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Warhammer Fantasy: Divided Loyalties - an Advisor's Quest

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I'll be preemptively staking my vote on another turn of Waystone establishment in either Mordheim or Sylvania before the elfcation. Yes, I know you all don't want to delay it any longer, but the earlier these are built, the better. They still suck up corruption even if we aren't there so it'd be more efficient to do it first.

Edit: Ayy, 16k pages!
 
Natch said:
Regarding elfcation I'll just repeat that The Father should be tested against as many possibilities at once as feasible, so fit some pokes at Bretonnia in there alongside it. Waystone Mapping seems like a good existing option, it inherently involves wandering all over the Bretonnian countryside and seeing if they're naturally distrusting or suspiciously not so, and it covers two nations for one action so we can throw in Tilea or Estalia and look for obscure regional female deities we've missed if neither Lady nor Lileath pass the paternity test.
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I'm personally of the opinion that a Father plan should seek to benefit from the Father, rather than just poke around - we should do stuff that we actually want to do, and that will go better if the Father happens to work. Bretonnian recruitment is the one obvious example, and there's also using the Father to improve our interactions with the already proven daughter like with the ore deal idea or with the Forest of Shadows nexus action. But your suggestion to use mapping as a broad poking action has caused my brain to fire up, so I offer this edited old plan of mine to your consideration:

[ ] Plan Fathermaxxing
-[ ] no overwork, no AP from T46
-[ ] The Father

-[ ]JOHANN: Explore the Ward of Rain
--[ ] Go out of your way to interact with Eonir that revere Ladrielle
-[ ]EGRIMM: Study the Kurgan Shrine
[ ] Waystone: Mapping: Tilea and Estalia (with Max, Egrimm and Johann)

-[ ] Waystone: Other Networks: Nehekhara (Egrimm, Elrisse, Thorek?)
-[ ] Attempt to bring a non-Order magical tradition into the Waystone Project (Bertonnian Damsels)
-[ ] Waystone: Nexuses (Forest of Shadows) (Aksel, Cadaeth?, Thorek?, Zlata?)
--[ ] Personally reach out to the Ostland and Ostermark Hedgewise for assistance, in the hope that the Father face of the coin will earn their cooperation

-[ ] EIC: Attempt to establish a trade route with the Eonir (ore)
--[ ] Attempt to broker a deal between Kislev and the Eonir. Personally work with Kalita worshipping Kislevite traders if possible.
-[ ] Begin copying the full corpus of a Partner Library. (specify which) (Nuln Aquila Academy)
-[ ] Eike actions: EIC action, Damsels negotiation, Ward of Rain exploration, Kurgan shrine study, linguistics paper
-[ ] Eike study: ??? (possibly nothing, she's on a lot of actions)
-[ ] SERENITY: Linguistic Drift in Lizardmen Glyphs

The thing here is that every single action except for the paper is somehow related to the Father. Beyond the Forest of Shadows action and the ore deal and the Damsel recruitment we also explore the Ward of Rain because Ladrielle is popular there, so we might be able to test that theory. We study the moon shrine because the moon, as an arrant thief, might be a daugher of Ranald. We map Tilea and Estalia in order to poke around the remote corners of the setting in search of potential minor Goddesses. We copy a library dedicated to Myrmidia because Myrmidia is not not similar to Shallya, and Myrmidia being Her daughter rather than Her sister has actually been suggested once or twice in the thread. And we also study the Nehekharan network, which might involve a bit of poking into the Nehekharan pantheon, and who knows maybe there's a daughter hidden in there. Are any of those actions likely to actually lead to anything, even in the case that one of the Goddesses involved there is a daughter? Eh. But we have at least two sure Father-benifiting action (the Hedgewise and Kalita actions) so it's not like we're going home empty handed either way.

I don't subscribe to this plan, but it's not that far off from something I might actually write up. The Waystone part of the turn involves dipping our toes in the study of nexuses and networks by using the expertise of two project member factions that so far haven't actually been called on their specialties, we have one research action and one self-improvement action, there's a solid theme for Eike's portion of the turn (xeno-affinity)...it's a decently balanced plan and no action in there is bad imo; the priorities here are somewhat different from my own, but this is all stuff that I would want to see us do eventually (except that I would prefer to explore Storm rather than Rain).
 
Woo! Ain't no party like a page 16000 party and the party don't stop till page 16001.

Anyways, farther side of the coin is a huge opportunity and huge opportunity cost depending on what we're doing. I would like to use it but there's a trend when it comes to things like this where the playerbase endlessly go in circles about a topic unless someone is capable of giving clear benefits to actually doing something with it beyond simple curiosity.
 
Some_guy_161 said:
I'll be preemptively staking my vote on another turn of Waystone establishment in either Mordheim or Sylvania before the elfcation. Yes, I know you all don't want to delay it any longer, but the earlier these are built, the better. They still suck up corruption even if we aren't there so it'd be more efficient to do it first.

Edit: Ayy, 16k pages!
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Sylvania's very doable because Mathilde and Roswita have dedicated several decades and several armies to cleaning it up, but Mordheim is VERY much a long-term project. If Praag is a city with an occupying force, Mordheim is a hostile city that will need a full-blown siege by the army of Ostermark and possibly more; there's a lot going on in that place that will boil over all at once when we put them on the clock.

Just for practical reasons I'd say focus on targets that don't require a military mobilization for now. On the current list the Blood Fane is probably something Mathilde could run an expedition against in the short term. It's "just" a Chaos shrine, I'm sure there's some Real Motherfuckers of Khorne present but not anything an army would actually help with.
 
mathymancer said:
I'm personally of the opinion that a Father plan should seek to benefit from the Father, rather than just poke around - we should do stuff that we actually want to do, and that will go better if the Father happens to work. Bretonnian recruitment is the one obvious example, and there's also using the Father to improve our interactions with the already proven daughter like with the ore deal idea or with the Forest of Shadows nexus action. But your suggestion to use mapping as a broad poking action has caused my brain to fire up, so I offer this edited old plan of mine to your consideration:
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I think that fathercation would have some benefit as well, but I like the idea of this plan.
 
Natch said:
Sylvania's very doable because Mathilde and Roswita have dedicated several decades and several armies to cleaning it up, but Mordheim is VERY much a long-term project. If Praag is a city with an occupying force, Mordheim is a hostile city that will need a full-blown siege by the army of Ostermark and possibly more; there's a lot going on in that place that will boil over all at once when we put them on the clock.

Just for practical reasons I'd say focus on targets that don't require a military mobilization for now. On the current list the Blood Fane is probably something Mathilde could run an expedition against in the short term. It's "just" a Chaos shrine, I'm sure there's some Real Motherfuckers of Khorne present but not anything an army would actually help with.
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Actually I would argue the other way around. During the push into Sylvania it is stated that Ostermark purged the hungry woods and if I'm remembering right, also Mordheim. (I do agree we shouldn't target it yet, too many secrets around that sh*t show).

The blood fane is a hard no go though, deep in the forests away from any supply or reinforcement, guarded by a champion of khorne at bare minimum. Those guys tank entire companies. Then add on to the fact it's technically also a herd stone, every beastman within the forest of shadows is going to sprint as fast as possible at us before we could get within a mile.
 
I would prefer protector on the elfcation. I want to build up favors we can call up in the future if there is a need against the 13th Everchosen.

Having a company of shadow elves on hand would be a great boon in that. And we might end up with more of them if we save many people and have favors show for it.
 
mathymancer said:
I'm personally of the opinion that a Father plan should seek to benefit from the Father, rather than just poke around - we should do stuff that we actually want to do, and that will go better if the Father happens to work. Bretonnian recruitment is the one obvious example, and there's also using the Father to improve our interactions with the already proven daughter like with the ore deal idea or with the Forest of Shadows nexus action.
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Cutting a deal with Bretonnia is something we can only negotiate once, and without any concrete indicators that The Father will benefit us there, I'd rather not walk into it with no other cards on the table. Boney mentioned previously that the Bretonnians will basically have to pay their way in now that the project they dismissed has succeeded without them; the more obvious our success is, the more we can run their pockets, so waiting another couple years and maybe figuring out the Nexuses first is to our good in the long run.

Alongside testing The Father, Waystone Mapping should tell us how badly Bretonnia needs what we're selling. Mousillon is the obvious Sylvania equivalent, and Mathilde speculated they have a critical Nexus in Gisoreux, but their network is assuredly damaged elsewhere, and the more problems we know about and can solve, the more books concessions we can extract for the Empire.
 
I dunno, I'd like to gamble big on the Father?

We know Ranald is a big deal, we know Deathfang at least thinks Ranald is Loec. So go for broke, assume Ladrielle and Lileath, assume one of them is the Lady. Assume the face of the Father is hidden because the husband of Isha and father of Lileath is Asuryan, that the distance of Asuryan is because its Loec, Ranald wearing a mask to sub in for a dead god.
 
Bucolic said:
I dunno, I'd like to gamble big on the Father?

We know Ranald is a big deal, we know Deathfang at least thinks Ranald is Loec. So go for broke, assume Ladrielle and Lileath, assume one of them is the Lady. Assume the face of the Father is hidden because the husband of Isha and father of Lileath is Asuryan, that the distance of Asuryan is because its Loec, Ranald wearing a mask to sub in for a dead god.
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Asuryan is Lileath's husband, Isha is married to Kurnous.
 
Bucolic said:
I dunno, I'd like to gamble big on the Father?

We know Ranald is a big deal, we know Deathfang at least thinks Ranald is Loec. So go for broke, assume Ladrielle and Lileath, assume one of them is the Lady. Assume the face of the Father is hidden because the husband of Isha and father of Lileath is Asuryan, that the distance of Asuryan is because its Loec, Ranald wearing a mask to sub in for a dead god.
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Asuryan being dead would make a mockery of his entire myth as being the Phoenix, who died and then returned to life.
 
Natch said:
Cutting a deal with Bretonnia is something we can only negotiate once, and without any concrete indicators that The Father will benefit us there, I'd rather not walk into it with no other cards on the table. Boney mentioned previously that the Bretonnians will basically have to pay their way in now that the project they dismissed has succeeded without them; the more obvious our success is, the more we can run their pockets, so waiting another couple years and maybe figuring out the Nexuses first is to our good in the long run.

Alongside testing The Father, Waystone Mapping should tell us how badly Bretonnia needs what we're selling. Mousillon is the obvious Sylvania equivalent, and Mathilde speculated they have a critical Nexus in Gisoreux, but their network is assuredly damaged elsewhere, and the more problems we know about and can solve, the more books concessions we can extract for the Empire.
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You speak of having no other cards on the table moments before mentioning that Boney said Bretonnia will basically have to pay us to join. We have other cards, and strong ones at that. We have a functioning Waystone, which would be a winning hand on all its own, and on top of that we have three tributaries, almost every major nation in the Old World aside from Bretonnia on the project, and Ulthuan's cooperation as a cherry on top. "We should figure out nexuses first" is to recruiting Bretonnia as "we should do one more self-improvement action" is to going on Elfcation; we're really, truly, already good to go.

Besides which, while waiting until we've reached another stretch goal before we get Damsels does mean we'll probably get an even better deal, it also means we won't have the Damsels' help on said goal. At that point you might as well not recruit Bretonnia at all, and just wait until the project is basically over and cash out. Which at this point is a valid position to hold! But if you want Damsels to help us with Waystone stuff we should probably recruit them sometime before we're out of stuff to do.
 
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mathymancer said:
At that point you might as well not recruit Bretonnia at all, and just wait until the project is basically over and cash out. Which at this point is a valid position to hold! But if you want Damsels to help us with Waystone stuff we should probably recruit them sometime before we're out of stuff to do.
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This is largely where I'm coming from; at this point I don't see the Damsels having much to contribute to the actual Waystones that isn't more easily pursued via Ulthuan. Techniques within their paradigm are likely closer to what the Ice Witches have done, i.e. dependent on their deity doing all the dirty work of purifying Dhar for them, thus bringing Bretonnia in is more a question of political and economic rewards than any magical advances.
 
I'm sorry is the site bugged or is an event I am unaware of happening? It is showing that there are 500 viewing this thread right now.

From my experience even on updates the max I've seen it go up is around 250.
 
Mopman43 said:
Asuryan is Lileath's husband, Isha is married to Kurnous.
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That's significantly less clear in quest.

Isha:
Boney said:
Now the Mandalas are molded to fit the culture and circumstances of the divided Elven societies. The Asur, for instance, have Asuryan at the heart of theirs, but the Druchii place Khaine in pride of place, while the Asrai place Kurnous and Isha in joint supremacy. But the Eonir, with their tamed forest and hard borders, have put Isha alone at the heart of their Mandala, and Kurnous and His wilds that the Eonir need not grapple with are demoted all the way to the outer ring. Ereth Khial, the Pale Queen who offers safe escort to Elven souls lost on their way to their proper destination and in danger of predation - not to where they actually wanted to go, but to an afterlife spent in Ereth Khial's service, but safe escort nonetheless - is placed in the outer ring by the Asur and Asrai who can count on the leylines of Ulthuan and the forest-soul of Athel Loren respectively to guide their souls to where it must go. But the Druchii, who presumably have nothing equivalent in Naggaroth to guide them and often die far from it besides, have Her on the inner ring. The Eonir, who have a strong taboo against leaving Laurelorn and its oversoul dominated by the Grey Lords, have removed Ereth Khial from the mandala entirely in favour of Ulric, relegating Her to a minor god.
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Lileath:
Boney said:
Kurnous is presumed in some places to be Her father, but it doesn't seem to actually come up in any of the myths or theology.
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Both:
Boney said:
There's a number of different ways to reconcile the relationship between Asuryan and Isha with the one between Asuryan and Lileath, and if you ask an Elf which one is true they say something vague and mysterious and smug. The Gods aren't just big powerful people having drama in the sky, they're also metaphors and morality tales and just-so stories and a collective emotional landscape and a bunch of other things. Asuryan and Isha being linked might be part of a creation myth for the Elven people, or a mythologization of the worshippers of Asuryan and Isha making peace with each other in Ulthuan's prehistory, or it might have been directly caused by the arrangement between the Phoenix Kings and the Everqueens, or a retelling of the relationship between Aenarion and Astarielle, or a statement about the intersection between nature and hierarchy, or a story someone made up that got popular enough that it became canon, or they might actually be boinking and Lileath may or may not know about it and may or may not be okay with it.
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Alratan said:
Asuryan being dead would make a mockery of his entire myth as being the Phoenix, who died and then returned to life.
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This is exactly why it'd be worth keeping anything that might point to it secret.
 
Regardless of whether my red string actually means anything, what keeps rattling around in my head is the Father is a secret. Okay, why? Ranald is not Tzeentch, deception is not for it's own sake.
 
Bucolic said:
I dunno, I'd like to gamble big on the Father?

We know Ranald is a big deal, we know Deathfang at least thinks Ranald is Loec. So go for broke, assume Ladrielle and Lileath, assume one of them is the Lady. Assume the face of the Father is hidden because the husband of Isha and father of Lileath is Asuryan, that the distance of Asuryan is because its Loec, Ranald wearing a mask to sub in for a dead god.
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Two daughters for every face of Ranald. Truly the power of the father coin is unrivaled.
 
My current draft for a hypothetical Father turn looks something like this:

Draft Plan: Good Intentions Across Large Distances
-Overwork: No
-COIN: The Father
-Build a Waystone (Hatalath, Sarvoi, Elrisse, Egrimm, Tochter, Johann, Max)
-[flex]
-Waystone: Nexuses (Forest of Shadows) (Aksel, Cadaeth, Thorek, Zlata, Niedzwenka; ask help from Ostland/Ostermark Hedgewise)
-Attempt to bring a non-Order magical tradition into the Waystone Project (Damsels)
-Attempt to ingratiate yourself with House Orodreth of Laurelorn (because they are known to worship Lileath)
-EIC: Attempt to establish a trade route with the Eonir (ore; seek Kalitan traders in Kislev)
-KAU: Hire educators to teach a language or group of languages to your scribes (Eltharin)
-SERENITY: Seviroscopes (?) (1/2)
-Eike Actions: Damsel recruitment, ingratiating ourselves into House Orodreth, EIC action
-Eike Study: Learn Khazalid

The actions in yellow are the ones that'd be Father-relevant. Honestly, the Forest of Shadows and the Damsels are the most relevant ones (with the EIC action being not super necessary but helpful), but Orodreth presents a double opportunity:

During the T41 social action that revealed that Tor Lithanel will be expanded for the first time in its history, the narrative explicitly notes that the plan to do so will likely work better if the Queen's loyalists have something new to contribute to the new status quo, and House Orodreth is one of the ones that hasn't yet:

Boney said:
[...] It does, however, rely on the queen's loyalists among the Great Houses actually having novel means of shoring up their support, and though it's entirely possible, verging on likely, that there's elements of the political situation that you're currently unaware of, it does seem as if at least three of those in favour of contact with humans have yet to secure those means - Orodreth, Maeglin, and Nienna. While that's not your problem to solve, you do make a mental note to keep an eye out for opportunities to work them into future dealings.
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Ingratiating ourselves with House Orodreth (likely by helping them find connections with some external group, and acting as an intermediary) would be worthy of consideration purely to make sure the isolationists are in a slightly worse position; but with the consideration that they're the only House that handles Lileath's worship in Laurelorn, that makes it entirely worthwhile, if you ask me! I think one of the best parts of our plan-making process is generally finding ways of doing more than one thing at the same time, and this would fall under that.

...I left a flex spot on the plan for further revisions and ideas, but I will stick firm to asserting we need that Build a Waystone action: we could really use a purely-elf-doable, Caledor-leylines-only waystone. It would be less expensive and more effective than putting up hybrid waystones in places where there is no river, and Ulthuan would very likely give us something for it.
 
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Derpmind said:
I'm seeing only 81 people viewing the thread. 44 members and 37 guests.
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It's not a user-by-user basis I think, I see it at regular numbers now same as you.

I asked here since it seemed most relevant, there were also past instances of having 200 the past week but in those cases Boney was commenting so I assumed watchers who receive pings from writer comments.

The proper window for discussing it here has passed so I think I'll leave the topic alone now. Thank you to everyone who replied to my question.
 
Bucolic said:
Regardless of whether my red string actually means anything, what keeps rattling around in my head is the Father is a secret. Okay, why? Ranald is not Tzeentch, deception is not for it's own sake.
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In Mathilde's conversation with Cython it was mentioned that there aren't many examples of Gods having children, so either it's uncommon or there's a reason for secrecy most of the time. If the latter is true then Ranald and Shallya's children being a secret is merely one instance of that wider phenomenon, which still raises questions but means there might not be anything mysterious going on with those Gods in particular but rather with Gods in general.

It might also be as simple as those connections being inconvinent to the public images of the Goddesses invovled. Do the Haléthan Hedgewise really want to inherit Ranald's enemies on top of the ones they already have? Assuming She really is a daughter, does The Lady want to be known as the daughter of the God of crime and lies? Heck, does the most well liked Goddess in the Old World want her relationship with the baddest bad boy in the pantheon made public?

With all that said, it's entirely possible that there's some more going on here (though I wouldn't bet on Ranald=Asuryan to be the thing going on).
 
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