fictionfan
Please sir, may I have some Meows?
- Location
- Tempe, AZ
What does Hochlander do on turns that we don't assign him work like when we were doing the mist bridge? I assume that he has some personal pet project like all our other employees do.
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.
- Location
- Norway
The EIC as an institution seems worrying when considered over the span of generations. Mathilde, Eike and Wilhelmina are all cognizant that they live in a death world, but Wilheminas sons seems not to be of great moral character, so even if they get cut out of the will that's no guarantee for future generations.
NavySeel
"I don't know what I'm doing."
- Location
- Places
I mean... that's true, but you can essentially say that for anything run by people.
K von Carstein
Likes to go for a walk
- Location
- Belgium
- Pronouns
- He
I mean, that's true for any feudal society. We just have to hope an dpi check and hope Whilhelmina put enough check and balances.
Corruption could occur over generations, but that's a risk in any institution, and I don't think the EIC is uniquely vulnerable in that regard. Wilhelmina and her future heirs aren't the sole owners of the EIC, and so long as the Grey Order has a stake in the EIC no stakeholder could safely get up to too much naughtiness. And the EIC does have an internal investigations department, which is currently headed by a member of the Empire's secret police.
- Location
- Finland
Imagine couple generations forward.
The head of EIC is working in their office, feeling quiet (or not so quiet) joy of the latest profit margin increases, when suddenly...
"The EIC was created to serve the needs of the Empire, some feel that this purpose has not been fulfilled as well as it could have."
And there is nobody else in the room.
edit-
To clarify, the head if EIC is not the one speaking.
What i am pointing out, is that with Grey Order oversight, EIC has very strong incentive to avoid short term thinking or purely profit motivated actions.
Because no amount of legal arguments is going to save their ass if Grey ORder decides the current leadership would be better of dead.
The head of EIC is working in their office, feeling quiet (or not so quiet) joy of the latest profit margin increases, when suddenly...
"The EIC was created to serve the needs of the Empire, some feel that this purpose has not been fulfilled as well as it could have."
And there is nobody else in the room.
edit-
To clarify, the head if EIC is not the one speaking.
What i am pointing out, is that with Grey Order oversight, EIC has very strong incentive to avoid short term thinking or purely profit motivated actions.
Because no amount of legal arguments is going to save their ass if Grey ORder decides the current leadership would be better of dead.
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- Location
- Utrecht
I would argue, that Kislev delivered enough to the Waystone Projekt, that they dont need the free pass. Yes the Icewitches have not done a lot, but the Hags have.
Some thoughts about which leyline methods we could use for those projects. I skipped over most of the discussion around the vote except for the Boney posts, so apologises if this has already been addressed.
Mordheim and Praag are both built on rivers which pass roughly through their centers according to some canonical maps, so riverine Waystones could cover at least most of them. Leyline Waystones might be trickier - Mordheim because the Waystone network in that area is most likely either destroyed or at least very heavily damaged, Praag because we're still not sure how the leylines work in Kislev. Praag does have a big benefit over Mordheim in that it has a working nexus, so if we can make normal leylines work in Kislev we can just feed our new Waystones into it.
Mousillon probably has the same problem as Mordheim regarding the state of the surrounding network so normal leylines might not work there, and riverine Waystone are also problematic there since Mousillon is on the mouth of a river, and we can't send Winds upstream - though we could probably send Dhar upstream with spirit leylines.
The Drakwald doesn't have major rivers running through it so we'll have to use regular leylines. The network in the Drakwald is probably heavily damaged, but to build a chain of networks to carve it in half we'll have to start from the edges and work our way inside anyway, and in that case we probably could just connect the edges of our chain to the surrounding functional network.
Troll Country might be a good use case for river leylines, since Boney noted that many areas in northern Kislev are far from functional Waystones but close to rivers. The Black Water is another candidate for river leylines, since it's the headwaters of the Skull River, though we might just be able to use regular Waystones there. That the Skull river empties into the Black Gulf, which has a chain of four nexuses on its northern shore, could help us reabsorb the magic if we go the riverine leyline route - though in that case we may also want to map Tilea and make sure that the Border Princes nexus chain doesn't eventually feed its magic into Skavenblight.
The Middle Mountains would require regular leylines, there isn't a river ringing the Middle Mountains - there are some rivers to the south of the Middle Mountains, so we could use riverline or dual transmission Waystones there, but that's only for like half of the required Waystones and also there's a chain of three functioning nexuses along the Wolf's Run so that part of the Middle Mountains' perimeter might not really need new Waystones.
I actually really like the idea of using Waystones to starve the Brass Keep of magic. Improving the Middle Mountains will be beneficial to Middenheim, so that's a good way of repaying the biggest supporter of Eonir diplomacy , and it'll also probably make our Haléthan contributors happy. It's just a good idea in general - ideally we'll reclaim all of the Forest of Shadows nexuses eventually, but the Brass Keep might be particularly urgent since it's controlled by Chaos worshippers and we know that Chaos cults are acting up right now because of the Everbowl. It might be good to deny Chaos a major nexus sooner rather than later.
There's two big problems with that idea. One is that it's a huge project - based on the numbers Boney gave us, with the number of Wasystones we'll need for the Middle Mountains we could also cover Praag and Mordheim and Mousillon and still have Waystones to spare. The other problem is that a large part of that hypothetical chain passes through Nordland. Maybe we could convince the Nordland Elector that this is about screwing Chaos over so we should put aside our disputes and work together on this, but even if that works it might lead to inconvenient questions like "those carvings on the new stones are dedicated to who?" and "Salzenmund and Neues Emskrank send their magic where?", the answers to which might make Nordland somewhat less enthusiastic about Waystones.
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What we are dealing with, ultimately, is a high power energy storage and transmission system. And those, by their very nature, areeasily made dangerous. Even IRL we sometimes get things like spontaniously combusting batteries (looking at you, Samsung smartphones!) And IRL only deals with boring old electricity, not notoriously unstable warhammer magic.
I don't think Praag has a working nexus. If it did it would look very different.
pucflek
Verified simpleton
- Location
- Czech Republic
The word of Boney on it is kind of... ambiguous.
But Quest canon sourcing puts "whats in the update is higher up than WoG in comments" so i would tentatively say that there might be a waystone. Probably not Nexus proper? Dunno.
Its also possible that its just one waystone/nexus there, the Ice Witches cannot expand its area of influence and so it only siphons the magic from a comparatively very small area.
EDIT: There is also this
Considering that Mathilde saw the energies going from Kislev to Praag. If Praag did not have at least a functioning waystone, the flow from Praag would go to Castle Alexandronov.
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No, there's definitely a working nexus in Praag, Mathilde saw the Kislev-Praag leyline with her own eyes during the Drycha business. IIRC she also remarked in that same update that Praag was recovering, only very very slowly. What Niedzwenka told us about the Kislev network might explain part of the problem - there's an outflow of magic from Praag to Castle Alexandronov, but there's also an inflow of magic from Kislev, and possibly the only reason the total magic goes down is that the Widow turns some of it into Ice Magic which is used up by Ice Witches. We don't know how fast that process is (we should really look into the Kislev network already) but it's possible that it's a lot slower than just draining the magic away.
In any case, Waystones flow into nexuses. If you have a nexus in a certain spot it'll obviously drain some magic, but if you add more Waystones around it it'll probably do that much faster. I think it's plausible that the Ice Witches could recover the Praag nexus but they couldn't rebuild a bunch of broken Praag Waystones.
pucflek
Verified simpleton
- Location
- Czech Republic
Yeah this sounds like one of the few possible explanations, but then i have no fucking idea what to do with that information because even expanding the network won´t exactly help them provided this is the case. Unless we introduce secondary network into Kislev that does siphon away the magic instead i guess. Thats liable to get pushback.
You are right honestly, we need to stick our head into that mess to find out what exactly is going on in there.
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It's possible the problem isn't low generation rate, but low usage rate? There are less Ice Witches and none of their mega projects like the Palace Wing or that one cool tower are running anymore. Which could ironically mean they have a full battery problem compared to the dwarve's original low battery problem.
That's a good point, thanks for the catch.
If this is the case, to help Kislev it doesn't matter so much whether we can plug Waystone into their nexuses, we'd need to build a spur of the network up from the Empire at least as far north as to intercept the Tobol
This also make me wonder whether it's possible to cross leylines, as if not that might be quite hard, as you'd need to arrange the leyline of the spur so if skimmed the western edge of Erengrad, west of the nexus and the leylines.
Unless we were happy just dump Dhar into the sea.
Unfortunately Tributaries don't drain Dhar, which is the major problem.
consequences
Not A Nice Person At All
- Location
- Jerkville
Fights the inevitable tide of entropy as it seeks to degrade any complex system even without four conceptual embodiments attempting to optimize the flow of collapse. Tries to sneak in a self improvement or research AP when he can get away with it. Yearns for the long awaited day when he levels up and his social turn gets split off.
Well, magic (including Dhar) being in the Leylines while it waits to be 'absorbed' by the Ancient Widow's power is probably a lot better - and less environment damaging - than it being just laying around. And some Leylines carry half the 'excess' magic of a continent, so the Kislev ones will probably keep working as usual if we plug in an additional Waystone or a dozen into them. We'll of course have to take a look at how exactly it works, but I think we can more or less safely assume that building Waystones in Praag and connecting them to the local Nexus will, in fact, decrease the ambient Dhar levels in the city.
I'm not sure I would call it happy but I could see us being pushed into a corner enough to do so, especially when it comes to Kislev. It's not like we can reconnect their network to the Vortex and at the same time they are the ones in most desperate need of Dhar clean up.
Mopman43
Mountain-Hermit of Nitpeak
- Location
- Vermont
At least mechanically in Realm of the Ice Queen, Ice Witches outside of Kislev mainly just lose the benefits they get to casting inside of Kislev (such as all spells counting as having ingredients and using the Glacial Surge table instead of Tzeentch's Curse) but are still able to cast magic, it just operates the same as College Wizards now.
There's also a reduction in available magic to use the farther you get from Kislev and the warmer the climate is, but Laurelorn isn't exactly Araby.
I believe the Time of Legends novels at least had Khaled Al Muntasir (Mr. Possibly-Mannfred) serving him then. Not sure outside of that.
Just wanted to note, Boney is using Castle Alexandranov from Claws of the Great Bear, but that doesn't necessarily mean he's using Boris Ursa from Claws of the Great Bear.
(I was always slightly annoyed that Pirinen took the mythical female-founder figure in Miska and went 'No, no, it was actually her father that's the mythical founder-figure')
Also, was just looking at the map and I realised something. We were told that Leylines can go in ordinal and cardinal directions.
Discussions in the updates seems to imply that this is true for connections between nexuses as well.
This means that nexuses can't connect always directly to each other. Because they aren't always on ordinal or cardinal lines, then they must have intermediary Waystones (or mini-Nexuses) where the flow changes direction
It would certainly be at best an attempt at an ironic reversal of real life if the Ice Witches had tried to write the male uniter of the Gospodars out of history and credited his achievements to his daughter on top of her own.
Generally, I don't see it as all bad. I think Miska still heeded the call of the Ancient Widow and led the Gospodars to conquer Kislev in that telling of the story, she just has to share some of the accomplishment rather than it being all about her as the sole relevant actor of note.
I think this is where these being IC accounts rather than the revealed truth of the setting is important. Having it be that some Kislevites (probably Ursun's devotees) claim that the uniter of the Gospodars tribes was one of theirs and the Ice Witches claim it was actually one of them, indeed their founder; is the kind of contested mythic origins and competition over legitimacy that makes a place feel more real, as it's what we've seen in the real world about how myth building works.
It also gives Ursun a more organic role in the Gospodar's history and explains where He comes from and why He's relevant. Bears have been an important part of the Kislevite theme as long as Ice, I think.
Edit: I need to check the dates, but I think Claws of the Great Bear was published in 1996, I'm not sure how detailed Kislev was before then.
Boney made some comments recently about what happens when Dhar accumulates in Waystones and leylines and it doesn't sound too great.
Discussions in the updates seems to imply that this is true for connections between nexuses as well.
This means that nexuses can't connect always directly to each other. Because they aren't always on ordinal or cardinal lines, then they must have intermediary Waystones (or mini-Nexuses) where the flow changes direction
It would certainly be at best an attempt at an ironic reversal of real life if the Ice Witches had tried to write the male uniter of the Gospodars out of history and credited his achievements to his daughter on top of her own.
Generally, I don't see it as all bad. I think Miska still heeded the call of the Ancient Widow and led the Gospodars to conquer Kislev in that telling of the story, she just has to share some of the accomplishment rather than it being all about her as the sole relevant actor of note.
I think this is where these being IC accounts rather than the revealed truth of the setting is important. Having it be that some Kislevites (probably Ursun's devotees) claim that the uniter of the Gospodars tribes was one of theirs and the Ice Witches claim it was actually one of them, indeed their founder; is the kind of contested mythic origins and competition over legitimacy that makes a place feel more real, as it's what we've seen in the real world about how myth building works.
It also gives Ursun a more organic role in the Gospodar's history and explains where He comes from and why He's relevant. Bears have been an important part of the Kislevite theme as long as Ice, I think.
Edit: I need to check the dates, but I think Claws of the Great Bear was published in 1996, I'm not sure how detailed Kislev was before then.
Boney made some comments recently about what happens when Dhar accumulates in Waystones and leylines and it doesn't sound too great.
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I don't think that's right - we were told that these are the best directions for leylines, and that some leylines flow in those directions, but not all:
I'm also pretty sure we've seen a bunch of leylines that aren't in ordinal or cardinal directions. One example that I found pretty early in the update where we mapped the Empire's network is the Fort Solace-Gisoreux leyline, which flow in a *checks notes* secondary intercardinal direction rather than an ordinal or cardinal direction.
Mopman43
Mountain-Hermit of Nitpeak
- Location
- Vermont
Most of the major details of modern Kislev were established in the 4th edition Empire army book released in 1993.
Pirinen seemed to be largely just drawing from that book when he wrote Claws of the Great Bear, along with throwing in a substantial amount of general Russian tropes and folklore.
There's a few parts that make me think he did have a copy of 1e Something Rotten in Kislev, but if that was the case, I don't understand why he threw in several new tribal cultures instead of using the Ungols.
Overall, the army list represents a lore cul-de-sac that had limited stuff original to it used in later works, with the main things sticking around being the Streltsi and Gryphon Legion.
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Thanks for the correction. My memory of all the links to Ulthuan following cardinal directions had confused me.
Reading that update I also noticed:
That make me I seem that there are Golden Age tributaries, which I recall recently being in dispute, unless this was disproved later.
If we try to design a Teclisian Tributary, those may be the place to start.
There are about four relevant paragraphs about this in that book. The most applicable ones are this:
FEARFROST Fearfrost was forged by the ancient Khan-queen Miska of the Gospodars in the ancient days when the tribes of Kislev first journeyed to the west. Miska led her hordes deep into the Empire itself, defeating two Empire armies and causing considerable destruction before an alliance of the Empire, Bretonnia and Dwarfs finally threw back the Kislev hordes.
…
The people of Kisley moved into the Old World from the areas east of the Worlds Edge Mountains and founded the kingdom which lies on the north eastern borders of the Empire. Its rulers are mighty warrior- sorcerers, practitioners of a brand of magic which is quite unlike that of the Wizards of the Colleges of Magic. This magic draws its powers from the land, and is concerned with the manipulation of chill, frost, and biting winds. The Tzarina Katarin is the current ruler of her warlike race, having succeeded to the throne on the death of her father Boris. She is the most powerful magician ever to wear the crown of Kislev, and her aloof majesty and inscrutable disposition has caused many to refer to her as the ice Queen of Kislev.
…
The people of Kisley moved into the Old World from the areas east of the Worlds Edge Mountains and founded the kingdom which lies on the north eastern borders of the Empire. Its rulers are mighty warrior- sorcerers, practitioners of a brand of magic which is quite unlike that of the Wizards of the Colleges of Magic. This magic draws its powers from the land, and is concerned with the manipulation of chill, frost, and biting winds. The Tzarina Katarin is the current ruler of her warlike race, having succeeded to the throne on the death of her father Boris. She is the most powerful magician ever to wear the crown of Kislev, and her aloof majesty and inscrutable disposition has caused many to refer to her as the ice Queen of Kislev.
That's not a huge amount.
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