I agree with you that this does not seem to be immediately-actionable information, but the mapping actions are still valuable insofar as we care about the strategic implications of the path of nexuses that takes magic out of the Old World and sends it to Ulthuan, and are entirely separate from the detailed surveys that will need to be part of any future rollouts. How much do we care about knowing the nexus flows of the areas we have yet to map?
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Well, going by the Teclis update, I would say it's a safe bet that northern Bretonnia's and the Empire's energy flows go to Ulthuan via Albion. Having that as IC knowledge (presumably, found out via doing a mapping action that includes Bretonnia) could be valuable - we could use it to pressure Ulthuan to affect negotiations for the better.

"What do you mean, all our energy is going to some mythical land that is magically hidden?? How do we know they're using this energy for good, or well-protected? Explain this to us, because it's not just Ulthuan's survival at stake here. Why should we not just reroute the energy via Athel Yenlui, which is a more direct path to Ulthuan?"
 
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