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Warhammer Fantasy: Divided Loyalties - an Advisor's Quest

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Parabola said:
Or have there been wizards who have successfully made one (1) waystone and then were unable to explain their internal logic to others?
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We did see a few seemingly one-off Waystone designs - the Obelisk of Laws in Talabheim and that weird immaterial Waystone in Altdorf. I guess those might be examples of that, and in the case of the immaterial Waystone I suspect it might also be an example of the 'why feed the network and not my cool project' principle, since I kind of doubt the Lights went to the trouble of doing whatever it is they did there just to add another stream of magic to the already well fed Altdorf nexus.
 
mathymancer said:
We did see a few seemingly one-off Waystone designs - the Obelisk of Laws in Talabheim and that weird immaterial Waystone in Altdorf. I guess those might be examples of that, and in the case of the immaterial Waystone I suspect it might also be an example of the 'why feed the network and not my cool project' principle, since I kind of doubt the Lights went to the trouble of doing whatever it is they did there just to add another stream of magic to the already well fed Altdorf nexus.
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There's also Skavenblight's Black Pillar of Commandments, probably.
 
Deathbybunnies said:
There's also Skavenblight's Black Pillar of Commandments, probably.
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Right, but Skavenblight is probably a nexus, and nexuses being one of a kind is less of a surprise expected because unlike Waystones those aren't mass produced things and you can imagine a nexus having unique properties to serve a certain purpose (as is the case with the nexus in Athel Yenlui). A nexus also isn't the sort of thing that a talented wizard could knock out in a few actions.
 
The Black Pillar is a divine artifact. It might have involved a waystone during creation, or techniques reminiscent of one (like the herdstones), and it might be placed on/connected to a nexus, but waystones won't tell us much about it because it's the primary divine conduit of the Horned Rat, who is a big leagues god. It could break any given rule it wants to.
 
Boney said:
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.
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I suppose follow up question:
Does the stat system do a good job of describing this?
Where if your learning/magic is higher than another heroes you can reliably break down /understand/replicate the unique ways previous wizards have done stuff. Like Melkoth teaching his Mystifying Miasma who had seen decades of younger wizards doing it wrong.
Or learning might be equal or greater than a previous wizard, but their specific narrative differences mean that they're equally mutually incomprehensible. So Nagash and Fozzrick are both equally confused by each others flying schools.
 
Dark as Silver said:
I suppose follow up question:
Does the stat system do a good job of describing this?
Where if your learning/magic is higher than another heroes you can reliably break down /understand/replicate the unique ways previous wizards have done stuff. Like Melkoth teaching his Mystifying Miasma who had seen decades of younger wizards doing it wrong.
Or learning might be equal or greater than a previous wizard, but their specific narrative differences mean that they're equally mutually incomprehensible. So Nagash and Fozzrick are both equally confused by each others flying schools.
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There is no level of any stat that will allow you to instantly digest alien paradigms. Having high stats will help you be able to figure out the steps that will lead you to understanding and speed your progress along it, but you're still going to have to travel that path. Melkoth is able to do what Melkoth does not just because he has raw numbers, but because he has decades of experience in guiding Grey Wizards to understanding.
 
fictionfan said:
@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.
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The towers work as bait due to rumors of them containing tomes of darkest lore. Neither the beastmen nor the goblins would care about that, they'd probably try to destroy the tower itself for fun.
 
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An EIC Interlude, Part Four New
  • Apocrypha
    • An EIC Interlude, Part Four


    Martin Brunter had not, in fact, filed a claim at the tax office.

    He had not paid to get a magistrate to enforce his father's will, at least none that Eike could find any record of. There was no claim, and definitely no counterclaim, and certainly no appeal on the books of any of the courts in Altdorf.

    She did, however, find a copy of the actual will itself, and there was no Lord mentioned who might have disputed it. The tax office, when she went to double-check the information she was given at the start of the mission, did have the elder Mr Brunter marked as decreased, but lacked a magistrate or local Lord's signature to validate a new authority. One of the clerks, in response to her questioning, confirmed that property never claimed reverted to the local Lord after 13 years.

    It was at this point that Eike, fed up with running hither and thon across Altdorf, began to speculate. The lawyer she saw in the younger Brunter's office was meeting with the same Lord who stood to gain the entire escrow account of a quite successful gambling house if it was never claimed. The same Lord who had apparently leaned on Brunter to give quite a lot of gold to friends of his.

    And the same lawyer who had apparently been paid quite a lot to file the unfiled will, and then pursue fictitious actions, and keep Martin Brunter strung along. As he was duped into paying river pirates AND auctioning their goods.

    One part of her said that she was assuming that Lord Swallowvale was already guilty, as she didn't know that the friends of his were pirates, nor that the goods were sourced from piracy. The other part was feeling quite a lot of sympathy for a poor young businessman who was apparently being robbed of his inheritance, charged for the privilege, and then strung along as a convenient fall guy for the Lord should he ever feel some heat upon him.

    It was a bit of an agonizing dilemma that she wrestled with up until almost the last moment before she had to leave Altdorf, though the ulgu in herself whetted itself against the feeling of it. Whether to risk alerting the Lord that someone was on to him, and setting the whole investigation on a time table, or to immediately remove his leverage.

    In the end she decided that she had a Civic Duty and she felt bad for the young man, so she showed the copy of the will to the clerks at the tax office and testified that she had seen one Martin Brunter running the business well and honestly (although part of her wondered how much of that was a lie, he seemed awfully credulous to be running a gambling house) and the magistrate overseeing it signed of with barely a glance and a muttered "bloody grey apprentices always meddling".

    The ride back on the riverboat had her biting her nails over the decision even as she put her mind to more productive uses; a notable downside of all the ulgu training she reckoned. Still, by the time the boat docked and she was running down the gangplank to the reserved table at Mary's, she thought she had her justifications pretty well marshalled.

    There was a bit of a mood to the town but she didn't think too much of it as she greeted the hochlander and they established cover over the appetizer course, until he asked her, "So, what did you learn?"

    Eike took a breath, about to launch into her prepared notes, and then cocked her head to the side as instinct and an odd swirl of ulgu near his head made her twig onto something.

    "Well, it wasn't very exciting, maybe you could tell me your side first? Something's changed since I was last here."

    The hochlander grinned.

    "Well, I was at the hidden docks and this ship came in, you know? Bunch of guys still covered in blood unloading crates, and guess who shows up with a few wagons and a dozen guards? So I figure it's a shame, since I was hoping to make it a lesson for you, but I had him dead to rights consorting with river pirates and took the shot."

    "Took the... You just killed him? Like that?"

    "It is a capital crime, and I am a recognized agent of justice through the college. There was no reason to wait."

    "Then I guess I learned I saved a man a trip. And that we should really tie up the lose end of that lawyer- he had me running around so much! Let me tell you all about it..."
     
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    • Talon TigerDino said:
    The towers work as bait due to rumors of them containing tomes of darkest lore. Neither the beastmen nor the goblins would care about that, they'd probably try to destroy the tower itself for fun.
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    I mean, everyone calls them the Screaming Towers, but no one has said *what* they're screaming yet...

    "Oi, boss. Big loud 'ouse what's fulla humie magic just showed up down that ways."

    "So? No good eatin' after a scrap with a pile a rocks."

    "It keeps shouting that youse just three gobbos in an ugly coat."

    "$%#&*!"
     
    RwconHD said:
    10 is enough to put a timer on Prag per WoB. It's mission accomplished numbers. So I think it would be up to rolls to get there.
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    It's enough to put a timer on it, but IIRC Boney also said in a different occasion that Praag is the sort of place where there would probably be an active effort to put up as many waystones as is ideal and then cover the whole place in tributaries as well.
     
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    Glau said:
    In the end she decided that she had a Civic Duty and she felt bad for the young man, so she showed the copy of the will to the clerks at the tax office and testified that she had seen one Martin Brunter running the business well and honestly
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    :) our apprentice is such a nice girl
     
    Boney said:
    "Tahoth Trisheros is a master architect who based reality on sacred geometry. The perfection of this geometry is found in the Great Pyramids, where the formless winds are given noble purpose."
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    Do our books on the Nehekharan pantheon and Nehekharan Incantations mention anything about "Tahoth Trisheros" and His relation to pyramids/the Waystone network? If not, do they mention any connection between Tahoth and the pyramids/the Waystone network?

    Unrelatedly, could a Grey Morb be incorporated into the Eye of Gazul to make it more effective in some way?
     
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