- Location
- Washington
Fortunately I said "a not insignificant amount" instead of "all of them."
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.
- Location
- Australia
That is contradictory. You cannot say say that the majority of the barrel was good and also that the whole barrel was rotten. (And it was. A class built on abuse and exploitation is always evil.)
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- Pronouns
- He/Him
I believe the logic is that, at most times through history, nobility were fine, but when one of them did go bad it resulted in a whole generation of bad nobles, rotting the 'whole barrel'.
I don't buy that at all, mind you, but it's not inherently internally inconsistent.
Yes, but our library is still pretty much in the ass end of the world as far as most of the Old World is concerned. And is staffed by giant spiders. And most of the population of the Old World is illiterate to boot.
Tasoli
Life is for Living
- Location
- Behind the Keyboard.
Being iliterate is no obstacle for people to use our library. If they have money they can just hire somebody to read to them.
Imperious
Without the sun of my life
Most people who can't read probably also don't have the money to have someone who can read read for them.
- Location
- California, USA
- Pronouns
- He/Him
I remember during the scribe vote Boney described the effects of our choice as massively increasing literacy by making K8P more of a "library town," like the many mining towns dotting the US. So hopefully eventually the library will be in use constantly just from completely normal citizens, living their lives and wanting to read a book in their local library.
It's likely too early to see such effects but it's one of my favorite votes. I can't wait for the library to be a thing that exists in the world with outspoken effects on people.
It's likely too early to see such effects but it's one of my favorite votes. I can't wait for the library to be a thing that exists in the world with outspoken effects on people.
DocMatoi
Theoretical Lover of Girls
- Location
- within 2 hours of the White House
- Pronouns
- They/Them
Attention was called to them in quest, even
Though id note in response to the thread at large that in the "modern" time of the quest, there does seem to be some at least some nascent conception of the empire as a nation as opposed to the Greater Feudal Fiefdom Of The Emperor, at least based on the idea of there being patriotic songs about how East Of the Mountains Is Empire Clay
Imperious
Without the sun of my life
Still, even in popular conception among the masses, the mountains essentially act as a natural border. Little talk of whether this patch of dirt or that patch of dirt is Imperial or Bretonni, since the mountains act as a clear divide. It prevents the sort of common border disputes that would arise over whether the border was actually this way or that way, because even the common man thinks: "West of the mountains is them, east of the mountains is ours, don't try to move east of them."
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I mean, if you are in Empire, you would still have troubles with visit to Kislev's library. Or if you are in Sylvania, and library is in Ostland, for example. It's medieval times and medieval travels.
From this point of view, problems with attending our library isn't that much worse than attending library in other part of Empire. Nobles and wizards don't exactly travel from one library to others. Ostland's library is used mostly by people from Ostland, Moot's one is used by people from Moot.
I don't see problems with our library been used mostly by people of Karak Eight Peaks. Especially since we hired and taught many of them to read and write.
And remember, from our collaboration with Moot, it's implied that journey to K8P is long, but not unimaginable, and people will do it, if needed.
- Location
- Australia
Not really, because bray-shamans are broke as fuck. They have no elven tutelage, no three hundred years of institutional knowledge, no hundreds of colleagues to share notes with (thousands if you include other Colleges), vastly reduced ability to gain and spend resources*, and are much more likely to blow themselves up with their magic since Dhar scarcely plays favourites. They can't even rely on Chaos cheat codes because an important part of the beastmen's lore is that the Chaos Gods don't care about them. The average amber wizard is better than the average bray-shaman.
*Winds of Magic tells us that wizards who want to make magical constructs can make the shell themselves, but get better results by hiring experienced artisans. One example is a wizard who commissioned an artisan to build a giant wickerman made from antlers**, which, given it was antlers, makes me think the client was an amber wizard.
**This provoked a 'small army of angry Taalites'. The wickerman ended up not being made.
Mopman43
Mountain-Hermit of Nitpeak
- Location
- Vermont
I'd wager a considerable sum that the average Bray-Shaman is more powerful.
The average Amber Wizard is a Magister, Journeyman, or Apprentice. I doubt that you get a lot of Bray-Shamans that aren't slinging Battle Magic.
- Location
- Australia
I don't think Battle Magic-grade bray-shamans spring fully-formed from the earth. They'd have to grind xp just like everyone else.
consequences
Not A Nice Person At All
- Location
- Jerkville
The average spherical bray shaman in a vacuum encountered on the battlefield is probably meaner than the average imperial wizard. They probably just got there on the gnawed bones of rather more of their not quite peers than the Empire can feasibly countenance. The near peak of imperial wizardry probably exceeds what can be achieved without actual dedicated support infrastructure without authors putting their thumb on the scales to reinforce the fremen mirage. The actual peak could go either way.
There's also the very distinct probability that the Shamans use the revolutionary new strategy called lying and privately pray to the chaos gods to explode less.
There's also the very distinct probability that the Shamans use the revolutionary new strategy called lying and privately pray to the chaos gods to explode less.
NexusEye
Aspiring God
- Pronouns
- She/Her
In most of the Empire literacy is seen as a luxury, a skill some people need but for most of the population the time spent learning literacy is time not spent learning valuable job skills.
By hiring the local population to do the job of scribing we've essentially guaranteed there will always be a job opening as a scribe at KAU as long as you're literate, incentivizing people to teach themselves and their children literacy so they can become scribes either as a primary source of income or as a backup or a side gig in case their primary job is too unreliable to rely on for a steady income or if their primary job doesn't pay enough to make ends meet by itself, as a side effect this massively increases the number of possible local patrons for our library since literacy rates are being pushed through the roof by our promise of a reliable source of income.
NexusEye
Aspiring God
- Pronouns
- She/Her
They don't necessarily have to be praying to the Chaos gods to help them cast their spells, they could be praying to another ancient god we've met once before, one so powerful a certain Dwarfhold felt it was their only hope to survive and drive back the influence of Chaos, Cor-Dum.
- Location
- Australia
You know, I really do like these effects on Karak Eight Peaks, it was a great vote option, but... I'd be happy that it won if it weren't for the orphans option. That would've been a major benevolence. As it is... it doesn't feel like a missed opportunity as such, but rather a missing action. We picked locals, but that's ok, because we'll help orphans a different way. But we aren't. And I'm not sure how we could.
I don't think a second army of scribes is doable - IC it'd break Belegar's budget, OOC that'd invite questions like "can we copy two libraries" which is undesirable. Vlag's transcendent boon is strong, but inapplicable. The goat fief (whose name is surprisingly not in the Organizations threadmark) is too small to support an orphanage. We could set up an orphanage through the EIC to reap PR benefits and train up useful employees, but that has nothing to do with espionage, which is the point of the EIC.
A Great Deed would do the job, but what labour would we exploit them for that'd justify the opportunity cost? I mean heck, two Great Deeds gets us a large fief including a town. Max-loyalty child soldiers is an option, but to do that we first need permission to found a knightly order, which is its own Great Deed, and then wait more than a decade as they go through pagehood and squirehood before the first crop is ready. We want something with quick payout, like the scribes. A spy ring? The CHERUB books are precedent that this is a good idea with an exceptionally low mortality rate, but it isn't viable if Boney hasn't read the books. Mining would get us in trouble with the bursar, so that's out.
I think the library was our only chance.
Imperious
Without the sun of my life
A lot of Bray Shamans probably also manage to enhance their powers by drawing from their warpstone made herdstones, something which the colleges would not tolerate due to the corruptive and damaging effects doing so.
I know of one Welsh folk song dating back to the 1400s about Celtic hearts not quailing when Wales calls on them to stomp some Saxon invaders. That sort of nascent nationalism goes back further than people think, but it was often treated as dissent to be stamped down for a long time before it was recognized as a motive force that could be harnessed.
Alexander the Great using the Persian invasion of Greece as justification for his conquest comes to mind... Classical Greece is a perfect example, actually: the shared, pan-Hellenic epics, festivals and language (though with substantial variance in its dialects) gave individual Hellenes a shared identity alongside identifying with one city-state or another. Nations themselves aren't a new phenomenon. (I will note that these opinions are far from universally held and the subject of substantial and ongoing academic debate, not least because ideas of what constitutes a 'nation' differ significantly.) The idea that we should organise politics and territorial ownership around the unit of the nation, the 'nation-state', is by contrast a far more modern view.
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