- Location
- Utrecht
the betrayal of Nicodemus.
It's on the wiki, but the source of it is the 6e vampire counts army book, which is iirc, decently high up on the quest canonicity list.
Warhammer Fantasy: Divided Loyalties - an Advisor's Quest
- Thread starter Boney
- Start date
- Fantasy Users' Choice!
Voted best in category in the Users' Choice awards.
It's on the wiki, but the source of it is the 6e vampire counts army book, which is iirc, decently high up on the quest canonicity list.
Parabola
Divided Loyalties Librarian
- Location
- The Destination of Fate
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Perhaps humans, who are more keenly aware of their mortality than vampires, have an easier time getting into the mentality required to bend both Shyish and Dhar together into Necromancy, and the incentive to become good at it faster than an immortal vampire would.
Edit: Didn't read the Betrayal of Nicodemus until after I posted this, but it basically has the same conclusion, hah.
Edit: Didn't read the Betrayal of Nicodemus until after I posted this, but it basically has the same conclusion, hah.
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deathofrats0808
Don’t think of it as dying; just as leaving early
- Location
- Earth
Right, but the conclusion there isn't actually "humans are just better at Necromancy", it's "humans are more motivated, and so learn faster". Which is a very different thing. It also still doesn't answer the original question about why you see exactly 0 Druchii necromancers, despite how useful it would be.
Perhaps the Apprentice Nero was just built different, because usually mortal necromancers are chumps compared to vampires.
Or that humans cast harder but vampires can cast safer, given that the one can use dhar for centuries without getting absolutely annihilated while the other most definitely can't.
Or that humans cast harder but vampires can cast safer, given that the one can use dhar for centuries without getting absolutely annihilated while the other most definitely can't.
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Tasoli
Life is for Living
- Location
- Behind the Keyboard.
It is not like Druchii can download a copy of Liber Mortis from Piratebay or anything like that? They need to go get necromancy books first and until they do they are unlikely to grok it naturally since fear of death is not natural state of mind for them.
But if you are interested in creating Druchii Necromancer, Morathi has an agent who is willing to buy it from us in Lorelorn and she is willing to pay. Just take the action. I am Sure Morathii will use her skeleton armies for a good cause and it won't piss of Asur at all.
deathofrats0808
Don’t think of it as dying; just as leaving early
- Location
- Earth
Necromancy was invented four and a half thousand years ago, and your argument is not one of the Druchii has ever captured anything of the basics on the subject? Hell, the Vampire Wars started five hundred years ago, and the Vampire Coast was established a thousand years before that, and you think that in all that time, raiding and stealing, trading and learning, the Druchii have never come across any necromancy books?
- Location
- Europa, Jupiter Orbit
I might be opening a can of worms, but should there not be a lot of mundane subjects where a House has whatever passes as Antiquarian-to-Esoteric that are still covered to a basic or Extensive extend in the Library of Mournings? Especially if it is about the surrounding landscape where the Cityborn's cousins live?
Same for stuff where the surviving Asur material predominates but someone somewhere in Tor Lithanel has written a little bit of new material on.
Also, aren't most Asur books in the Library of Mourning technically Antiquarian? Antiquarian only maybe?
But I get if going through everything with that kind of mentality is far too much work. And inflates the actual mechanical bonuses. Especially if we plan on doing similar things to other libraries whose owners find themselves indebted to us.
Do they have anything basic on the major ones? Or is anything they know about, say, Sigmar, based on offhand knowledge from local Empire experts? Or, I guess, a meagre collection of books that are just straight translations (and mistranslations) of what is already found in all the Empire books?
Yeah, there's a lot of institutions we can approach for a library deal. I think The Royal Academy of Talabecland will also be very interested in our new plant lore, and they also have a Jade and Amber branch - see Andres's library post for more details. The Light Order's Ancient Library is another strong candidate for a deal imo: not just for our new elf magic lore, but because they have a lot of writings on religion, and we have a whole lot of Elven and Dwarven theological writings that they probably don't have access to.
...on the other hand, we already have four libraries we have secured copying rights to. We are quickly creating a library backlog. Is this what it means to suffer from success?
Parabola
Divided Loyalties Librarian
- Location
- The Destination of Fate
- Pronouns
- She/Her
I have to imagine Druchii, like most other Elves, don't do Necromancy for a variety of cultural reasons.
- Part of the reason humans use necromancy is out of a fear of death and a deep awareness of their mortality and elves not only live really long but can extend it through non-Necromantic magic if they're really good/dedicated - see: the Grey Lords, Malekith, Morathi, miscellaneous others.
- Part of the reason humans use necromancy is that they don't actually need that much in the way of inherent power to do so. A human with low talent at the Winds (who could only cast, say, Lesser Spells) can become a deadly menace with Necromancy, because adding Dhar to anything makes it more dangerous and powerful. Elves don't have this problem because generally speaking they're all capable of using magic and have similar levels of talent.
- Part of the reason humans use necromancy is that they go less crazy using Necromancy than just directly using Dhar. But Elves can already use Dhar directly as safely as is possible. Sure, they probably become more megalomaniac and power-hungry due to needing to channel that mindset to use it, but they can still think clearly. So to an elf, it's an extra step to take rather than just directly taking the power in your own hands.
- Necromancy is not that useful outside of raising armies, killing people and doing evil magical experiments... And Dhar can already do all those things. Asides from summoning Daemons, Dhar can help enslave beasts and corrupt dragons and pegasi. And unlike undead, these can generally act more independently/intelligently. Dhar can shoot Doombolts like nobody's business. Dhar can presumably do stuff like sacrificing souls to absorb their life energy directly. So beyond the speed in raising armies, necromancy doesn't bring anything unique to the table.
- Vanity. Elves are known to really like their luxuries and creature comforts, and necromancy is an ugly thing where you generally raise corpses and bind ghosts and it's like, very unpleasant. Grotesque, even. Sure, Druchii are no strangers to torture and awful shit but I don't think they'd appreciate needing to stitch together lots of bodies like Alkharad did in his macabre museum of beasts.
I'm definitely starting to wonder how many turns it'll be before we're comfortable enough with handing over the EIC's reins over to the Hochlander and then hiring a different Perpetual to help us manage the library.
- Location
- Leeds
It's just not the same whipping a zombie as a slave.
They might also have a less extreme version of the Skaven Necromancer Problem (TM) with the Witch King rather than the Horned Rat, i.e. not a fan of the idea that any skilled wizard with access to a graveyard has an army that can't betray them in particular.
deathofrats0808
Don’t think of it as dying; just as leaving early
- Location
- Earth
This would honestly be my main guess. One of the mainstays of his power is probably that he can raise a bigger army than anyone else in Naggaroth. He also probably doesn't use necromancy himself because I doubt he trusts that Nagash didn't slip tricks in there. It's already what Morathi does to the Sisterhood of Ghrond after all.
All of these are examples where it would have significantly compounded the difficulty of deciding what subject gets what bonuses for extremely little of actual interest to most readers. That sort of depth might be a good investment of effort for a theoretical Spider-We Quest where the entire thing is about the books, but not here where it's a sideshow.
Not enough to represent whole number bonuses to the relevant subjects. It takes more than just someone from a distinct culture putting pen to paper for a fresh set of bonuses to appear, there needs to be meaningful amounts of unique insight.
Tasoli
Life is for Living
- Location
- Behind the Keyboard.
I imagine if they were to find any random necromancy book they would turn up their nose to it because magic in most of those is ametour, minor league stuff and no elf would lower themselves to spending decades it would take to master necromancy themselves. I mean why bother? Especially since they might not think end result is worth it.
Only something like Liber Mortis would be worth their time tough but absent of that they are likely to ignore it. So yes I think Elves would ignore it.
Asur or Druchii both still don't use Black Powder or canons on their ships and that is almost no brainer upgrade in most cases. Magic that is at best side grade is not going to spread before that.
I'm kinda hoping we can get that one as a sort of freebie by having Egrimm use it as a carrot to get Cython to share their book hoard with us.
The Light Order gives us their library, we give Cython premium access, and Cython gives us
... Whatever they feel like giving in return.
infinityDivided
Prince Of Doom
- Location
- USA
Does Cython have a book hoard?
- Location
- Earth
Of course. They're definitely old and powerful and scholarly enough to have collected a significant amount over the centuries. It's just that Cython can usually get whatever they ask for book-wise because dragon, so we can't just give them a KAU library pass to get copies of their hoard. There was an opportunity earlier during the KAU staffing vote where we could've let Cython staff the library, but that would've come with significant loss of control over library operations (since it's essentially letting Cython consider the entirety of KAU as an extension of their hoard), so we picked the We instead.
So with that off the table, we'd need more interesting bribes to get access to Cython's books (which probably needs to be related to their current interest in gods and divinity). The most obvious example would be divine AV, but that's kind of not allowed. My next best idea would be studying the Kurgan shrine with Egrimm and then giving it to Cython if something interesting came up.
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Tasoli
Life is for Living
- Location
- Behind the Keyboard.
I actually disagree. We know that he has a strong enough memory to remember entire dictonary after one read. So most likely he has memorized a hoards worth of books but I doubt he keeps the books around, no point to it from his PoV really.
Good luck getting him to dictate books he read.
- Location
- Earth
I found a citation for them having physical books. I suppose while it's entirely possible for Cython to just memorize the knowledge, sometimes it gets annoying in regards to topics they're no longer interested in, or maybe they just occasionally like being able to physically look at the writing while thinking.
- Location
- North Wales
- Pronouns
- He/Him/His
I've got to say that I've enjoyed the library sections of the updates more than I'd expected when it won the boon vote. It's the most "numbers go up" part of the quest, admittedly, but that's nice in its own way, and it's already prompted its own mini-adventure (book-mining) and translated several currencies we're usually hard-up on ways to spend into results that are both prosocial and personally beneficial.
The time to hang up that particular hat is peeking over the horizon, though. Not here yet; there's still some 'quick wins' with potential exchanges. But diminishing returns are going to hit sooner or later.
chocolote12
A Penguin Flailing Against The Keyboard Of Life.
You can do it to rocks if you want*. The people part is what causes the motion, because it works by enslaving them either whole or in part, but orcs can walk and talk so it's not like they'd be deficient.
*If you get the people from elsewhere.
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Have The We made any book requests known? Do The We know they can make book requests?
chocolote12
A Penguin Flailing Against The Keyboard Of Life.
No, you can do it to rocks, it's a whole thing. It's not the only way to make angry statues but it is one of the ways to make angry statues, of which the Nehekharans have many.
The thing is that while the vessel is permissive, you need to gather parts of the soul to achieve the animus, and the smarter and stronger you want the creation the more parts of the soul you need. That's why people with big souls turn into more dangerous undead by default. (You can also make up the difference with gumption and warp stone.)
There's probably a more elegant way to explain the concept, but I forgot which specific bits you need to make a Golem.