Remove ads

Warhammer Fantasy: Divided Loyalties - an Advisor's Quest

Voted best in category in the Users' Choice awards.
Voting is open
Reader mode
We're keeping the credit because it gives us mad wizard rep to have come up with it ourselves.

(Whether it's a mad quantity or a mad quality of wizard rep is yet to be determined, of course, but I'll take either. :V )
 
LightLan said:
But why would they tell us if something we have access to would be good for enslaving a good portion of their citizens?
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
They don't actually seem to have dryads proper. They've got peopel like Cadaeth, but she's somewhere between Elf and Dryad and there's no guarantee that things that work on spirits work on effectively part spirits. They still might not be ok sharing, but I think the chances are higher than it would first appear.
 
deathofrats0808 said:
They don't actually seem to have dryads proper. They've got peopel like Cadaeth, but she's somewhere between Elf and Dryad and there's no guarantee that things that work on spirits work on effectively part spirits. They still might not be ok sharing, but I think the chances are higher than it would first appear.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
To be specific, Cadaeth says that there is no distinction between "Laurelorn Dryads" and "Faniour Elves" in modern Laurelorn:
Boney said:
and in modern times the distinction between Faniour Elf and Laurelorn Dryad has practically disappeared.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Either way, they likely have something, because we saw two Elf-Dryad people with what Mathilde described as a "familiar" bond with each other, but it's unlikely to follow the same principles as the crude apparition binding techniques of the Colleges, which involve slathering a creature with your Wind and stitching it to your soul.
 
"Hey, wanna hear about this neat thing I wanted to try out (but I can give you the credit!)?"

Proceeds to describe a soul-butchery enslavement that would work on the local population, but not her own, in only the most cheerful terms

... Mathilde no
 
guyfromtheplace1 said:
@Boney

I know the Golds made us promise to claim that we came up with the apparition binding techniques without citing them as a source.
And that we very briefly thought about trying apparition binding against Drycha but weren't sure that it would work at all.

I assume Laurelorn must have also been raided by Drycha at least once. They're a source of tree-themed magic and she's questing for more tree magic.

Suppose we asked the elves whether our apparition-binding techniques could be useful as a method of restraining or sealing Drycha.
I'm not sure which elves to ask specifically, but if we do a follow-on 'interactions of high magic and AV' research after the book publication, the topic of apparitions is likely to come up.
Then we explain the political kerfuffle about publishing, and if the 'bind drycha' idea might actually work, ask them to say that they were the ones to supply the initial techniques on subject.

the actual questions
1. Could we ask the Laurelorn elves to confirm one way or the other that our apparition-binding might be effective against Drycha?
2. Could we ask them to pretend to serve as a source for the inspiration of apparition-binding?
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

Anything that would work against Drycha would work against a lot of Laurelorn's weapons, allies, and possibly citizens, so they're unlikely to be willing to open a dialogue about it.

Talon TigerDino said:
The Grey Lord who made dragon-enslaving collars: "Amateur."
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

...except possibly with Lord Skathrai, but there's a reason why they're mostly limiting you to talking to Hatalath, who is the comparatively sensible one.
 
Boney said:
...except possibly with Lord Skathrai, but there's a reason why they're mostly limiting you to talking to Hatalath, who is the comparatively sensible one.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
I find it real funny that overall we haven't really brought Hatalath that far away from his home, despite that kinda being why he was chosen - he is familiar enough with the Empire that he has the moniker 'the Wanderer', and he could recognize Mathilde as being from Stirland (or, well, from Asoborn descent) just by looking at her.

Yet, the farthest we've gotten him away from Laurelorn has been... Southern Middenland, during the original Leylines experiment. That might change sometime soon, but it's kinda hilarious anyway.
 
On the Ulrican schism Laurelorn-Nordland situation, do we know if the Ar-Ulric would accept a repeal of the Vow of Chastity? If he would vote for it, we can try arrange this:

- Ask the High Priestess of Sudfast in Nordland to back Laurelorn in exchange for a repeal of the Vow.
- Convince the Ar-Ulric to raise repealing the Vow at the next meet.
- Ask Heidi to convince the Emperor to accept, in case the Emperor somehow has a stake in the Vow. We can allow her to claim credit for all this assuming it succeeds if she needs it, because there's still all the other electors to convince and she's best positioned to do it for us.

All that's left is to convince Nordland and Middenland, Middenland because their internal competition for influence with the Ar-Ulric, and Nordland for the obvious reason that this is bad for them.
 
Last edited:
Curtains said:
On the Ulrican schism Laurelorn-Nordland situation, do we know if the Ar-Ulric would accept a repeal of the Vow of Chastity? If he would vote for it, we can try arrange this:
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Almost certainly, considering it was instituted as a check on the Ar-Ulric's power, and the Cult at large hates having to follow the vows.

The problem is convincing everyone else to just let them remove it and improve their position. The vows were part of a deal between the Elector-Counts of Middenheim and the Ar-Ulric, they can't just unilaterally go back on it. And what does Todbringer stand to gain from agreeing to this? All he's getting is a threat to his own position in Middenheim.
 
Blackout said:
And what does Todbringer stand to gain from agreeing to this? All he's getting is a threat to his own position in Middenheim.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
I think I have one. Though I'm reluctant to put Ulrikadrin on the table, Sir Rurecht might agree to send assistance to their neutral knight kin, the Knights of the Northern Cross.
There are also a few other Ulrican Knightly Orders that you know of that might be moved to back one side or the other. The Knights of the Order of the Grey Wolf are unlikely to be shifted from their oaths to keep Grey Lady Pass open, but their deeds and opinions are respected within the Cult of Ulric. The same could be said of the Knights of the Northern Cross, an ascetic order with a monastery in the Middle Mountains that battle constantly against the evils that call it home.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Especially since it was he that said that his Knights were (paraphrasing) getting too settled and needed to see more action.

If the Army of Middenland has to garrison against the denizens of the middle mountains, which they probably do, this would indirectly bolster them on that front. And part of the middle mountains is on the Nordland-Middenland border. If Ulrikadrin-in-the-middle-mountains can be neutrally stand in force right there, it'd help further lower the risk of descent into violence.
 
Curtains said:
I think I have one. Though I'm reluctant to put Ulrikadrin on the table, Sir Rurecht might agree to send assistance to their neutral knight kin, the Knights of the Northern Cross.

Especially since it was he that said that his Knights were (paraphrasing) getting too settled and needed to see more action.

If the Army of Middenland has to garrison against the denizens of the middle mountains, which they probably do, this would indirectly bolster them on that front. And part of the middle mountains is on the Nordland-Middenland border. If Ulrikadrin-in-the-middle-mountains can be neutrally stand in force right there, it'd help further lower the risk of descent into violence.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
I think that Todbringer would need more of a bribe than the support of a couple hundred wolf-riding knights.

Not that that's even a bribe that the Ar-Ulric could bring to bear, given these particular knights don't listen to him anymore.
 
Last edited:
Ulkrikadrin wouldn't be doing it for the Ar-Ulrik. We'll be asking them. And Sir Ruprecht would decide based on the strength of its merits. And we know he's looking for places to send the Knights, so he could feasibly agree.

While they aren't a lot, the winter wolves would serve as ample demonstration that healing these rifts would provide immediate military benefits just from the cult's forces reuniting. We can spin that, and so could the Ar-Ulric, and possibly others besides.
 
Curtains said:
Ulkrikadrin wouldn't be doing it for the Ar-Ulrik. We'll be asking them. And Sir Ruprecht would decide based on the strength of its merits. And we know he's looking for places to send the Knights, so he could feasibly agree.

While they aren't a lot, the winter wolves would serve as ample demonstration that healing these rifts would provide immediate military benefits just from the cult's forces reuniting. We can spin that, and so could the Ar-Ulric, and possibly others besides.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
I still don't get how this results in the requirement of celibacy being removed.

That's inherently an argument between the Ar-Ulric and Todbringer, the entire reason it exists is to restrict the power of the Ar-Ulric.
 
It doesn't. The point of removing the vow is for us to offer it in exchange for the High Priestess of Sudfast convincing her faithful to be okay with Laurelorn.

This isn't supposed to be a huge diplomatic coup, only stabilising the Laurelorn situation, and maybe using what we have to untangle as much of the knot as we can.

If Todbringer decides it's not enough on his end, it would be much harder. Though if it comes to a vote there are other electors we can convince instead.
 
Last edited:
Would limiting the vow of celibacy to the Ar-Ulric position be in any way feasible?
Like, candidates for the position can't be married and have kids.
 
Some of the power of the Ar-Ulric office stems from the people in the cult, so if it's good for the people, it would be good for the power of the Ar-Ulric. Though maybe the man himself might seperately have an opinion on what he wants.
 
I'd like to point out that the mainstream cult seems to only pay lip service to the vow—the head of Ulrikadrin has an adult son, and I believe Boney mentioned something about how in canon the next Ar-Ulric has the same surname as the current one.

They mainly use it nowadays as a bludgeon to restrict membership to men of Teutogen descent only.
 
Blackout said:
Why would the Ar-Ulric agree to that?
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Pressure from the rest of the Ulricans. The Ar-Ulric is technically not giving up anything new.

The Graf of Middenland is happy because there won't be a rival dynasty
The Ar-Ulric has defanged part of the threat to his power, because the faction that wants women in the priesthood is on the Nordland ulrican side
 
Been thinking about the effort to work out the forging of waystone gold.

The mention that melted waystone gold was 'less lodestone-y' is very interesting.
So the theory of magnetism that I've heard is that nonmagnetic objects have their positive and negative charges aligned in any number of different directions, in any number of different sized chunks.
While magnetic objects have most or all of their positive and negative charge aligned along a single axis.
And the process of creating a magnet is about altering that charge alignment such that it becomes more aligned to a single axis.
As it was explained to me, we don't actually know that this is true, because it's hell to test.

I sort of expect that if the lodestone comparison was made and is actually correct, one of the first things that would have been tried is the old trick of rubbing a magnet back and forth on something to make it a temporary magnet.
If that find that makes melted waystone gold temporarily acquire the magical properties of unmelted waystone gold, that in itself will be a very interesting scientific finding for this era, discovering that nonmagnetic objects may have the properties of magnets without projecting a noticeable magnetic pull.

While whichever physical or magical method they use to align the waystone gold correctly may potentially be able to be used to create lodestones itself.
An amazing breakthrough that will ease costs of experimenting with the things, and also greatly ease the costs of getting compasses made.

Assuming electricity works the same way, with more lodestones around we might even see someone else invent an electric generator.
And find that the only practical thing to power using that generator at the current level of lack of knowledge is lighting systems based on the one we studied off the Skaven.
 
Last edited:
Reader mode
You must login or register to reply here.
Voting is open
Remove ads
Back
Top