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Warhammer Fantasy: Divided Loyalties - an Advisor's Quest

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Is the canon for elves not that they can live until killed by something? Like I don't think they need to do anything to extend their life. There aren't many alive from the sundering but that is because they got killed over the many millennia.

Edit. On the ritual, that seems like more like something to maintain there youth, which is a different thing than not dying of old age.
 
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pucflek said:
Neither did Volans casting of "normal" magic. Just the act of channeling magic without ever using it for anything left him far younger looking than he ought to be. No Marks necessary.

And if Spite alone was necessary to survive countless ages, there wouldn´t be like, five elves that could claim to have survived it, whose only commonality is that their polities have free relationship with dark magic.

I really think that all the other necromancers are just low skill noobz and we just got unlucky enough that the next Fozzick was´t born on our side of the camp but on the other one.
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Humans are highly mutable. Elves were designed not to be. Volans observing the winds is not at all applicable to Malekith using dhar and the winds for millennia.

There are much more than five elves alive from the Sundering. Most of the Hag Queens are. But there are also several elves still alive today who remember the War of Vengeance, like Yadoh, the first Champion of the Queen. He is at least four thousand years old, to quote Archives of the Empire. The Grey Lords too, at minimum, are of similar age. If Laurelorn has at least a thirteen elves that old, then Ulthuan would as well.
 
reignonyrparade said:
Daith, among the Asrai. (Also Ariel herself, but, well, Special CaseTM​)
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Daith is rumored to be old enough to have lived before the Sundering, but it's unknown if he really is.

The first timeline appearance of Ariel is around -1125 IC, when she and Orion become King and Queen of Athel Loren.

The Sundering itself was a millennia before that. It's unclear how old Ariel was when she became Queen.

(If you go by Malekith's wife being her sister, she'd presumably be old enough, but I'm pretty sure Boney has said he's discarding that because of how much it doesn't work with the timeline? Along with other issues.)
 
MrHobbit said:
Humans are highly mutable. Elves were designed not to be. Volans observing the winds is not at all applicable to Malekith using dhar and the winds for millennia.

There are much more than five elves alive from the Sundering. Most of the Hag Queens are. But there are also several elves still alive today who remember the War of Vengeance, like Yadoh, the first Champion of the Queen. He is at least four thousand years old, to quote Archives of the Empire. The Grey Lords too, at minimum, are of similar age. If Laurelorn has at least a thirteen elves that old, then Ulthuan would as well.
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Yes, but Fozzick being some sort of only one ever outlier is weird. I think we earned another human genius per millenium. Too bad he decided to be a twat.
 
pucflek said:
Yes, but Fozzick being some sort of only one ever outlier is weird. I think we earned another human genius per millenium. Too bad he decided to be a twat.
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Counterpoint: Nagash.

The oppression that magic-users are subjected to in the Old World is more than sufficient to explain why there aren't more Fozzriks. In Bretonnia humans are taken away by the Fay Enchantress. Similarly Kislev and Araby have their magic-traditions in lockdown. In the rest of the Old World they got murdered. Today magic-users in the Old World are absorbed by the Colleges, who encourage specialization. Fozzrik being an exception makes complete sense. Maybe there are others and they just aren't mentioned, but it really does not matter.

This comment is not a good argument. "I think we deserved" is not an argument. It is pleading. There is no reason to assume things about how magic affects elven lifespans from Fozzrik.
 
Mopman43 said:
Daith is rumored to be old enough to have lived before the Sundering, but it's unknown if he really is.

The first timeline appearance of Ariel is around -1125 IC, when she and Orion become King and Queen of Athel Loren.

The Sundering itself was a millennia before that. It's unclear how old Ariel was when she became Queen.

(If you go by Malekith's wife being her sister, she'd presumably be old enough, but I'm pretty sure Boney has said he's discarding that because of how much it doesn't work with the timeline? Along with other issues.)
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Exact timeline appearance, yes, but the more vague history we get usually tells us that "mortal" Ariel was a fairly early colonist.
 
MrHobbit said:
Counterpoint: Nagash.

The oppression that magic-users are subjected to in the Old World is more than sufficient to explain why there aren't more Fozzriks. In Bretonnia humans are taken away by the Fay Enchantress. Similarly Kislev and Araby have their magic-traditions in lockdown. In the rest of the Old World they got murdered. Today magic-users in the Old World are absorbed by the Colleges, who encourage specialization. Fozzrik being an exception makes complete sense. Maybe there are others and they just aren't mentioned, but it really does not matter.

This comment is not a good argument. "I think we deserved" is not an argument. It is pleading. There is no reason to assume things about how magic affects elven lifespans from Fozzrik.
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It was an entirely fake point. Of course noone earns some kind of brownie points to collect to create a once a millenium genius.

But Heimrich Kemmler is by now century old, is not a vampire, and is an extremely accomplished necromancer, with very little of it showing on him. So either its chaos blessing, which i guess is possible, or the channeling of dhar sustains his form without any of the mutations, which is, what iam saying, also possible.
 
The Amethyst College has a spell that quite literally lets them heal themselves by sucking the life out of someone else, Steal Life.

I wouldn't be remotely surprised if you could do something like that for your lifespan with necromantic rituals, like a way-less-successful vampire - Kemmler is supposed to be one of the strongest necromancers out there (probably the most powerful one that isn't actually a vampire), so it sounds like something that could be within his capacities.

Alternately, maybe he has Shyish Arcane Marks - those wouldn't at all interfere in the usage of necromancy, and would slow down his aging to an extent.
 
It's getting to about 2 years since I last read this quest. Time to go back to the start and read the old stuff again, and the new stuff with it :D

It's like letting the new updates pile up so I can binge them, but if you wait long enough all the old updates become new updates again and you can binge the whole lot!
This is going to be the 3rd time I've done this too! Anyone else read quests like this or just me?

Though I suppose anyone else who does read quests like this would also be vanishingly unlikely to ever read this particular message haha.
 
AzureShogun said:
It's getting to about 2 years since I last read this quest. Time to go back to the start and read the old stuff again, and the new stuff with it :D

It's like letting the new updates pile up so I can binge them, but if you wait long enough all the old updates become new updates again and you can binge the whole lot!
This is going to be the 3rd time I've done this too! Anyone else read quests like this or just me?

Though I suppose anyone else who does read quests like this would also be vanishingly unlikely to ever read this particular message haha.
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I have done it a few times. I have considering doing a reaction bit well rereading, but I don't know if that really works.
 
AzureShogun said:
It's getting to about 2 years since I last read this quest. Time to go back to the start and read the old stuff again, and the new stuff with it :D

It's like letting the new updates pile up so I can binge them, but if you wait long enough all the old updates become new updates again and you can binge the whole lot!
This is going to be the 3rd time I've done this too! Anyone else read quests like this or just me?

Though I suppose anyone else who does read quests like this would also be vanishingly unlikely to ever read this particular message haha.
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I don't reread quite that way, but I've certainly reread this quest a number of times (most notably, I did the thing that I often do with stuff that enthralls me, which is that I started my first reread immediately after finishing my first readthrough). I should probably do so again soon -- my memory of the post-Dum content is shaky, since I've only read most of it once or twice (which is part of why I made the Brief History of the Waystone Project infopost). I started a reread in the fall, after finishing my Brief History of Stirland, but got distracted.
 
Wiggy said:
It's kinda funny how both elves and dwarves can just decide, "Nah, I'm not finished yet." And keep living instead of dying of old age. It's like they're ghosts with unfinished business that just refuse to leave their bodies behind.
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I always got the impression it's the other way around for elves. Dwarves get older and older but can just keep going because they decide they have stuff they still need to do.

Elves stay forever young and should live forever, but the world eventually wears them down and they give up on living.

Dwarves are mortals who decide they are not done yet.

Elves are immortals who decide they are.
 
pucflek said:
It was an entirely fake point. Of course noone earns some kind of brownie points to collect to create a once a millenium genius.

But Heimrich Kemmler is by now century old, is not a vampire, and is an extremely accomplished necromancer, with very little of it showing on him. So either its chaos blessing, which i guess is possible, or the channeling of dhar sustains his form without any of the mutations, which is, what iam saying, also possible.
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If it was a fake point then what was the purpose of writing it? People are going to respond to what you write.

Heinrich Kemmler is also a bad example. He is notorious for his large collection of necromantic lore. But what is important is one of his sources: Nehekhara. Nehekhara is known for having immortal magic-users, the Liche-Priests. There is also Shyish to consider. Necromacy casts magic by grasping at Dhar with Shyish. Shyish is known to extend the life of its practitioners, Elspeth Von Draken is foremost example. Age of Reckoning says that Liches get their extended lifespan from their mastery of Shyish.

Is it possible that channeling Dhar can give you an extended lifespan? Maybe. But the evidence you've brought up really doesn't make the case. It is much more sensible to stick with the factors that we know can cause immortality when imagining why certain characters are immortal. With Morathi and Malekith, you have their elven nature and Malekith's Darth Vader suit and Morathi's Khainite rituals. The Lichemaster is known to have acquired magical knowledge from Nehekhara and he uses Shyish.

Something else to consider is that all Skinks are mortal. They are the sole mortal lizardman caste. They are also the only servitor caste that can cast magic.

Parabola said:
The Amethyst College has a spell that quite literally lets them heal themselves by sucking the life out of someone else, Steal Life.

I wouldn't be remotely surprised if you could do something like that for your lifespan with necromantic rituals, like a way-less-successful vampire - Kemmler is supposed to be one of the strongest necromancers out there (probably the most powerful one that isn't actually a vampire), so it sounds like something that could be within his capacities.

Alternately, maybe he has Shyish Arcane Marks - those wouldn't at all interfere in the usage of necromancy, and would slow down his aging to an extent.
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It could be Steal Life, but there's also a whole host of things that it could be before even considering Dhar. I'm pretty sure there is mention of Necromancers extending their life by researching necromancy. Rituals would be a logical method for that.

I've always wondered how Arcane Marks work with Necromacy, or how it would work for other similar lores. I assume grasping at Dhar with Shyish means that you don't get Arcane Marks, maybe the Dhar destabilizes Shyish or something. But practically any Necromancer would be able to use Shyish spells.

But at the same time, it might be that the Necromantic tradition doesn't really do arcane marks. If arcane marks were so common for human users of the Winds, the Druchii sorceress wouldn't have been surprised about Mathilde's arcane marks. They've been fighting human tribes enough for that to be normal. Admittingly she could have been lying and trying to get Mathilde to describe the Empire's perspective of arcane marks to her.

Boney said:
She smiles at you, and then gives you a more calculating gaze that suddenly turns surprised. "Have you... pierced your soul with Ulgu? Repeatedly?"

You look down at yourself, and wave away some of the mist clinging to you. In Tor Lithanel there's much less smoke than in human cities, so currently most of it is perfume. "That would be one way to describe it."

"How do you manage that? Wouldn't breaching the surface tension of the soul that many times be ruinous to its integrity?"
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MrHobbit said:
But at the same time, it might be that the Necromantic tradition doesn't really do arcane marks.
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Arcane Marks are a back port of the mechanics describing what the use of necromancy (or the lore of chaos) does to you.

Physical decay, strange hatreds, character flaws like megalomania or paranoia, and vampire style weaknesses to certain objects or materials that cause you to burst into flame are all options.

It's the use of Dhar's properties for their own sake that starts the degeneration, so just using the Dhar method to enhance color spells isn't enough to cultivate a desire to eat babies, but the two Dhark lores are similar enough to have basically the same symptoms, with the difference that Chaos causes mutations and Necromancers turn skeletal.

Specializing in a single wind is a relatively new phenomenon; witches that use single winds informally have always existed, but the Teclisian tradition of truly limiting yourself to one or another was invented for the colleges, I think. That might be why she hadn't encountered it before.
 
I think a Dhar user with an Arcane mark would be at pretty high risk of contaminating that part of their soul to Dhar through the usual process by which Dhar converts other winds to more Dhar, at which point you just look Dhar poisoned
 
chocolote12 said:
Arcane Marks are a back port of the mechanics describing what the use of necromancy (or the lore of chaos) does to you.

Physical decay, strange hatreds, character flaws like megalomania or paranoia, and vampire style weaknesses to certain objects or materials that cause you to burst into flame are all options.

It's the use of Dhar's properties for their own sake that starts the degeneration, so just using the Dhar method to enhance color spells isn't enough to cultivate a desire to eat babies, but the two Dhark lores are similar enough to have basically the same symptoms, with the difference that Chaos causes mutations and Necromancers turn skeletal.

Specializing in a single wind is a relatively new phenomenon; witches that use single winds informally have always existed, but the Teclisian tradition of truly limiting yourself to one or another was invented for the colleges, I think. That might be why she hadn't encountered it before.
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Necromancy and Lores of Chaos don't give arcane marks. They give mutations. The Colleges are quite firm that there is a difference. Collegiates can also get mutations. The Hag Witches and Ice Witches get witch marks. Priests get divine marks.

Dedicating yourself to a single wind wasn't invented for the Empire by Teclis. In Cathay humans are only allowed to learn one lore: Heavens. Their alchemists seem to be split between Fire and Metal. The Indic books that Mathilde went over evidently didn't say something groundbreaking, like humans using multiple winds without going insane. Hell, if the Sidestory is to be taken seriously, the Old Ones themselves noted that humans had a tendency to get attached. There is only one tradition in the world that is known to produce humans capable of safely using multiple Lores and that is Albion.

I don't think there is evidence that arcane marks come from prolonged use of a single wind. If anything the Collegiate system is evidence against that. The Colleges like arcane marks because they ensure that the apprentice can't take what they were taught and leave. You don't need to be deeply immersed in a wind to get them and the first arcane mark that people get often won't be achieved in deep immersion. You only need to fumble casting once. I can't think of a reason why she would be so shocked about a human having arcane marks.
 
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