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Warhammer Fantasy: Divided Loyalties - an Advisor's Quest

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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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"Sir! Lady Mathilde has published another book sir!"

"Oh by Verana how delightfull. Her tendency to walk from topic to topic can be quite bothersome, but her insightfull and curious insights into all manner of magical effects is always a informative read, please tell me pauper what this newest one is about"

"It's about a Bretonian lady and a Knight of the Empire getting kidnapped by foul orks, and they have to break out while finding their true love for each other sir"

"...What?"
 
The best battle magic is the one that causes battlefield mistakes to have already been made.

Ribauld's Retroactive Illusion is the proof the of the concept, letting you send an illusion backwards in time to have fooled your targets about the location of a point of interest such as a hill or fortress; in practical terms, it appears as if you teleport the feature or landmass elsewhere, leaving them standing in an empty field.

Mathilde's Misheard Mandate would be a pretty funny mirror of the RRI, focused on having retroactively confused the listeners in the past so that when the spell goes off everyone in the area of effect has been broken off from each other with a different idea of what they're supposed to be doing. I suppose it would look like a hostile teleport to break up a line, and everyone's morale would tank when they realized they were suddenly jumbled around like a Hollywood scene instead of in formation.
 
T_of_A said:
    • Note that we cannot posthumously publish a "here's how Dhar works, I knew it the whole time!" book just to be smug. That would bring too much scrutiny on the important things we've built and on the people we care about. The only purpose of writing a Dark Magic Book is as an emergency "how to beat your current Dhar-wielding apocalypse", not to be smug or to widely disseminate everyday anti-Dhar knowledge.
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That book already exists. It's the Liber Mortis, and it's already been used as that by a non-mage. We don't need "Liber Mortis 2: Electric Boogaloo".

Anyway, I'd nominate "Don't share around the nuclear secrets" as a good strategy. Doing nothing can frequently be the correct option. We should know, that's how we dealt with the tunnel between Karagril and Karak Drazh, and before that, under-Karagril.
 
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Abhorsen said:
That book already exists. It's the Liber Mortis, and it's already been used as that by a non-mage. We don't need "Liber Mortis 2: Electric Boogaloo".
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It seems Mathilde is currently better at Dhar theory than she was after reading the Liber Mortis. That book is a tell-all for Necromancy, but Mathilde has also examined a bunch of Chaos Wastes Dhar use and just generally has a lot more theoretical knowledge of how Dhar behaves. Mechanically speaking, she now has a bigger bonus to fighting Dhar users. The goal of writing a "Multiple Approaches To Harnessing Incredibly Lethal Dhar Energy" book of dark magic would be to pass on such a trait in an emergency.
 
Empire does not need a book for people to be better at Dhar than Liber Mortis.
Liber Mortis gives the tools needed, and the tools needed are "poke here to break things" instructions, which Liber Mortis has.
Any detailed skills that might, in theory, be acquired from a Dhar users guide by Mathilde would almost certainly require study before whatever emergency it is used for happens.
 
We can make a Sevirscope out of mundane materials that can detect the Winds. In theory if we had available sources we should be able to refine it to detect things like a Waaagh or Chaos Sorcery being employed.


We also have AV that we know when exposed to magic it turns into the same kind of magic it was exposed to. Also when we dipped the Coin it turned into, I think, crystallized Ranald Divine Energy.


Considering that the Coin could do so I am guessing Chaos artifacts would also do the same. For example if we had a Brass Collar we could use it to get Khorne's Divine Energy.

Now my question is, If we had said crystallized Divine Energy, would we be able to refine our Sevirscope to detect said magic? With the ultimate goal, if possible, of making a Chaos Detector (or a Chaoscope if you will).


Now, I know we sacrificed the whole Divine AV Research in Faith or Truth. But at the same time a lot of restrictions don't apply to Chaos Gods, for example Shallya not violence mandate excludes the Chaos Worshipers and such so I am unsure if this would also be forbidden.

Parabola said:
Yes, I asked Boney about it a while back. We'd probably have to negotiate with the Cult of Thungni/Runesmiths Guild.
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Oh that's quite nice. Then I hope we can negotiate with them soon to get their books about magic.
 
Abhorsen said:
That book already exists. It's the Liber Mortis, and it's already been used as that by a non-mage. We don't need "Liber Mortis 2: Electric Boogaloo".

Anyway, I'd nominate "Don't share around the nuclear secrets" as a good strategy. Doing nothing can frequently be the correct option. We should know, that's how we dealt with the tunnel between Karagril and Karak Drazh, and before that, under-Karagril.
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The point of writing it would be condensing down the specific points useful for anti undead army, without having to read the rest of the book while a massive undead army is actively bearing down on you
 
rocketroland999 said:
The point of writing it would be condensing down the specific points useful for anti undead army, without having to read the rest of the book while a massive undead army is actively bearing down on you
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Or we can place a bookmark on Liber Mortis for the bit that tells the second secret.
Much faster, probably won't even take full AP.
Also, if the massive undead army is already bearing down on you, it's kinda late to start reading the anti undead army book.
 
pucflek said:
Oh definitely. Unless you somehow press them in, Pit of Shades will kill way less people than Melkoths Miasma cast on regiment in pitched combat. But there is degrees and such. If you are already casting a spell that will envelop entire military unit, you might as well kill the commanders instead. Sure, technically they could do way more damage if their orders were misheard, but quite frankly, if you just murder them instead, you risk no possible dispelling. ITs sorta eh.
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I definitely agree that killing commanders has more of an effect than merely sowing mass disorder in enemy ranks (even for the armies that literally revolve around their leaders), but you do have to admit that enemy commanders have a higher tendency to have protections against enemy spells than their soldiers.

With the exception of undead or some Daemonic armies, most forces would be far more susceptible to being misled as to what their orders are.

Retrueno said:
We can make a Sevirscope out of mundane materials that can detect the Winds. In theory if we had available sources we should be able to refine it to detect things like a Waaagh or Chaos Sorcery being employed.
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We asked about a Waaagh detector back when making the visual Seviroscope and Boney clarified that Waaagh energy is not ambient like the Winds - it only revolves around a large enough number of greenskins or individual greenskin shamans, so trying to make a Waaaghscope would be more fraught than a Seviroscope - there is danger in taking orcs as prisoners in order to experiment with the energies of their gods.

Similarly, outright magics of the Four (that which we explicitly call the Lore of Tzeentch or Nurgle or Slaanesh) are not ambient - they're actively shaped by Chaos sorcerers, and they're not found naturally outside of rare and extremely dangerous artefacts. Finding a way to detect these might actively be impossible.

A Dhar-detector is fine, though, because Dhar is an ambient force that you can find in the world.

Edit: Also, a Waaagh detector in particular isn't really all that practical. You can see Waaaghs on the horizon. A Chaos Sorcery detector... again, I'm not sure it'd be possible.
 
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Retrueno said:
We can make a Sevirscope out of mundane materials that can detect the Winds. In theory if we had available sources we should be able to refine it to detect things like a Waaagh or Chaos Sorcery being employed.
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I mean, maybe. Probably, even. But it doesn't definitely follow that we can do it.
It's like the natural philosophers of the Renaissance saying "We can now make a device to quantify the previously immeasurable property that is a person's temperature, so we should soon be able to construct devices to quantitatively measure other properties like their virtue or wonder."
Non-Teclisian energies act very differently to those described in the Teclisian model. That's why they're outside the model in the first place.
 
T_of_A said:
It seems Mathilde is currently better at Dhar theory than she was after reading the Liber Mortis. That book is a tell-all for Necromancy, but Mathilde has also examined a bunch of Chaos Wastes Dhar use and just generally has a lot more theoretical knowledge of how Dhar behaves. Mechanically speaking, she now has a bigger bonus to fighting Dhar users. The goal of writing a "Multiple Approaches To Harnessing Incredibly Lethal Dhar Energy" book of dark magic would be to pass on such a trait in an emergency.
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No, we really don't have a ton more theoretical knowledge, at least not relevant. Almost all of our relevant knowledge is the nuke: second secret of Dhar. When someone cracks open the book, because things are that dire, that's what they need. They don't need the small stuff.

Knowledge on how to use a gun is redundant when you give them access to a nuke that only targets Dhar as well.
rocketroland999 said:
The point of writing it would be condensing down the specific points useful for anti undead army, without having to read the rest of the book while a massive undead army is actively bearing down on you
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The specific point is the Second Secret of Dhar. And apparently, gleaning that from the book isn't too hard or time sensitive, if The Grand Theogonist picked it up so quickly.

On how to fight undead? We know there are censored copies of the Liber Mortis. They probably have that info.



Basically, it's "let's play dice with Mathilde's reputation (and waste AP), so we can give the Empire something they already have."


There's a million more useful things to do, including writing "How to get good at diplomacizing Dwarves" to, as metnioned, more/better Seviroscope.
 
Abhorsen said:
Basically, it's "let's play dice with Mathilde's reputation (and waste AP), so we can give the Empire something they already have."
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I started this whole topic by double-checking whether or not your statement was correct. It's not.

Boney said:
Dhar manipulation: You know the theory behind using another Wind to manipulate Dhar.
Dhar diagnosis: You know how to spot Dhar poisoning, gauge its severity, and temporarily reduce the severity of some of its symptoms.
First Secret of Dhar: Dhar is inherently unstable, everyone knows that. What they don't know is how to turn Dhar against itself. You do. And now you'll never not know it.
Second Secret of Dhar: Dhar could be made more unstable. A tiny nudge in just the right way and Dhar unravels in just the right way to unravel more Dhar, and so on until nothing remains.
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This is what we got from the Liber Mortis.

Years later, after accumulating a lot more Dhar info and performing detailed study of Skaven technology + natural Dhar movement + modern necromantic innovations + some Chaos stuff, we obtained the following trait:
Boney said:
[ ] LESSON: Dhar Insight
You've seen Daemons, the Chaos Wastes, the Windfall. You're reaching as thorough an understanding of the fel energies of Dark Magic as can be attained without actually wielding them.
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Boney said:
[Trait gained: Dhar insight: You've observed Dhar in so many different contexts that you've reached a deep understanding of it without ever wielding it. +10 to studying or countering Dhar-based magics, +20 to wielding Dhar.]
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This shows us that Mathilde is significantly better at using and countering Dhar than she was after merely reading the Liber Mortis. And beyond mere numbers, the narrative impact of this trait has been noticeable, and it's been more widely applied that the Liber Mortis' lore was.
We have gone further than what that book allows, and I think it's worth the time to make sure our knowledge will be available in case it's ever needed.

Let's get another of our apocalypse weapons ready for deployment !
 
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Abhorsen said:
On how to fight undead? We know there are censored copies of the Liber Mortis. They probably have that info.
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The Liber Mortis is capable of granting the Necromantic Insight and Undead Tactics/Strategy modifiers to a reader. Mathilde has, on top of those, her Dhar Insight trait. A Liber Mathilde would be written with the intent of allowing a reader to pick up that trait in addition to those in the Liber Mortis, letting them engage Dhar wielders with a huge bonus even without invoking the Second Secret and its "put the user to fire and sword" consequences.

I don't really think it's worth it, personally, but that's the premise. I'd rather work on spreading her other abilities and traits, from Apparition-capture to maybe her greatsword style if we ever get around to making the Shadowsaber spell.
 
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Nerdasaurus Rex said:
We actually have a boon with the runesmiths guild that we could use for this, although lately people have been complaining about swapping boons for books so maybe we should do something else with it.
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The only other thing that I can think of asides from getting books from the Runesmiths (or rather, a more favorable library exchange deal) would be getting to study the Phoenix Crown.

Boney's been pretty clear before (twice now, I believe) about how we can't just go 'oh maybe it has something to do with the Waystone Network' as an excuse to do so, and I don't think AV alone would cut it.
 
You missed my point.
T_of_A said:
This is what we got from the Liber Mortis.

Years later, after accumulating a lot more Dhar info and performing detailed study of Skaven technology + natural Dhar movement + modern necromantic innovations + some Chaos stuff, we obtained the following trait:
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Here's the issue:
T_of_A said:
This shows us that Mathilde is significantly better at using and countering Dhar than she was after merely reading the Liber Mortis. And beyond mere numbers, the narrative impact of this trait has been noticeable, and it's been more widely applied that the Liber Mortis' lore was.
We have gone further than what that book allows, and I think it's worth the time to make sure our knowledge will be available in case it's ever needed.

Let's get another of our apocalypse weapons ready for deployment !
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Dhar insight isn't significant to teach, because it's next to the nuke that is the second secret. Quite bluntly, we can't teach Dhar insight in normal circumstances. In abnormal circumstances, the Liber Mortis gets cracked open, and who cares about Dhar Insight, a nuke just got dropped. In an emergency situation, there's no time to learn Dhar insight, you go straight to the Liber Mortis with someone bad at magic, then blow everything up.

It's a waste of time, not because it isn't a useful weapon to us, but because it cannot be safely taught, and there's already an emergency button.

In contrast, Waaaghbane? Crazy useful. Safe to teach, nothing was already there at all.


But even worse? The whole idea of mass teaching this tool in an emergency is a bad idea. Because some will use Dhar because it is tempting and needed, not just counter it. And now the knowledge is widespread, you can't just bottle it up. This is another reason the Dhar nuke is so good: a single person learns it, they don't need to be good at magic, and they can be killed if needed.
 
Parabola said:
The only other thing that I can think of asides from getting books from the Runesmiths (or rather, a more favorable library exchange deal) would be getting to study the Phoenix Crown.

Boney's been pretty clear before (twice now, I believe) about how we can't just go 'oh maybe it has something to do with the Waystone Network' as an excuse to do so, and I don't think AV alone would cut it.
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I'd love to study the Phoenix Crown, but yeah, the dwarves won't let us near it unless we have a good enough reason first, and I can't think of anything beyond "it's neat".
 
Abhorsen said:
Dhar insight isn't significant to teach, because it's next to the nuke that is the second secret. Quite bluntly, we can't teach Dhar insight in normal circumstances. In abnormal circumstances, the Liber Mortis gets cracked open, and who cares about Dhar Insight, a nuke just got dropped. In an emergency situation, there's no time to learn Dhar insight, you go straight to the Liber Mortis with someone bad at magic, then blow everything up.
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I think that actually using the Second Secret would require rolls, which Dhar Insight would help with. Surely if you're trying to weaponize the way Dhar structures explode it'd be useful to have a better understanding of how Dhar travels ? Surely if you're trying to break someone else's spells in a very specific way it'd help to have insight into how his magic behaves ?

Abhorsen said:
But even worse? The whole idea of mass teaching this tool in an emergency is a bad idea.
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I didn't say anything about mass teaching it ?
Indeed, in my previous posts I said things like "a trusted Lord Magister could learn this". I view this as being like the Liber Mortis : potentially very useful in a crisis, but even then you'd only give it to your most trusted expert.
 
T_of_A said:
Indeed, in my previous posts I said things like "a trusted Lord Magister could learn this". I view this as being like the Liber Mortis : potentially very useful in a crisis, but even then you'd only give it to your most trusted expert.
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If a trusted Lord Magister can learn this, see "I can now do more than 40 years worth of Damage before the Magisters Vigilant get to me".

Yeah sure they're trusted. This is also a universe with Fucking TZEENTCH, and other temptations. How much trust are you going to put in a figure like this?

There's a reason people in general and Wizards in particular are not meant to be taught Liber Mortis tier stuff about Dhar.
 
Parabola said:
The only other thing that I can think of asides from getting books from the Runesmiths (or rather, a more favorable library exchange deal) would be getting to study the Phoenix Crown.
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We could also get a bunch of Runes for our library. I remember lighting Runes have been brought up a while ago and then never revisited, or maybe preservation Runes if that's a thing? Also, I wouldn't be so sure that getting to study the Phoenix Crown would make sense as a Runesmiths boon. The permission to study a very significant prize from the War of Vengeance sounds like something that will be the decision of the High King, and while we can use our boon as a general KaK boon it's only a Minor Boon if we do so and that might not be enough.

Honestly I'm fine sitting on that boon for now. The exact value of a boon is vague, but IIRC a moderate boon can get you a team of experts for a year or something like that. Having a pile (of unclear but decently large size) of Runesmith favours in our back pocket could come in handy, and we may as well wait for an opportunity to use it as we did with the Metalsmiths boon.
 
@Boney Do any of the Colleges of Magic ever get bequeathed or gifted (profitable) land, like monastic orders often did? If yes, do they usually keep and tax it?

They do get members from all walks of life, they give lots of opportunity to said members make something of themselves, and their members are less likely than average to sire and raise heirs (especially among some of the Colleges). Wizards leaving all of their inheritance to their College (instead of a family member or adoptee) doesn't seem too unlikely. And among the more ascetic Colleges I could even see someone donating real estate they acquired in their previous life upon joining instead of waiting to do so posthumously.

I know that this is a bit of a random question. But for quite a long time now I have been fiddling with a hypothetical last will for Mathilde. No idea why it fascinates me (since I definitely don't want her to die any time soon), but it does. At times I even wrote down random notes and then revised them as circumstances changed (like Eike taking up Greatswording for instance).
 
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