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Warhammer Fantasy: Divided Loyalties - an Advisor's Quest

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Alratan said:
I mean, we're told:

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Due to their proximity to the Shadowlands, Kislev's Witches have long learned to avoid the Chaos Winds, for they blow strongly in the north and almost always herald corruption and mutation. Thus, they mastered alternative methods of casting spells. This difference has helped build their comparatively good reputation, as they ae not so readily associated with the Ruinous Powers.
Source: Realm of the Ice Queen, page 108


If people didn't know they weren't using the Winds and what that meant, it couldn't help build their good reputation.
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Yes, the Ice Witches know about the Winds. I doubt the average Kislevite does.

The Witches don't need to build a reputation, they've been part of Ungol or Gospodar society since before the founding of Kislev.

The average Kislevite knows that Ice and Hag magic are good because they're Ice and Hag magic, they don't need some kind of metaphysical justification.
 
MrHobbit said:
Are you going to actually cite anything or are you going to continue projecting the Empire on Cathay for absolutely zero reason? The circumstances that shape how the Empire view magic are not replicated in the slightest in Cathay. They don't have Nagash! They didn't have a god unify them and decree that Thou Shalt Hate Magic. They had the opposite!

Why wouldn't they know about? They know about the Great Bastion. It would be wonderful propaganda to talk about all the effort that the dragons of Cathay put into making their daily lives safe. Sure, it'd be mythology for the majority of them, but the majority of people believed that mythology. The average subsistence farmer doesn't need to know the exact mechanics of how it works. They just need to know that the dragons, in their wisdom, harnessed the might of Cathay to build a system that harnesses the ambient magic and uses it to enhance their harvests, punish their enemies, protect the afterlife, ect.

Real life India was actually extremely educated before the Europeans came along and destroyed it. It varied over time, but it trended much higher than Europe, but that admittingly does say very much. There is a very good chance that Indic peasants have an idea of what magic is and how it fits into philosophy. Not the most particularly indepth or accurate idea, but it'd be there for a decent number.
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No, I am not going to quote TW lore because A) I do not know it so I'd just have to go off the wiki and B) it is one of the farthest things from quest canon.

As for why their mythology might want to paint magic as evil unless X either out of draconic design or simple cultural evolution it is because it is. All other things being equal it is better in warhammer not to interact with strange magic. The average human does not have the knowledge, the skills or even the senses to protect themselves effectively from a magician wishing them harm or not in proper control of them power.

Most of the Old World did not have a god telling them to hate (unconsecrated) magic, they arrived at that position independently, many of them long before Sigmar was born.
 
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The funny thing about the "Dragomas is a Cathayan Dragon" theory is that the NuCathay lore has actually made it less likely to be true than before, because dragons are actually super rare* in Cathay. It's not really an empire of dragons so much as it is an empire of humans whose ruling dynasty happens to be dragons- as far as we know there are no "generic" dragons in Cathay that could have decided to venture west, just ten dragons and one shapeshifter that moonlights as a dragon a lot of the time. Sure there's the two unnamed dragon siblings, but I'm pretty sure the Cathayan lore indicates that they disappeared long before Dragomas made his journey to the east, with a strong implication that one of them became the Chaos Dragon that Archaon fought to get the Eye of Sheerian.

*There's no hard numbers, obviously, but I can name off the top of my head twelve named Ulthuani dragons and twenty+ Old World dragons (most of whom come from the backstories of Bretonnian named characters, funnily enough) with there obviously being many more that are not named in canon. At least if you believe the 8th edition core rulebook, the High Elves can still muster 20 moon dragons to escort the Everqueen on her once-a-decade trip to Ind.
 
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Blackout said:
but I'm pretty sure the Cathayan lore indicates that they disappeared long before Dragomas made his journey to the east.
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Honest to god, I'm pretty sure we have no idea.

It's stated that the Emperor and Empress had 9 children, but there hasn't even been a hint of a mention of the last 2. No 'some disappeared in ancient days' or anything like that.

Obviously we don't have a full Cathay army book or anything, but the absence has been glaring.
 
Mopman43 said:
Yes, the Ice Witches know about the Winds. I doubt the average Kislevite does.

The Witches don't need to build a reputation, they've been part of Ungol or Gospodar society since before the founding of Kislev.

The average Kislevite knows that Ice and Hag magic are good because they're Ice and Hag magic, they don't need some kind of metaphysical justification.
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I mean, you can assert that the main sourcebook about Kislev is wrong when it tells us about Kislev, as you do here, but the text is pretty explicit that the Witches did need to build a reputation. I can't see any contradictory sources saying what you suggest.
 
Mopman43 said:
Honest to god, I'm pretty sure we have no idea.

It's stated that the Emperor and Empress had 9 children, but there hasn't even been a hint of a mention of the last 2. No 'some disappeared in ancient days' or anything like that.

Obviously we don't have a full Cathay army book or anything, but the absence has been glaring.
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I can't be arsed to look it up, but I'm pretty sure the lore regarding the Cathayan Civil War (Which began before the Colleges of Magic were founded, so before Dragomas became a Journeyman) states something to the effect of "The five children of the Dragon Emperor began squabbling and dividing Cathay between themselves", indicating that the two unnamed ones were already not around.
 
DragonParadox said:
No, I am not going to quote TW lore because A) I do not know it so I'd just have to go off the wiki and B) it is one of the farthest things from quest canon.

As for why their mythology might want to paint magic as evil unless X either out of draconic design or simple cultural evolution it is because it is. All other things being equal it is better in warhammer not to interact with strange magic. The average human does not have the knowledge, the skills or even the senses to protect themselves effectively from a magician wishing them harm or not in proper control of them power.
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Then why are you arguing that Cathayans are magophobic if you aren't going to draw upon what lore about them exists? Do you see the flaw here? Do you not see the problem in arguing that a society you aren't familiar with must be magophobic because the society you are familiar with is? Furthermore, Total Warhammer lore is just about the only lore on Cathay we have, as it Cathay is extensively covered nowhere else. Boney has mentioned that Games Workshop's Cathay will be drawn upon if we ever visit.

The problem with this is that you are starting from a prior that the Empire is normal and that all people across the world act like peasants do in the Empire and are working backwards to justify it. You need to start with the conditions that Cathay is in and work forwards to figure out what their opinion of magic would be. They are entirely ruled by wizards, those wizards would certainly want magic-capable Cathayans to be harnessed rather than killed, those wizards are basically worshiped, those wizards have extensively shaped Cathayan society to suit them. Why would these people treat magic the same way that peasants in the Empire do?

The average human also does not possess the knowledge, skills, or anything to protect themselves from abuse by nobility. Are you going to argue that all humans in-setting are noble-phobic? Mind you, hating the nobility is infinitely more justifiable than hating magic users.

Mopman43 said:
Honest to god, I'm pretty sure we have no idea.

It's stated that the Emperor and Empress had 9 children, but there hasn't even been a hint of a mention of the last 2. No 'some disappeared in ancient days' or anything like that.

Obviously we don't have a full Cathay army book or anything, but the absence has been glaring.
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The impression I got is that Games Workshop had intended them to be three Lost Primarchs Dragons, but Creative Assembly convinced them to let them have one of them to serve as Princess Peach the campaign objective. The Old World gives us insight into what Cathay was like during 2076 2276 IC and there were only the five dragon children. I am pretty confident they all were lost before -1800 IC, when the Emperor built the Bastion, divied up the lands, and retreated to Weijin.
 
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MrHobbit said:
Then why are you arguing that Cathayans are magophobic if you aren't going to draw upon what lore about them exists? Do you see the flaw here? Do you not see the problem in arguing that a society you aren't familiar must be magophobic because the society you are familiar with is? Furthermore, Total Warhammer lore is just about the only lore on Cathay we have, as it Cathay is extensively covered nowhere else. Boney has mentioned that Games Workshop's Cathay will be drawn upon if we ever visit.

The problem with this is that you are starting from a prior that the Empire is normal and that all people across the world act like peasants do in the Empire and are working backwards to justify it. You need to start with the conditions that Cathay is in and work forwards to figure out what their opinion of magic would be. They are entirely ruled by wizards, those wizards would certainly want magic-capable Cathayans to be harnessed rather than killed, those wizards are basically worshiped, those wizards have extensively shaped Cathayan society to suit them. Why would these people treat magic the same way that peasants in the Empire do?

The average human also does not possess the knowledge, skills, or anything to protect themselves from abuse by nobility. Are you going to argue that all humans in-setting are noble-phobic? Mind you, hating the nobility is infinitely more justifiable than hating magic users.


The impression I got is that Games Workshop had intended their to be three Lost Primarchs Dragons, but Creative Assembly convinced them to let them have one of them to serve as Princess Peach the campaign objective. The Old World gives us a sight into what Cathay was like during 2076 IC and there were only the five dragon children. I am pretty confident they all were lost before -1800 IC, when the Emperor built the Bastion, divied up the lands, and retreated to Weijin.
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I'm not starting from the prior that the Empire is normal, I am starting from the prior that the Old World, being a region that includes several distinct civilizations with very different history is reasonably representative. Seeing as that is where most of the setting lore to date has been expressed that seems like a more solid foundation than the lore of a grand strategy that is concerned with culture and religion only in so far as it informs the relationships of 'Lords and Heroes' and confers aesthetic distinctiveness.

Also yes, I do think that most people would fear heavily armed foreign nobles wandering though their vicinity.
 
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Alratan said:
I mean, we're told:

Article:
Due to their proximity to the Shadowlands, Kislev's Witches have long learned to avoid the Chaos Winds, for they blow strongly in the north and almost always herald corruption and mutation. Thus, they mastered alternative methods of casting spells. This difference has helped build their comparatively good reputation, as they ae not so readily associated with the Ruinous Powers.
Source: Realm of the Ice Queen, page 108

If people didn't know they weren't using the Winds and what that meant, it couldn't help build their good reputation.
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People don't have to understand all the causes of something to recognize a pattern in the effects. If wind users regularly get corrupted by the chaos gods and ice witches don't people who are afraid of the chaos gods will trust the ice witches more because they don't turn into murderous abominations with the same frequency, even if most people don't know shit about the underlying reasons
 
DragonParadox said:
I'm not starting from the prior that the Empire is normal, I am starting from the prior that the Old World, being a region that includes several distinct civilizations with very different history is reasonably representative. Seeing as that is where most of the setting lore to date has been expressed that seems like a more solid foundation than the lore of a grand strategy that is concerned with culture and religion only in so far as it informs the relationships of 'Lords and Heroes' and confers aesthetic distinctiveness.

Also yes, I do think that most people would fear heavily armed foreign nobles wandering though their vicinity.
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Would you say that Europe and Northern Africa circe 1500s is a representative sample of cultural norms on humans?
And can therefore be used to predict how Chinese people will react tospecific things?
I would not.
Like, sure, maybe the average Cathayan peasant, or whatever they got there, is fearful of magic.
Or maybe they are not, because several thousand years fo relatively stable governance by dragons, and societally accepted magical tradition, will have changed their attitude.
 
DragonParadox said:
I'm not starting from the prior that the Empire is normal, I am starting from the prior that the Old World, being a region that includes several distinct civilizations with very different history is reasonably representative. Seeing as that is where most of the setting lore to date has been expressed that seems like a more solid foundation than the lore of a grand strategy that is concerned with culture and religion only in so far as it informs the relationships of 'Lords and Heroes' and confers aesthetic distinctiveness.

Also yes, I do think that most people would fear heavily armed foreign nobles wandering though their vicinity.
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There really isn't much of a meaningful difference for the discussion. The southern realms also suffered from Nagash. The Empire was the dominant state of the region and much of its ideas would also flow out. The Karaz Ankor hated magic because dwarf and preached that readily. The experience Cathay had with magic users was vastly different to what you see in the Old World. Bretonnia in particular has a notably different view of wizards than the rest of the Old World. They adore the damsels, but fear foreign human wizard. If 3e is to be believed, they view all elves as wizards and try to placate them with gifts.

I repeat myself. The situation that Cathay is in is so vastly different compared to that of the Old World that it really bares no further discussion to explain why the Old World, which is notorious for how non-magical it is, does not apply to it.

Most people do not in fact lynch nobles! Even if they're not heavily armed! And why do you mention foreign nobles? Cathayan alchemists and astromancers aren't foreign. They are backed by the dragons themselves. I'm sure that a number of them might get agitated by foreign magic users, less so if they live in Fu-Hung or Shang-Yang, but foreign is the key word there.
 
MrHobbit said:
It is literally some of the only lore on Games Workshop's Cathay that we have. Besides, it's not as if it isn't intuitive. Why wouldn't their attitudes trickle down?
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It being the only lore given by GW doesn't matter at all if Boney doesn't include it in his own world building. And afaik, we don't know if he does or does not.
 
Orbmorb said:
People don't have to understand all the causes of something to recognize a pattern in the effects. If wind users regularly get corrupted by the chaos gods and ice witches don't people who are afraid of the chaos gods will trust the ice witches more because they don't turn into murderous abominations with the same frequency, even if most people don't know shit about the underlying reasons
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Kislevite's legitimate spellcasters have historically been embedded in their communities. They're not centralised orders like the Colleges of Magic or secret mystery cults. The local Ungol Hag Witch or Gospodar Land Witch pitches her tent a few yards over. I think the same is true of the various religions, historically they've been very decentralised.

This means that over the many centuries they've been around, when people, including their own apprentices, ask why their magic is good and other magic is bad, and people with magical talent need to be taught not to unconsciously channel the Winds and instead learn how to use Ice Magic or channel the spirits instead, they're likely to have explained.

As these aren't hermetically sealed communities and it actually matters, that knowledge seems likely to have filtered out into implicit cultural background understanding of the world. Power from the Chaos Winds that leak through the Great Eye in the north is bad. Power from the spirits or the land is good.

This is particularly relevant as people with Witchsight can look at spellcasters and see if they're drawing on the Winds, and because it's good for internal as well as external legitimacy to be able to give a reason for why a dividing line between acceptable and forbidden exists. 'Just because' is a lot less convincing. It's not as if knowledge that the Winds exist and they they're something different to what powers Witchcraft isn't something that can be readily misused so there's no need to spend the effort to enforce secrecy around it, which is what would be required to stop the knowledge spreading.

And you want this understanding spread at least in part to make it easier to drive off some Druid coming in and setting up shop as another female magic user who interacts with spirits, by being able to say that she also touches the bad magic so is a wrong'un.
 
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MrHobbit said:
Are you going to actually cite anything or are you going to continue projecting the Empire on Cathay for absolutely zero reason?
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As a general rule when the QM @s you and makes a polite little suggestion about your posting style, you should probably take that pretty seriously. Your current argument does not get grandfathered in.

@MrHobbit will be taking a break from the thread for a few hours. I will ask that nobody makes further responses to his posts on the subject of Cathayan attitudes towards magic.
 
Alratan said:
Kislevite's legitimate spellcasters have historically been embedded in their communities. They're not centralised orders like the Colleges of Magic or secret mystery cults. The local Ungol Hag Witch or Gospodar Land Witch pitches her tent a few yards over. I think the same is true of the various religions, historically they've been very decentralised.

This means that over the many centuries they've been around, when people, including their own apprentices, ask why their magic is good and other magic is bad, and people with magical talent need to be taught not to unconsciously channel the Winds and instead learn how to use Ice Magic or channel the spirits instead, they're likely to have explained.

As these aren't hermetically sealed communities and it actually matters, that knowledge seems likely to have filtered out into implicit cultural background understanding of the world. Power from the Chaos Winds that leak through the Great Eye in the north is bad. Power from the spirits or the land is good.

This is particularly relevant as people with Witchsight can look at spellcasters and see if they're drawing on the Winds, and because it's good for internal as well as external legitimacy to be able to give a reason for why a dividing line between acceptable and forbidden exists. 'Just because' is a lot less convincing. It's not as if knowledge that the Winds exist and they they're something different to what powers Witchcraft isn't something that can be readily misused so there's no need to spend the effort to enforce secrecy around it, which is what would be required to stop the knowledge spreading.
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Ice Witches are decentralized (though that seems to have been more of a consequence of Kattarin's rule than necessarily the historical norm), but I don't think there's anything suggesting that they're particularly embedded in local communities the way that Hag Witches are?
 
Boney said:
Their ideas of each other were very often incredibly wrong but adorably romanticized, such as China being super impressed by how Rome never had power struggles.
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???

????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????

29% of Roman Emperors died of natural causes! 29%!

Did Roman merchants just lie to the Chinese because they thought it was funny? Because that is pretty funny. It would be like Mongol traders convincing the Zulu that they were all committed pacifists.
 
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dptullos said:
???

????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????

29% of Roman Emperors died of natural causes! 29%!

Did Roman merchants just like to the Chinese because they thought it was funny? Because that is pretty funny. It would be like Mongol traders convincing the Zulu that they were all committed pacifists.
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China being China and Rome being Rome, maybe they just didn't hear about any equivalent to the Spring and Autumn/Warring States periods, etc, and felt that if Rome didn't have those, then it must have all been fine and dandy?

(Yes, I know Rome absolutely had major breakups and reunifications, but the key part is whether people in/from China had heard of them.)
 
dptullos said:
???

????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????

29% of Roman Emperors died of natural causes! 29%!

Did Roman merchants just like to the Chinese because they thought it was funny? Because that is pretty funny. It would be like Mongol traders convincing the Zulu that they were all committed pacifists.
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Confucius's wisdom tells us that if it doesn't kill millions of people it's just a sparkling tiff, not a civil war.
 
The Phoenixian said:
China being China and Rome being Rome, maybe they just didn't hear about any equivalent to the Spring and Autumn/Warring States periods, etc, and felt that if Rome didn't have those, then it must have all been fine and dandy?

(Yes, I know Rome absolutely had major breakups and reunifications, but the key part is whether people in/from China had heard of them.)
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China dropping in to check on rome in the 4th century: Hey buddy been a while, traffic on the silk road was ridiculous, what've you been doing for the last century?

Not saying you're wrong, just that its funny.
 
dptullos said:
29% of Roman Emperors died of natural causes! 29%!
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They might be thinking more about the Roman Republic period? Which, while it did have some internal strife, was actually notably peaceful compared to just about everyone the Romans conquered.

Like, if you assume that the Roman Empire is pretty much the same as the Republic, and I wouldn't expect the Romans to try to highlight that distinction...
 
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