Why is it still taught then, if it is such a gigantic risk?
Is it at least battlemagic?
Have a high chance of exploding the caster?
Is this spell as-written quest-canon too?
Last edited:
Warhammer Fantasy: Divided Loyalties - an Advisor's Quest
- Thread starter Boney
- Start date
- Fantasy Users' Choice!
-
- Tags
- warhammer warhammer fantasy fantasy be gay do crimes (gay) female protagonist pansexual protagonist ck2 quest divided loyalties mountain vietnam ranald is real this is a dwarf quest (dwarfs) this is maybe an elf quest this is not a vampire quest this is not an empire quest try it and find out open voting
Voted best in category in the Users' Choice awards.
Is it at least battlemagic?
Have a high chance of exploding the caster?
Is this spell as-written quest-canon too?
Graf Otto von Bitternach, Chamberlain of the Seal: "My lord, Marienburg is threatening to blockade us once more!"
Bright Magister Mandred Holswig-Schliestein, Prince of Reikland: "Fetch me a list of the current members of the Directorate."
pucflek
Verified simpleton
- Location
- Czech Republic
Presumably because it wouldn´t work.
EDIT: The number of reasons is large i think. My guess would be that the enemies worth knowing are already fairly wilfull individuals to whom shrugging off such a spell would be a trifle, or that the usual factions this could be used against would barely notice it. Court wizards being a fairly common these days is another reason. If about every person in a thousand has some manner of windsight, they could notice such a spell being cast too.
That, or, unlike virtually all the other spells, it actually does need its casting ingredient, instead of it being just a crutch.
Last edited:
- Location
- North Wales
- Pronouns
- He/Him/His
The Golds also teach a spell to their Journeymen that's capable of instantly and unsalvagably destroying the one alliance that's keeping the Empire alive. They don't even need to use the spell, just describe it to the wrong dwarf.
- Location
- Leeds
The real reason emotional Ashqy is going underused is that young Bright apprentices look at that basement and opt for a career with less stress and better work life balance. Like throwing fireballs at Chimeras.
Being on the curriculum doesn't actually mean its taught to every apprentice, Mathilde entered her journeying stage only knowing a handful of spells and she's had to go back to the college to get a teacher to learn every new spell since.
I'd guess its still taught because its too useful in the situations that call for it to allow it to be forgetten, however access to learning it is still on a pretty highly trust restricted list and like when Mathilde was looking up dark rituals, everyone who's learnt it is on a list and under some degree of observation.
Only the person compelled to murder gets to apply their will, so you could still yeet the local failsons at the canny person causing you trouble.
NuclearConsensus
Herald of the Thorned One
- Location
- the Philippines
The first lesson a Bright young wizard is taught before they learn Burning Vengeance is, I imagine, a litany of all the times it went horribly wrong for everyone involved, starting from the very first instance, when it was used upon two rival wielders of Aqshy, both of whom then proceeded to name their newly invented spells Fireball in order to spite the other.
- Pronouns
- He/Him
While I agree there are probably other requirements preventing it from being used all the time against all enemies, it is also in the Fiendishly Complicated category, the most complex magical spells available short of Battle Magic. So any plot hole is not related to everyone not having it, it's not having the suggested room of specialists doing it all the time.
Personally, if it were me doing the worldbuilding, I'd say either it requires the three drops of blood to work at all, or line of sight. That makes it still very powerful but much less setting-breaking.
Last edited:
- Location
- To the left. No, not there, the other left.
Which spell are you talking about?
View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VV_fbwLX_Ag
It's not my responsibility to hunt down and correct every worldbuilding mistake GW has ever made. We're a million words deep and the only problems Burning Vengeance has caused is having to say 'no' to a couple of people who wanted an enchantment of it.
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Tale of Metal, since it can learn Dwarven forging secrets casually.
- Location
- Leeds
But that is unrelated to what I was answering. I was answering why it was still taught despite the danger.
- Pronouns
- He/Him
I wasn't disagreeing as much as expanding on another reason that spell in particular is not widely taught and would not be expected to be.
- Location
- Leeds
Which is why I only quoted the second sentence.
As far as the industrial burning vengance complex goes, the answer is probably that they don't get enough blood samples from enemies that they need this being cast multiple times a day every day.
Tale of Metal is in the same category where it's only mentioned a few times but if thought about too much it has huge potential to break the setting, and one of the rules this quest operates under is that you - that is, the readers, individually or collectively - are not allowed to break the setting without earning it. The tale of the Bright Wizard who sits in a basement somewhere and spends one afternoon pitting every enemy of the Empire against every other enemy of the Empire might make for an interesting oneshot but it's not a story element that I think would benefit the quest. So some things get a tiny little label that says 'Mathilde isn't allowed to play with this' and the setting bimbles happily onwards.
The Substance of Shadow accidental chain antimatter explosion that instantly vaporizes the continent because someone dug a hole in the wrong place is an example of something that's too close to hand to just get the label, so I outright retconned that.
The Substance of Shadow accidental chain antimatter explosion that instantly vaporizes the continent because someone dug a hole in the wrong place is an example of something that's too close to hand to just get the label, so I outright retconned that.
Last edited:
- Pronouns
- He/His/etc
Remember the experiments into divine fingerprinting? Make sure Mathilde doesn't find a way to view your labels.
- Location
- Void
Wait when did that happen, the whole antimatter chain explosion? I feel like I've missed that presuming it did occur, though I don't fully follow the chain of logic.
Last edited:
- Location
- Earth
But it'd be such a good world-building opportunity.
Aka: This is why every Noble now has a secret birth name known only to his closest family.
(I suspect the spell to be less effective on wizards because a) higher willpower generally b) they get an additional check to sense the Aqshy affecting them and get to actively contest it)
Mopman43
Mountain-Hermit of Nitpeak
- Location
- Vermont
It was a thread discussion somewhere around September of 2019.
Basically, Boney originally ruled that something with Substance of Shadow having the spell canceled (such as by part of the object being hit by light) while it's shoved inside something else would cause a nuclear explosion or similar.
But that meant that there was probably an entire set of nukes scattered around the Empire from Grey Wizards shoving SoS'd enemies into the ground or walls that would cause the destruction of the Empire if a shovel ever breached them, so he changed it to just unspecific 'bad things happen'.
Last edited:
People wanted to use Substance of Shadow while doing stealth stuff to hide bodies in the floor. Substance of Shadow would last until the object gets illuminated, which would happen if someone dug a hole where the body was hidden. I rolled the question of 'what happens if a corpse worth of matter suddenly occupies the exact same position as an equal volume of dirt' around in my mind and the most straightforward answer was extremely large explosion, because atoms like their personal space. I said this as a reason for the players not to do it, but then it was pointed out that other Grey Magisters don't have a hive mind of 21st century questers looking over their shoulder so there's no reason they wouldn't have been doing this extremely useful thing on a regular basis for the past couple of centuries, which would result in the Empire being littered with these buried bodies that would essentially be antimatter landmines, and once one went off near enough to another one the chain reaction would take out the continent.
- Location
- North Wales
- Pronouns
- He/Him/His
I remember reading somewhere that atomic fusion through telefragging is very unlikely to be a problem in settings where telefragging is possible. There's simply too much empty space between the atoms of even solid objects that the chances of overlaying just a single nucleus exactly on top of another is really, really low. The chances of doing so enough to cause fusion on a scale we'd actually notice is so low that it's not worth considering.
You'd still end up with a real mess, though.
You'd still end up with a real mess, though.
Last edited:
Sounds like a situation out of Dwarf Fortress.
Yeah, there's not only too much empty space between atoms, but atoms themselves are mostly empty space.
So what would likely happen is that you get a person with concrete atoms and molecules shoved everywhere inside of him, which would be grizzly, but not too dangerous.
Pedantic sidenote: Atomic nuclei getting too close together due to telefragging would cause an explosion due to nuclear fusion, not a matter-antimatter reaction.
Last edited:
I got to the part where the words 'strong nuclear force' came up, and those words in that order was enough for me to reach the conclusion that it would be bad to make it angry.
The Phoenixian
The Glacier Witch
- Location
- My own little world
You know, as someone living in a civilization whos slowly accumulating waste and other skeletons in the closet turn more and more to doom us to an unhappy future, there's a certain poignancy to the idea of a society under the threat of destruction from the very literal bodies it's buried.
Meanwhil, on the grounded side, personally, this sounds like a way to end up with a large number of very novel chemicals that, shortly thereafter will largely decompress, or decompose. Explosively. The remaining novel organic molecules could be a fun time for all, though!*
OTOH, The narrative and thematic implications of the nuclear blast are their own kind of fun.
*a chemist or biologist will likely have their own opinion on the fun factor of a several gallon mass of randomly generated organic molecules appearing out of nowhere.