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Warhammer Fantasy: Divided Loyalties - an Advisor's Quest

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Boney said:
I think you're confusing Sarvoi with Harathi, who's one of the Grey Lords and had the confrontation with the Sorceress.
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Ahhhhhh. Yeah, that tracks, I'm terrible with names lmao.

To bring it back to the bookmaxxing discussion - Boney earlier said that the full knowledge of the grey lords isn't part of this offer, as the full +5 requires having access to some of their personal notes that were never actually added to the library in the first place. Given that some of these folks were exiled for dubious magical experiments, the juicy dark magic topics like Dhar will probably be hit hardest by the omission.

+3s and +4s are still nothing to sniff at though.
 
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I know this is like twenty pages late. But I think its easy to throw out a decent amount of how land ownership works with peasants in WHF. Cause in IRL you usually didn't have to worry about goblins showing up at your farm and going 'OI WHAT'S ALL THIS THEN?' who then steal your pigs and set your house on fire.
 
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Prime 2.0 said:
Ahhhhhh. Yeah, that tracks, I'm terrible with names lmao.
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Probably doesn't help that Sarvoi did have a confrontation with a Druchii Sorceress, but in a different occassion.
Boney said:
Sarvoi, it seems, has a lot to share but little of it of immediate use - he and the Druchii Sorceress had apparently engaged in some rather recursive mind-games to try to winkle magical secrets out of each other, and while it seems both of them enjoyed the challenge and Sarvoi is eager to retell what he considers to be the most thrilling gambits of it, there seems to be a profound lack of usable results from it.
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Retrueno said:
I wonder if we could do better than Sarvoi in trying to pry magic secrets from the Sorceress... Probably not, but it'd be fun to try
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The trouble is that being seen to try would be disastrous, and if she finds that out she now has blackmail over us. Better to empower others to pry the lore off of her in our stead, if we still think it's worth the hassle.
 
Retrueno said:
I wonder if we could do better than Sarvoi in trying to pry magic secrets from the Sorceress... Probably not, but it'd be fun to try
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[ ] Enter into negotiations with the Druchii delegation to Laurelorn
The Druchii have proffered magical knowledge and advance information on Karond Kar corsair movements in exchange for information on and samples of interesting creatures and phenomena of the Old World, but all kinds of other deals could be negotiated.

:V

I think we could very well better. Though I think we should wait trying until we have gone on Elfcation and done the Druchii Diplomats social action. The latter will help us not get caught unaware of political situations like with Tindomiel, for instance, the Empire and Laurelorn recently recognizing Finubar as Phoenix King. The former will certainly give us an insight into how to peel apart Druchii factions for your benefit.
 
It would totally track for Laurelorn to know relatively little about Dhar - maybe they have no spells whatsoever for it, and most of their books are theoretical, or maybe the topic might be incomplete, at two or three points.

Either way, Laurelorn is a big magical forest that the Eonir have bent to be useful to them, and the excessive use of Dhar could throw that out of wack, given that it can poison the land and give rise to horrible monsters. Dhar is best at destroying, hurting, dominating and corrupting things, and you don't really want the last one.

A sufficiently skilled Wind or Qhaysh user can do most of the damage Dhar can with significantly less risk, in the end.

Prime 2.0 said:
To bring it back to the bookmaxxing discussion - Boney has previously confirmed that the full knowledge of the grey lords is not up for grabs, as the full +5 requires having access to some of their personal notes that have never actually left their homes. Given that some of these folks were exiled for dubious magical experiments, the juiciest dhar lore will probably be hit hardest by the omission.

+3s and +4s are still nothing to sniff at though.
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Yeah, I'm going with the expectation that we may get around +3 or so to the Winds and Dhar (pretty solid given that they're what we care the most about), and hopefully +5s to other magic stuff like Prophecy, Elementalism, Enchantment, Potions, Rituals, and such.

...Ironically, because they're not restricted to us, it's possible the copying might not include Forest Spirits (the Eonir see theirs as mundane) and Beastman Wild Magic (the collaboration with Middenland means they're fair game for us to get even without ithilmar).
 
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[X] [ITHILMAR] A copy of the Library of Mournings, including most restricted texts.
[X] [ITHILMAR] Precious Stones
[X] [ITHILMAR] Middenland Crowns
 
Have we written a paper about Dhar Diagnosis before? If not that might be helpful to have, it probably can't be used to break things too badly.

As for the Transcendent Boon, if we really want to use it that badly, I wonder if we could kick it upstairs and get some options they would like for evaluation of reasonableness?
 
Prime 2.0 said:
The trouble is that being seen to try would be disastrous, and if she finds that out she now has blackmail over us. Better to empower others to pry the lore off of her in our stead, if we still think it's worth the hassle.
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On the one hand, you're right that doing it personally wouldn't really be worth the hassle, and it could be bad.

But, on the other hand, she comes from a society that has one hundred percent primed her to believe that as a head of our magical institution we have a piece of paper that says "I do what I want" and anyone who questions it gets banished to the Shadow Realm, and convincing her of that would be very very funny.
 
Prime 2.0 said:
Ahhhhhh. Yeah, that tracks, I'm terrible with names lmao.

To bring it back to the bookmaxxing discussion - Boney earlier said that the full knowledge of the grey lords isn't part of this offer, as the full +5 requires having access to some of their personal notes that were never actually added to the library in the first place. Given that some of these folks were exiled for dubious magical experiments, the juicy dark magic topics like Dhar will probably be hit hardest by the omission.

+3s and +4s are still nothing to sniff at though.
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He said that we wouldn't get access to the Grey Lord's notes not that we wouldn't get full +5s. It's entirely possible there's enough information in the Library of Mournings for full a full +5 for all magical subjects.
 
quantum lurker said:
Have we written a paper about Dhar Diagnosis before? If not that might be helpful to have, it probably can't be used to break things too badly.
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The Colleges' lessons on how to properly train Apprentices covered how to diagnose Dhar poisoning, so the Colleges must already know.

Then again, Mathilde had to stop herself from "um, actually"-ing the teacher when they were explaining it...
 
NexusEye said:
He said that we wouldn't get access to the Grey Lord's notes not that we wouldn't get full +5s. It's entirely possible there's enough information in the Library of Mournings for full a full +5 for all magical subjects.
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Nah, some magic subjects the library might have +5, but definitely not all.

Boney said:
There'd be a gap to represent the writings of the Grey Lords themselves. Without them it's hard to justify the Eonir having a whole +5 of separate insight to Ulthuan.
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Parabola said:
...Ironically, because they're not restricted to us, it's possible the copying might not include Forest Spirits (the Eonir see theirs as mundane) and Beastman Wild Magic (the collaboration with Middenland means they're fair game for us to get even without ithilmar).
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We're getting all of the unrestricted books in this trade, so we'll get the mundane siubjects as well. The restricted and magical books are just more exciting, so they're dominating the conversation.

NexusEye said:
He said that we wouldn't get access to the Grey Lord's notes not that we wouldn't get full +5s. It's entirely possible there's enough information in the Library of Mournings for full a full +5 for all magical subjects.
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No, Boney's said at least for some subjects the full +5 would apparently need Grey Lord notes.
 
Prime 2.0 said:
The trouble is that being seen to try would be disastrous, and if she finds that out she now has blackmail over us. Better to empower others to pry the lore off of her in our stead, if we still think it's worth the hassle.
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I really should take a moment to refresh the page before posting. Oh well.

Anyways, no one really would care if Mathilde talked to the Druchii to try to get a few magical secrets. Boney has mentioned before that even Bretonnia would bribe Druchii into sharing raid informatiion. Trying to trick morsels of secrets out of a Sorceress would not even register to the majority of people around the world. As far as buying secrets? It's still not really a big deal. Morally dubious, yeah. There's a lot of morally dubious things the Colleges of Magic do, like literal human sacrifice. Not everything the Druchii know is related to Dhar, so there would be suspicions, but that suspicion already exists, like with the Gold Order and their Skaven technology. Buying secrets with a few samples of exotic animals really does not register to the Empire as something important.

Even if Mathilde bought a sorcery that utilizes the wicked powers of dark magic. Naggarond doesn't have a significant presence in the Old World either. Who are they going to threaten to tell? Laurelorn? The ones who invited them so they could meet? Ulthuan? Good luck talking to them. The Empire? Who are they going to trust, Lady Magister Weber who is renowned for being a firm supporter of the Empire's greatest ally or some random elf?

Main problem as far as I can see with negotiating with the Druchii is that you're telling them that the Empire has exotic creatures that they would have reason to raid the Empire for.
 
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Frankly even if they did believe the random dark elf sorceress about Mathilde trying to wrangle dark lore out of her, "I was trying to get enough information for people to work on countermeasures because we don't actually trust them" is something she has basically already been entrusted with by virtue of Being Made Lord Magister.

As to "tell's the Dark Elves there's exotic creatures to raid the empire for" most of the exotic creatures that are not now formally Laurelorn's exotic creatures are far enough inland that I think the raiders would be extremely disappointed. Also, well, even though Druchii don't currently raid the empire's coast very often and most of the places they do are hit by Norscans far more often, that's not never and the Druchii have been at it for a couple thousand years. Any exotic animal actually accessible to their raids I'm pretty sure they would already know about.
 
MrHobbit said:
Main problem as far as I can see with negotiating with the Druchii is that you're telling them that the Empire has exotic creatures that they would have reason to raid the Empire for.
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All the good stuff is in Altdorf, which isn't really feasible for the Druchii to assault given how inland it is. They might as well be trying to strike Nuln from Norsca, or get to Rome over the Alps.
 
MrHobbit said:
Main problem as far as I can see with negotiating with the Druchii is that you're telling them that the Empire has exotic creatures that they would have reason to raid the Empire for.
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I don't think even the that is a problem, in the sense that we don't have to tell them where the exotic creatures or things (which could be even normal spices considering they're extremely valuable) come from.
 
Deathbybunnies said:
We're getting all of the unrestricted books in this trade, so we'll get the mundane subjects as well. The restricted and magical books are just more exciting, so they're dominating the conversation.
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Well, hopefully we're getting it all, but I was assuming we're getting the equivalent of the ithilmar's worth as books. It's vaguely possible that it could be only some/most of the library + enough to compensate the EIC.

The update only says the ithilmar is worth 'tens of thousands' of crowns. We don't know how many tens of thousands, but my notes and numbers and calculations suggest that the library is, with some conservative estimates, somewhere between 25k and 30k gold crowns' worth of books, maybe more. That's nothing at all to sneeze at.
 
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Parabola said:
Well, hopefully we're getting it all, but I was assuming we're getting the equivalent of the ithilmar's worth as books. It's vaguely possible that it could be only some of the library + enough to compensate the EIC.
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Almost all of the library will be ours.
Resonant said:
2. If we barter ithilmar for books, they're basically giving us a free copy of the entire Library of Mournings with their scribes/actions and only leaving out spellbooks right?
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Boney said:
2. There might be other narrow slices they'd leave out ("How Nordland Might Get Through All Our Defences", say), but yes.
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Boney said:
Considering it was paid for with a military resource, the blanket restrictions on military topics and part of that on magical would be lifted. No full-on spellbooks, but books on magical theory and magical critters and whatnot seem like fair game.
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reignonyrparade said:
As to "tell's the Dark Elves there's exotic creatures to raid the empire for" most of the exotic creatures that are not now formally Laurelorn's exotic creatures are far enough inland that I think the raiders would be extremely disappointed. Also, well, even though Druchii don't currently raid the empire's coast very often and most of the places they do are hit by Norscans far more often, that's not never and the Druchii have been at it for a couple thousand years. Any exotic animal actually accessible to their raids I'm pretty sure they would already know about.
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Andres said:
All the good stuff is in Altdorf, which isn't really feasible for the Druchii to assault given how inland it is. They might as well be trying to strike Nuln from Norsca, or get to Rome over the Alps.
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Retrueno said:
I don't think even the that is a problem, in the sense that we don't have to tell them where the exotic creatures or things (which could be even normal spices considering they're extremely valuable) come from.
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Yeah, I don't think it will be practical for the Druchii to raid the Empire to get whatever creatures we send. I was trying to get the point across that working out a deal doesn't materially harm the Empire and only benefits it. I wasn't clear enough, apologies for that. As you say, what are the Druchii going to do? Raid Hargendorf or Salkalten? Maybe they'll even beat the Norscans to it this decade!

Though Andres I think you're underestimating the amount of 'exotic animals' the Empire has. Basically any creature you can imagine would be novel for them. Even those who have memories back when the Empire was still part of Ulthuan's colonial empire, and that might even make it more valuable to them. They're not going to give spells for bog-octopuses, but there's still a lot of creatures that live in the Empire that can be wrangled that they would be interested in. But yeah I agree about your main point.

Really the only objection I see is the moral issue of dealing with slavers which I don't think exists if you try to buy raiding plans. Where you buy the raiding plans or magical lore, most creatures won't materially aid them. So don't sell them hippogriffs or gryphons. I also don't care about it? Sure, if Mathilde or the Druchii were real it'd be gross, but it isn't. Though I could see an argument about Mathilde being a Ranaldite, but I don't see this as being significantly different than her deals in Uzkulak. Well, morality and AP. But appeasing the dreaded AP is a base assumption of debating what actions to take. :V

NavySeel said:
Do you have a source for this?

Because I vividly remember the reason they thought those Jade order carvings weren't something the colleges could use was the fact they depicted human sacrifice.
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You need human sacrifices to summon Incarnate Elementals. The Empire mostly views it as an extension of 'war is human sacrifice.' It means you can let prisoners die so you can defeat your enemies, rather than letting more of your soldiers die.

Boney said:
Death in modern warfare is usually fairly stochastic, you know that when a unit goes into battle that a certain amount will fall to bullets and shrapnel, but those giving the orders usually cannot identify the exact men who will die as a result of their orders. That wasn't so much the case in earlier eras. There used to be something that in English was called a 'forlorn hope': a body of soldiers chosen in advance to be the ones that will be given a task that was almost guaranteed to kill them. The first ones over the wall when assaulting a fortified position, the ones on the front rank of an insufficiently fortified position being assaulted, those holding an outwork, things like that. Many military units would go so far as to have a separate unit of condemned criminals to perform these tasks. What is this, if not human sacrifice?

There being ways to translate deaths into military advantage is inherent to this era of warfare. Incarnate Elementals introduces a way to make it so that captured enemies can be the ones to suffer death for your military advantage. That doesn't mean that everyone is perfectly okay with it, but it does mean it's something most military people in the setting can see the logic behind, rather than being seen as unacceptably monstrous.
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