Warhammer Fantasy: Divided Loyalties - an Advisor's Quest
- Thread starter Boney
- Start date
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Parabola
Divided Loyalties Librarian
- Location
- The Destination of Fate
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Even if there weren't horrible political or practical consequences out of making the thing and everyone were happy with human wizards, the idea might not be doable. We know that people in general can have enough degree of aethyric sensitivity that they can vaguely feel magic without actually having the ability to use it (such as possibly Wilhelmina).
And it's not like a human sense, either, where it's just part of your body, it's the soul's capacity of feeling out magic, and it usually gets filtered through human senses. As such, unlike regular senses, it's something that can become better through a moment of sudden insight like Mathilde, or years/decades of experiences (also like Mathilde, or like Volans).
So it's unlikely you'd find any one setting to a Wind-flashbang that would reliably make potential magic-users flinch.
And it's not like a human sense, either, where it's just part of your body, it's the soul's capacity of feeling out magic, and it usually gets filtered through human senses. As such, unlike regular senses, it's something that can become better through a moment of sudden insight like Mathilde, or years/decades of experiences (also like Mathilde, or like Volans).
So it's unlikely you'd find any one setting to a Wind-flashbang that would reliably make potential magic-users flinch.
WanderingEye
smol skeleton
Even if it's only Ulgu viable and a Grey only secret, other Wizards have their senses they probably can guess what's happening after a while and will ask some pointed questions.
- Location
- Toronto, Ontario(occasionally)
Or until we're staring down the barrel of some broadly influential disaster and are thinking about what exactly we're going to prioritize sacrificing or protecting while trying to increase the Empire's military power suddenly.
I know for one that I'd be very tempted to risk it instead of risking actually using the Necromancy spells from the Liber Mortis.
And potentially tempted to resort to this over resorting to trying an Ulgu-Dhar combination derived from the Skaven(for all that that might involve less immediate soul-turning-to-dhar).
- Location
- Earth
Hm, so if the ability to use magic is only found in 1/1000 people, then how do the Hedgewise and other small rural traditions find people to keep things going? It'd be hard to find even one apprentice a generation in a village with a population of a few hundred, nevermind references to there being multiple Hedgewise native to one village.
Are most of them nonmagical people or people with Windsight but no ability to manipulate magic eking out little bits of magic from specific material and circumstantial resonances?
Are most of them nonmagical people or people with Windsight but no ability to manipulate magic eking out little bits of magic from specific material and circumstantial resonances?
- Location
- Finland
I don't really see much use for "discover windsight" spell in an emergency.
It takes years to train a wizard, by the time something is an emergency, it is too late to start training wizards.
Short term it only helps someone to hunt down potential casters, and long term that is exactly what it would be used for.
Best to just, not bother.
It takes years to train a wizard, by the time something is an emergency, it is too late to start training wizards.
Short term it only helps someone to hunt down potential casters, and long term that is exactly what it would be used for.
Best to just, not bother.
- Pronouns
- He
I think it might have been more because of the rapidly exploding vial in her hand, but there is something similar to the windsight flashbang;
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The Hedgewise are the members of the Hedgefolk who have the ability to use magic. For the rest of them, it's a religion/mystery cult/social group and a collection of unusually effective folk cures and superstitions. When a Hedgefolk finds someone willing to join who has magical ability, they refer them to one of the Hedgewise.
- Location
- Toronto, Ontario(occasionally)
Or maybe rule that it requires some unusual confluence of circumstances to be viable?
As in getting enough wind moving to guarantee a flinch reaction requires that you have battle-magic levels of wind moving? And some kind of stationary infrastructure to suddenly move a large amount of wind from somewhere out of observation into somewhere within observation range?
So the testing process would be more 'get people to stand in front or this wizard tower without telling them why in advance.'?
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- Location
- Earth
So Hedgewise themselves are kind of rare, it's just that Hedgefolk-dominated areas will recruit just about anyone with magical ability living there and their social networks are developed enough that any magically talented Hedgefolk looking for a master will be able to find one even if they have to travel a few villages?
Could this also be said of the Belthani Teclis recruited, where most of the population just has a culture/religion/set of unusually effective folk practices, and anyone with actual magical talent automatically joins their magical tradition?
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- Location
- Washington
In addition to "rest of the hedgefolk help with recruiting" as boney mentioned it is worth remembering the magic is RARE but it isn't RANDOM. Magic passing down within the same family is well documented at this point, so if a village already has a hedgewise it is more likely than the naive application of the 1/1000 chance would suggest for that hedgewise to find an apprentice because the first people they're looking at are their own children, grandchildren, nieces and nephews, cousins.
Even if we handwave away all the unintended consequences, it still runs into the problem that unwilling conscripts aren't actually that useful for the Colleges.
Pretty much every single village in the Empire will have someone who either lives on the outskirts or visits semi-regularly that is turned to for solutions for unusual problems and maladies. Sometimes these are entirely mundane, like herbalists or barber-surgeons or just someone that's old enough to have seen it before and clever enough to have learned from it. Sometimes they claim magical ability, and sometimes they actually have some form of self-developed talent - the term for these is 'Hedge Wizards' and 'Hedge Witches', not to be confused with the Hedgefolk. Sometimes these are part of a magical tradition, like Hedgefolk or Druids or Hag Witches. Sometimes a Chaos Sorcerer or Vampire or Necromancer will build a power-base this way, and that sort of thing turns nasty enough to justify the existence of Witch Hunters.
In towns and cities, this niche is filled by folks like physicians, apothecaries, Cults and Wizards instead.
Yes. There's a few avenues for a magical tradition to be able to find enough recruits to survive. They can provide enough benefits to the host culture that the host culture helps propagate it, like the Hedgewise and Druids. They can travel widely and have some sort of draw to bring in both paying customers and potential recruits, like soothsayers and illusionists. Or they can have a powerful patron, like the Colleges and Chaos Cults.
pucflek
Verified simpleton
- Location
- Czech Republic
Why are you trying to keep convincing the qm to approve something he directly tells you is bad. And then try to convince him that it could be less bad if he just converted some of his finite time and effort to build workable framework. Can we just learn to drop bad ideas after literal word of god states them to be so instead of making him invest further brainpower to continue that line of thinking?
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- Location
- A dark lair
- Pronouns
- He/Him/They
I beg your pardon, but ...Yeah, how about we talk about good ideas
Like the FUEL AIR BOMB
what
Edit: And after a quick search, now I see that this is an idea that has been kicked around off-and-on since at least 2019.
Questers, as a late arrival - who's been sleeping on this omg?
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- Location
- Australia
Somic
It's meow or never
- Pronouns
- She/Her
There was an idea floating around some time back to create an Ulgu spell to turn a liquid into a mist and control it. The liquid, of course, being something very much flammable.
Jokes aside, I don't think that's quite within Mathilde's paradigm, but now I'm having hopes for Eike shenanigans since she's so great at using the material world.
- Location
- A dark lair
- Pronouns
- He/Him/They
Yes, yes - I know what a Fuel Air Bomb is.
I'm now wondering why the Magnificient Mistress of the Staff of Mistery hasn't mastered it yet.
- Location
- Australia
Since making the Staff of Mistery, Mathilde's spent so long in the shadows of mountains that she now thinks of Ulgu as shadows instead of mist.
Somic
It's meow or never
- Pronouns
- She/Her
See, things can explode without needing Winds, just because of their material properties. I'm thinking of using just enough Ulgu to alter the form a material takes (from contiguous to dispersed through the air) without messing with reality so hard it forgets the properties of the material entirely.
Mist is very, very Ulgu.
fictionfan
Please sir, may I have some Meows?
- Location
- Tempe, AZ
Given that Eike is going down the path of magical material science do you think it might make sense to assign her to the magical smith we have working for us?