- Location
- Finland
Doesn't matter.
Just drop the dog into the Magister Matriarchs/patriarchs office and he can handle the paper work.
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.
Just drop the dog into the Magister Matriarchs/patriarchs office and he can handle the paper work.
She'll come back for him sooner or later.
You can't do that, the Ambers will sue you for patent infringement. And let me tell you, that's not a case where barking dogs don't bite, those guys are absolutely dogged once they've bitten down on a case. It's better to let those sleeping dogs lie.
- Pronouns
- He
Boney, I know you don't often ban people from the thread but would you consider making an exception just this once?
Parabola
Divided Loyalties Librarian
- Location
- The Destination of Fate
- Pronouns
- She/Her
We know that during the Trouble in Talabheim mini-arc, Wolf was in Tor Lithanel, because he woke up the wizards there when he needed to guide Mathilde on how to properly howl. So he's presumably around off-screen more than we would think, not spending 100% of his time in K8P. Who knows? Maybe he occasionally hangs around when Mathilde is researching Waystone stuff, laying on her lap and hanging out with her when she's not doing sensitive stuff that needs full concentration.
Mathilde: "Okay so then if you put (magic babble) into (magic blahblahblah), you get-"
Hatalath, aside to Cadaeth: "(Do we ask her why she has her wolf on her lap?)"
Cadaeth, aside to Hatalath: "(Let's not. I sense that she'll give us an awful pun if we do.)"
I kinda wonder what new positions might be available to us on the next choose-your-arc vote. I could see a very strong argument for a 'Ambassador-at-Large for Laurelorn' position being offered, though I don't imagine we'll take it since we didn't take the same position for the Karaz Ankor (with whom we get along better).
...Honestly, a while back Boney mentioned that it's possible that if we get more involved in College politics we could be on the other side of the Favor economy, and that feels attractive in its own way. Helping out varied Magisters or LMs on any of a dozen given topics sounds fun, beyond the actual Favors it'd give us and the miscellaneous good it'd do to the Empire.
Not sure whether that'd be a 'position', though - maybe an extension of Sinecure, or her trying her best to get a more formal position within the Grey College's organization? Honestly, I think Mathilde could make a quite good agent of the Provost's office, given how she managed to get so many magical traditions in a single place at a time to cooperate for something of such importance to the Old World.
Mathilde: "Okay so then if you put (magic babble) into (magic blahblahblah), you get-"
Hatalath, aside to Cadaeth: "(Do we ask her why she has her wolf on her lap?)"
Cadaeth, aside to Hatalath: "(Let's not. I sense that she'll give us an awful pun if we do.)"
I kinda wonder what new positions might be available to us on the next choose-your-arc vote. I could see a very strong argument for a 'Ambassador-at-Large for Laurelorn' position being offered, though I don't imagine we'll take it since we didn't take the same position for the Karaz Ankor (with whom we get along better).
...Honestly, a while back Boney mentioned that it's possible that if we get more involved in College politics we could be on the other side of the Favor economy, and that feels attractive in its own way. Helping out varied Magisters or LMs on any of a dozen given topics sounds fun, beyond the actual Favors it'd give us and the miscellaneous good it'd do to the Empire.
Not sure whether that'd be a 'position', though - maybe an extension of Sinecure, or her trying her best to get a more formal position within the Grey College's organization? Honestly, I think Mathilde could make a quite good agent of the Provost's office, given how she managed to get so many magical traditions in a single place at a time to cooperate for something of such importance to the Old World.
deathofrats0808
Don’t think of it as dying; just as leaving early
- Location
- Earth
Possibly part of a Sabbatical? Boney mentioned he might get bored and start baiting plot hooks, and that sounds like at least one way to do that. Otherwise, I'd imagine any position both in Altdorf and with access to levers of power (Heidi's bodyguard job that came up for example) could have some elements of that.
dinomannitro6
all your gender is belong to us
- Location
- The Land Where The Sunflowers Bloom
Looking at the org chart the artificer and senior fellow also sound pretty neat. Or we could invest more time in WEBMAT experiments in multi wind, wind-rune, and wind-divine interactions.
Extra hilarity comes from the fact that Wolf is rougly as long as Meowthilde is
- Location
- Outside the Box
- Pronouns
- She/Her
I heard there was a bug with the view count that's randomly bumping the numbers up by hundreds. But I haven't looked into it.
The real reason Mathilde did the Waystone Project: To establish the basis for magical infrastructure projects, kickstarted through funding from the EIC. Yet another coup for Master Economist Wilhelmina!
Money(B) moves the world.
Staffs can be made to be pliable to all eight winds of magic by a human (staff of volans), at the earliest founding of the college when much of the individual magical secrets of each college weren't in quite there.
And the Grey college lacks for an in house stave tuner.
Can't we outsource this? Is there a need for this to be in house?
@Boney what does Mathilde know about where her colleagues in the grey college get their staff?
And the Grey college lacks for an in house stave tuner.
Can't we outsource this? Is there a need for this to be in house?
@Boney what does Mathilde know about where her colleagues in the grey college get their staff?
They make them themselves, or inherit it, or have someone else make it, or do without one. And the Staff of Volans was made by von Tarnus, who was a genius. His work cannot be easily replicated.
One thing I note is very interesting and different about WHF, is that genius means that someone goes off and makes awesome things themselves, instead of making it so that others can go off and make awesome things.
In WHF, the competent may work together and build off of competence, but genius rarely works in a way that invites collaboration.
What does everyone think?
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Outsourcing the stave making is to fulfill that niche of people making do without a staff. (Possible that this niche is so small in the grand scale of thing everything below is unnecessary)
Even a mediocre staff would be beneficial. It obviously would not come close to the staff of volans. Quantity (of staffs) over quality is the intention. QoL for imperial wizards as a whole.
I am hoping the eonir has the capacity for lots of mediocre mono wind enchantment works without the demand for them.
No great houses dedicated to Hoeth or Hekarti would sully themselves. But money is money and many elves with access to simple lore without economic purpose exist amongst the city born. How many of them would be capable of this?
It would take a long time, to develop something of a cottage industry amongst eonir outside great house with aptitude for enchantment. But it's a possibility impossible in the empire do without significantly larger wizard population.
Even a mediocre staff would be beneficial. It obviously would not come close to the staff of volans. Quantity (of staffs) over quality is the intention. QoL for imperial wizards as a whole.
I am hoping the eonir has the capacity for lots of mediocre mono wind enchantment works without the demand for them.
No great houses dedicated to Hoeth or Hekarti would sully themselves. But money is money and many elves with access to simple lore without economic purpose exist amongst the city born. How many of them would be capable of this?
It would take a long time, to develop something of a cottage industry amongst eonir outside great house with aptitude for enchantment. But it's a possibility impossible in the empire do without significantly larger wizard population.
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- Location
- Finland
Is there a large demand for staffs?
Because if there was, i'm fairly sure wizards are more than capable of producing more staffs either by paying another wizard to do it, or learning how to do it themselves.
Sure, on paper making sure every wizard has a staff would be a benefit, but i'm not sure it is one worth the effort it would take to establish, because the wizards themselves seem to not be that fussed about it.
Because if there was, i'm fairly sure wizards are more than capable of producing more staffs either by paying another wizard to do it, or learning how to do it themselves.
Sure, on paper making sure every wizard has a staff would be a benefit, but i'm not sure it is one worth the effort it would take to establish, because the wizards themselves seem to not be that fussed about it.
For better and for worse, Warhammer Fantasy is a setting where there are exceptional individuals who can achieve things that are impossible under normal circumstances. The fundamental metaphysics of the setting bend around the existence of Lords and Heroes who can individually change the fate of entire battles. Gods are undeniably and blatantly active in the world and intervening to the benefit of individuals they favour, and there are forms of matter and energy that actively foil the concept of scientific rigor.
The factions of the setting can be examined through the lens of how they deal with this. The 'standard' way is to focus on creating militant heroes, the most directly useful kind, by having a professional warrior class trained from birth as well as exposing the rest of the population to enough violence for any 'natural' heroes to show themselves, and then enough class mobility to elevate them to make use of their gifts. This is how the Imperial Tribes worked, this is how Kislev works. Bretonnia is arguably at war with this dynamic, but depending on how much Joan of Arc and 'I looked through the archive and it turns out that Peasant Really Good At Stabbing is actually a bastard offshoot of a noble family!' you read into their dynamic, it could be that they're working in harmony with it.
The High Elves try to make everyone a hero. The Dark Elves make it so that anyone that is a hero can swiftly backstab their way to the top. The Skaven put their population into situations where the only way to survive is to be a hero. The Lizardmen have plaques that tell them when the next lot of heroes - a 'sacred spawning' - is going to clamber out of the pools. All greenskins think they're the hero of their story, and a lot of them turn out to be right. The Ogres have outright codified this outright into their 'Big Name' cultural dynamic. And Chaos, of course, revolves around it. The faceless masses matter so little that their logistics don't even bother to make sense. What matters is the Heroes - the Chosen. And what matters most of all are the intricate rituals around the selection and the coronation of an Everchosen.
The Dwarves, as is their nature, largely refuse to bend to this system and instead try to bend it to their purposes. Dwarven heroes are almost always leaders and artisans. The only time they lean into the whole thing is when they wish to die. To be a Slayer is for them to surrender themself to the ugly truth of the world, where individuals stand against hordes and beasts, and ride it to as many slain enemies as it allows them, until it grows bored of them and grants them death. The rest of the time they stand in shieldwalls and firing lines, with the rank-and-file wielding the weapons crafted by the heroes and following the orders shouted by them.
The Empire, deeply influenced by the Dwarves as it is, is an attempt to marry the two approaches. On one hand you have the sacred: the Knightly Orders, the Warrior-Knights, the Witch Hunters. On the other you have the secular: the shieldwalls, crossbows, the handguns, the cannon. 'Faith, Steel, and Gunpowder' are the three pillars of the Empire: the faith and steel of the knights, and the steel and gunpowder of the engineers. This dynamic is perhaps strongest of all with the Colleges because they interface directly with the energies that make the world what it is. The heroes charge forward into the impossible, and then when reality bends the rules for them, they shout 'no backsies' and try to wrestle what just happened onto parchment and into something reproducible. This is what codifying is.
This doesn't always work. Every great Wizard leaves a trail of Fozzrick's Flying School memes in their path.
If Mathilde had just wanted to make one Waystone, she could have banged that out in maybe a couple of actions. The reason that what she's doing is hard, and why it hasn't been done before, is that Mathilde needs to gather together heroes and then have them work against what they know works best and instead carefully and laboriously blaze carefully-marked trails that anyone can follow.
- Location
- Deep in a bog
Yet again another insightful post from Boney.
I wanted to make a joke about how it's better to leave a trail of memes than undead, but that just reminded me that the reason Fredrick's Liber Mortis is so dangerous is that it gives any two-bit necromancer the ability to level cities just by being user friendly.
TimEd
Meteor maker
Man the greenskins truly are the only winners of the whole setting. It's the one thing that drew me into Warhammer in the first place, and that shine still hasn't faded for me yet.
Parabola
Divided Loyalties Librarian
- Location
- The Destination of Fate
- Pronouns
- She/Her
High praise, given that other College wizards explicitly unsuccessfully smacked their heads against this wall for years.
Or have there been wizards who have successfully made one (1) waystone and then were unable to explain their internal logic to others?
Thebigpieman
I've got this, I think.
- Location
- United States
Given how easily components of the waystone were theory crafted once people started actually making a concerted effort to do so, I'd say it's the latter.
- Location
- Finland
Mathilde is a Lady Magister, exceptional by definition, and the biggest limiter to her is the lack of time.
No doubt other exceptional wizards could have made a waystone.
But are they going to take that time to make a singular waystone, when there is a thousand more immediate problems in the Empire that need solving, right now?
What a Waystone does is really just moving magical energy from point A to point B. That's the most basic application of magical ability and any Wizard that knows anything about enchanting could bang out ten to fifteen ideas of making it happen off the top of their head. The difficulty is in the details - you need to manage cost, scale, staying power, reproducibility, and hooking it into the existing network, as well as probably other factors that don't come to mind just now.
Also if you build a machine that moves a bunch of magic from point A to point B, why should point B be the Waystone Network and not my exciting new superproject?
fictionfan
Please sir, may I have some Meows?
- Location
- Tempe, AZ
@Boney : In the event of this happening would Algard be open to dropping his tower down close to black fire pass to get the Grobi and beastmen to fight over it? Seems like a good way to soften them up before the campaign.
If he had that much control over them he'd be using them as more than bait.