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Warhammer Fantasy: Divided Loyalties - an Advisor's Quest

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Tobtorp said:
Ehh, having your own is always better then relying on someone else to make the hard choices.
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I mean, who would use it. When Mannfred invaded Empire, it did not have colleges. Grand Theogonist had to read from Liber Mortis blah blah blah. You know what would happen nowadays? Brights would drown the field in purifying flame and Mannfred would get pasted by a Comet of Cassandora he would´t be able to dodge because he would be bound by Net of Amyntok, and him being a powerful wizard wouldn´t help him because he can´t train apprentices to competence because they would backstab him and so he would have to solo basically the entire Battlewizard contingent alone. Not bloody likely.

K8P has Eye of Gazul, nuff said. I mean pass it along to Eike if you feel like it, but there isn´t really any pressure imho. I don´t disagree with giving it to Belegar or colleges as a curio and "well if shit goes down, here is a button" but it also feels very unnecessary, ya ken.

EDIT: I also think that the precedent established by previous Grand Theogonist in Vampire Wars was pretty clear and would ease the institutional restrictions. Its not hard decision anymore. Grand Theogonist did it when undead marched on Empire before, so you should too.
 
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I think we should have a specific booklet for "here's how to obliterate oncoming skeleton army, read in case of emergency", but it should be passed down alongside the Liber Mortis, purely so our successor doesn't need to read the entire thing to obliterate an army in case of emergencies
 
Worth remembering the Liber Mortis comes not only with the foundational secrets of Dhar and the diary of Van Hel with annotations from Vlad, but also has an entire section full of necromantic spells. Even just cutting out that last bit from our edition would probably make the book slightly safer.
 
DragonParadox said:
Study of Black Magic with no intent to cast can't be forbidden because we read Chaos texts in the Colleges for the purposes of recognizing and countering Chaos and dark ritual lore for the purposes of defeating the murder ritual. There is no qualitative difference between those grimoires and the Liber Mortis. All are Dark Magic and would get one killed to use them but the former two are allowed to be read and analyzed by imperial magisters, the latter is not due to how powerful it is.
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There absolutely is a qualitative difference, regular books on Chaos Magic or Necromancy from our library don't give out skills like the First and Second Secrets of Dhar and Necromantic Insight.

Library books on dark magic, at least from the Colleges and Karaz Ankor, are observations and specific insight that doesnt actually help you do it.

Retrueno said:
Can we get Runesmith's books about magic? Not about Runes but about things like Dhar, Beast Magic, Chaos Sorcery, etc. I imagine they must have some of only for the purpose of countering it.
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Yes, I asked Boney about it a while back. We'd probably have to negotiate with the Cult of Thungni/Runesmiths Guild.

pucflek said:
It already is that, did Arkhan steal the book?
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IIRC Arkhan did attack Altdorf in quest canon but Mathilde doesn't know how it went down.
 
065tdsa said:
Worth remembering the Liber Mortis comes not only with the foundational secrets of Dhar and the diary of Van Hel with annotations from Vlad, but also has an entire section full of necromantic spells. Even just cutting out that last bit from our edition would probably make the book slightly safer.
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This already exists.

Extremely redacted editions of the Liber Mortis are standard reading for witch hunters and vampire hunters.
 
Boney said:
Fun fact: Rome and China were aware of each other and had official, if occasional, diplomatic relations. 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. People are very quick to get super pissed off with those fuckers (Ulthuan) when they're messing with our shit (policing all transit into and out of the Jade Sea), but if there's two thousand miles of brutal terrain between you and them and the only contact you really have is that occasionally a caravan or shipload of nifty and exotic trade goods shows up, then there's no harm in being charmed by their quaint oriental/occidental ways.
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I do feel the need (because I'm just like that) to point out that china had a romantic view of Rome

Rome was Rome, and so viewed china the same way it viewed everything not Rome but not quite a filthy barbarian: indifference.
 
Parabola said:
There absolutely is a qualitative difference, regular books on Chaos Magic or Necromancy from our library don't give out skills like the First and Second Secrets of Dhar and Necromantic Insight.

Library books on dark magic, at least from the Colleges and Karaz Ankor, are observations and specific insight that doesnt actually help you do it.
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I was not talking about library books, I was talking about the kind of books they chain to shelves at the Colleges. The books on murder rituals we studied were guides on how to to it, specifically noted in the text, it is just that murder rituals are less scary than the contents of the Liber Mortis.
 
DragonParadox said:
I was not talking about library books, I was talking about the kind of books they chain to shelves at the Colleges. The books on murder rituals we studied were guides on how to to it, specifically noted in the text, it is just that murder rituals are less scary than the contents of the Liber Mortis.
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Oh, thats what you meant. Then yes, totally true. The Colleges absolutely "study" dark magic.

Edit: Though it's worth remembering even a Lady Magister can't freely read those.
 
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Simon_Jester said:
Yes. Jade tablets for an empire that's broadly modeled after Tang or Ming China have effectively zero relevant cost on the imperial scale.
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As long as it was a small one, and potentially low or medium quality jade. The cost of jade scales exponentially with its size, and jade tablets big enough to have a treaty on is definitely not trivially small.

The sacrifices to the Heavens and the Earth was a ritual sacrifice involving large jade tablets that "was only done once every 600 or so years, because of its earth shattering cost." I believe it was done only once during the Tang dynasty, even though it was considered of ultimate importance. (It was a "report back on the results of my dynasty to the Heavens," kind of sacrifice, and was a huge part of how Empress Wu Jiao [that is what she called herself, not Wu ZeTian] gained the legitimaacu
Boney said:
There's a general dynamic wherein it is known and accepted that it's possible that any given Wizard might be doing some stupid-ass Tzeentchian 'I have served the Colleges for forty years so I might be in a position to pull THIS betrayal!' thing, but the Colleges still ends up ahead of the game because you ain't gonna do forty years of damage before the Magisters Vigilant chaos dunk you into a Pit of Shades. That makes it kind of a questionable decision to publish I Can Do Way More Than Forty Years Worth Of Damage Before The Magisters Vigilant Catch Up To Me.
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Could she, though?

Even with turning to Dhar, I am not sure how it would be possible.
 
The Phoenixian said:
The keys of crystal may have a lot of interpretations, but it's also important to acknowledge they very much did not exist in isolation during the Karag Dum arc and what we learned afterwards. We did eventually get resolution in the explanation from Borek, but there's also the question of how many other points of foreshadowing there were, and how many related to the Old Gods of the Dawi. I'm not sure when exactly Boney would have decided on the fate of Karag Dum out of the nine-square chart, but it would have been at least since the mention of the Runemasters and the elves pursuing Cor Dum during the buildup to that arc.
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We know that much - Boney rolled when we tried to investigate Vlag. Its fate depended on whether the leyline from Dum was active.

HanChenYou said:
Could she, though?

Even with turning to Dhar, I am not sure how it would be possible.
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1. Distribute "How To First Secret" leaflets across the Empire and plunge it into a war between dozens of petty necromancers, each one suddenly a threat to an entire province.
2. Use the chaos to persuade the dwarfs that the Empire is corrupt and must be overthrown, leading to a war between the forces of Order.
3. Travel out to the Plain of Bones by gyrocopter, and return with an army of skeletal dragons to clean up the survivors.
 
Don't forget having a chained Tzeentch sorcerer/bound daemon or something around for a +20 to casting. Numbers gotta get pumped. Also we have ready access to Heide and the Reikland Heir for a quick bout of murderous destabilization, especially if we yoink their souls so no Amethysts could question their corpus. Also has a few vampires that she could restore pretty easily all told, one of which is a very organized and skilled Necrarch. Mathilde could do a lot of damage in a very short time.
 
HanChenYou said:
Could she, though?

Even with turning to Dhar, I am not sure how it would be possible.
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The Liber Mortis can turn a petty necromancer into a threat to an entire province. Frederic van Hal was a regular Morrite priest, and the book turned him into one of the most feared caster in the Empirés history, who could raise endless armies of the undead.

Mathilde isn't a petty necromancer or a priest without much casting experience. She's a LM, with a Learning of 29 and extremely powerful magic items. What could an already exceptional caster with such a boost as the Liber Mortis? Raise even bigger armies, infiltrate cities to kill and animate their population, go to the dragon cemetery and bring back an army of zombie dragons, assassinate and use as undead puppet enemy leaders while keeping their nature hidden by illusions, and plenty of other things I can't imagine.
 
Mystic Pentagram said:
I just re-opened the thread after some time, and i see people discussing how to make Mathilde the Supreme Evil Overlord and destroy the Empire.

WTF.
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Megalomania is a common foible of powerful wizards.

I think the primary mode of attack would be leveraging Mathilde's knowledge of the Waystone Network into disabling or destroying the handful of outflow nodes for the continent. That's something she could probably do with sufficient prep, and is a potential apocalypse. Plonk an army of the dead on top to keep Ulthuan from re-installing one of their few remaining replacement menhirs long enough for the accumulated magic to allow daemons to manifest and defend the spots themselves, and she can homebrew an End Times.
 
If we ever had the spare time off from writing research papers to write an anti-Dhar book, (edit: or engineer the destruction of the Old World, apparently,) I'd much rather Mathilde use that time to write a romance novel instead. Take a look at this:
Boney said:
Bookshelf:
Romance +11 - Extensive Imperial / Bretonnian / Dwarven / Extensive Eonir / Extensive Druchii / Extensive and Obscure Skaven
Overly Vulgar Romance +4 - Druchii / Eonir / Extensive Skaven
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Currently, Mathilde's personal collection is at +11, but it's got a lot of gaps. But filling out the Imperial, Dwarven, and Eonir sections is very doable for her, which would raise that to an astonishing +21, higher than the highest Library topics. Add in Max's assistance, Mathilde's +27 Intrigue, and the Coin's +20 bonus, and there's a good chance Mathilde could knock it out of the park as a writer of dirty, smutty romance fiction. And is that not a worthy goal to aspire to?
 
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Gavin Prince said:
Megalomania is a common foible of powerful wizards.

I think the primary mode of attack would be leveraging Mathilde's knowledge of the Waystone Network into disabling or destroying the handful of outflow nodes for the continent. That's something she could probably do with sufficient prep, and is a potential apocalypse. Plonk an army of the dead on top to keep Ulthuan from re-installing one of their few remaining replacement menhirs long enough for the accumulated magic to allow daemons to manifest and defend the spots themselves, and she can homebrew an End Times.
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On the other hand, à necromancer Mathilde wouldn't necessarily want to end the world, just conquer it.
 
Mystic Pentagram said:
I just re-opened the thread after some time, and i see people discussing how to make Mathilde the Supreme Evil Overlord and destroy the Empire.

WTF.
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Eh. More so why we would absolutely never want to publish this stuff. We CAN do more than 40 years worth of damage before the magisters vigilant catch up with us

Edit: to clarify, that means "and so could potentially anyone else who learns the first and second secrets of Dhar".
 
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Derpmind said:
Currently, Mathilde's personal collection is at +11, but it's got a lot of gaps. But filling out the Imperial, Dwarven, and Eonir sections is very doable for her, which would raise that to an astonishing +21, higher than the highest Library topics. Add in Max's assistance, Mathilde's +27 Intrigue, and the Coin's +20 bonus, and there's a good chance Mathilde could knock it out of the park as a writer of dirty, smutty romance fiction. And is that not a worthy goal to aspire to?
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With sufficient dedication, she could publish enough smut to qualify for an 'Overly Vulgar Romance +2 (Extensive Mathilde)' bonus.
 
Gavin Prince said:
Megalomania is a common foible of powerful wizards.

I think the primary mode of attack would be leveraging Mathilde's knowledge of the Waystone Network into disabling or destroying the handful of outflow nodes for the continent. That's something she could probably do with sufficient prep, and is a potential apocalypse. Plonk an army of the dead on top to keep Ulthuan from re-installing one of their few remaining replacement menhirs long enough for the accumulated magic to allow daemons to manifest and defend the spots themselves, and she can homebrew an End Times.
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I would say first to organize multiple simultaneous assassinations against key leaders of the Empire and the Dawi.

Even if some of them fail, a few will die and cause enough chaos to make it difficult for the forces of Order to organize an effective resistance.

Of course, that is if she wants to "just" destroy civilization in the Old World or cause mass destruction.

If she wanted to conquer or take over the Empire, it would be more complex but still possible thanks to the resources Mathilde has.
 
Mystic Pentagram said:
I just re-opened the thread after some time, and i see people discussing how to make Mathilde the Supreme Evil Overlord and destroy the Empire.

WTF.
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Thread madness about becoming Dark Lady Weber strikes again! Unfortunately, she's competing against LM Weber, Dame Weber, and Loremaster Weber.

Personally, I prefer thread madness about what sort of Ulgu spells and rituals we could make, but I'll take this over other forms of thread madness.
 
Derpmind said:
If we ever had the spare time off from writing research papers to write an anti-Dhar book, (edit: or engineer the destruction of the Old World, apparently,) I'd much rather Mathilde use that time to write a romance novel instead. Take a look at this:

Currently, Mathilde's personal collection is at +11, but it's got a lot of gaps. But filling out the Imperial, Dwarven, and Eonir sections is very doable for her, which would raise that to an astonishing +21, higher than the highest Library topics. Add in Max's assistance, Mathilde's +27 Intrigue, and the Coin's +20 bonus, and there's a good chance Mathilde could knock it out of the park as a writer of dirty, smutty romance fiction. And is that not a worthy goal to aspire to?
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Reading a lot of fiction doesn't necessarily turn someone into a good writer (source: 99.99% of all fanfiction ever written). The actual relevant topics in our library are Literature (naturally), Anatomy (for obvious reasons) and possibly Hydrology if you really want to go Overly Vulgar. The current combined bonus for those is 27, but after we get those Eonir books it'll be 42, which is a good number to have when writing a story.
 
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