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Warhammer Fantasy: Divided Loyalties - an Advisor's Quest

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Parabola said:
And yet now they call wizards by the name they are called in Reikspiel, rather than that which mainstream dwarf culture does. That speaks of a certain amount of effort adapting to the outside world.
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deathofrats0808 said:
Remember that when they got cut off, Khazalid didn't have a word for Wizards. I suspect them using the Imperial term is a reflection partly of their already evident diversion from the greater KA on things and partly not wanting to insult Mathilde by associating her profession with an existing prejudice.
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Boney said:
"Oh, I'm not a Daemonette," you say. "Mathilde Weber, Dalmhornzhufokrul."

There's a moment of silence as they consider that. "Night water crafter? You make commodes?"

You're too busy grimacing at the mistranslation to react fast enough, and two crossbow bolts punch through the empty air that your Illusion occupies. "Grey Wizard of the Empire," you say, as voices mutter in the darkness at your apparent intangibility.

"Pull the other one," says the voice after a moment. "Empire's not like Kislev, they burn their Zhufi."
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Ah yes, I suspect that Vlag would be very hesitant to disrespect Mathilde and her profession after freeing Vlag with the protector coin in place. It might even be that they excised any such references in their language and refuse to use them in honour of her.
 
Mystic Pentagram said:
I don't understand who the "Them" Mathilde is talking abaout is. The Chaos Gods? Gork and Mork? The Old Ones? Some nameless primordial deity?
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She was talking about the same entity she invoked via the Coin for assistance, and led her to that glade. In the context, 'He' would have been less accurate.

DragonParadox said:
@Boney was that 1 you rolled a while back for beastman loot and we did not get any? Not complaining or anything, just curious.
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No, it's a result of the circumstances. Mathilde racked up experience against greenskins with a throng at her back and that experience lets her accurately evaluate the risks she's taking and gives her options of getting out of trouble if things go sideways, which makes the more direct method of information acquisition more or less safe. She hasn't got that experience with Beastmen, and she's not going to try to accumulate it when it's just her and Johann and a single fragile escape route unless a vote explicitly tells her to do so. If it was just Beastmen in that forest it probably would have been a vote between taking risks or just sticking with safer and more indirect ways to gather information.
 
Boney said:
No, it's a result of the circumstances. Mathilde racked up experience against greenskins with a throng at her back and that experience lets her accurately evaluate the risks she's taking and gives her options of getting out of trouble if things go sideways, which makes the more direct method of information acquisition more or less safe. She hasn't got that experience with Beastmen, and she's not going to try to accumulate it when it's just her and Johann and a single fragile escape route unless a vote explicitly tells her to do so. If it was just Beastmen in that forest it probably would have been a vote between taking risks or just sticking with safer and more indirect ways to gather information.
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More that fair... though it does leave me still curious what that roll was for. Something to do with the shrine maybe?
(Question is rhetorical, not expecting an answer, just ruminating aloud for the rest of the thread.)
 
I'm not opposed to the idea of Spinning Lyre, but I'm not really familiar with the instrument and it sounds to me that it's a bit complicated. Wouldn't the lyrist or strings going out of tune be blamed for disharmonic sounds rather than the magic in the air?
I'd prefer to go with something more stable with the sound it makes

[X] Portativ
[X] Xylophone
 
Boney said:
Adela touches down inside the clearing without powering down the engine, and the moment you step out you can feel it. The power of Mork, yes, but it is out of tune with the power you're familiar with, underlaid with something else. This holy place is a pentiment, a palimpsest - a surface layer over something deeper and older and truer. The shadows here are impenetrably deep, and would remain so even if the webs above were removed entirely. They retreated in a circle around the hole of sunlight that Adela's fire let in not as a surrender to it, but as a welcome.

You called on a divinity to seek something ancient and lost, and in this place, it is impossible for that divinity to find anything but this. This place was sacred to Them before the name and form that you know, before the name and form that others know, before any name still spoken on this world. This place is more ancient than anything you can name, and more lost than anything you can comprehend.
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This immediately made me go on a search for any lore on the Forest of Gloom, only to find that there really isn't any - with one exception that Graf Tzarogy already noted. The descriptions of one of those landmarks is also interesting. The first one is just The umbrous depths of the Forest of Gloom are well-suited to the worship of the Shadow Dancer. which ok, whatever. But look at the second: The gloomy halls of the Shadow-Dancer - and the minds of his priesthood - are filled with many useful secrets. Many useful secrets, eh? So yeah, I think this is almost certainly the inspiration for what Boney did here.

(another fun fact from that short wiki dive - Dryhca's faction's starting location is the Gryphon Wood, which is where we fought her)
 
Chopak said:
I'm not opposed to the idea of Spinning Lyre, but I'm not really familiar with the instrument and it sounds to me that it's a bit complicated. Wouldn't the lyrist or strings going out of tune be blamed for disharmonic sounds rather than the magic in the air?
I'd prefer to go with something more stable with the sound it makes

[X] Portativ
[X] Xylophone
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I mean it's a bit hard to blame the lyrist when the thing starts making sounds on its own.
 
Okay, so we have come across all these, Ranald is Loec is Qu'aph is whatever, but i think here we saw some glimpse of truth. We assumed they are all facets of same being, and my guess here is that, well, that is right, but actually no.

Some gods may have started as terminals for old ones to act through and like, why not just take entire subset of them. So my guess is this. The trickster archetype god was like a glove, with Ranald, Loec, Qu'aph and however many gods being its fingers. And there was one Old One who used this glove to interact with mortals. But when chaos came, it just yanked the glove off, or cut off the fingers, whatever. Point is, the same essence still fills the "fingers" of the glove, despite there being no real overarching brain (or maybe yes, who knows, Old Ones are beings of such onthological mass that whatever scraps got left behind are still One Mind) anymore.

That's how you get three or more gods that are all very similar, feel the same to some of the best senses that can gauge so, and yet differ. Because Qu'aph was entirely comfortable with human sacrifice, demanded it even, and Loec has entire subset of warriors, but Mathilde is pretty unique in being primarily ranaldian that wars. Idk. Prolly wrong but there might be something to it?
 
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Boney said:
"Both would take it just to spite whoever they were taking it from, but just as we have the Silk and Ivory Roads, so too do the Greenskins have a trade network that leads to the Chaos Dwarves - a 'Steel Road', or a 'Fire Road', I suppose one could say. And some Beastmen tribes have been known to collaborate with Chaos cultists within the Empire, and sometimes with the Norscans, and so know to accumulate the coins those trade partners would value." One might even call the trade link between Beastmen and Norscans an 'Ice Road', you consider. You wonder if it's worth pursuing more information on the subject with an eye to future papers - it's somewhat outside your usual specialities, but the pleasing symmetry of the names of the two conceptual roads begs to be elaborated further upon. And it might be something you can tie in to Roswita's research into the economies of the Vampires.
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A smaller note in the update, but I find it really neat how Mathilde is considering the implications of logistics further.

"There's a really fascinating paper all those trade routes" feels like it's both a look into how her work with similar topics has affected her at the same time a plot hook out of character for "There's a path for bringing up a study of logistics here, if it interests you."

Adela touches down inside the clearing without powering down the engine, and the moment you step out you can feel it. The power of Mork, yes, but it is out of tune with the power you're familiar with, underlaid with something else. This holy place is a pentiment, a palimpsest - a surface layer over something deeper and older and truer. The shadows here are impenetrably deep, and would remain so even if the webs above were removed entirely. They retreated in a circle around the hole of sunlight that Adela's fire let in not as a surrender to it, but as a welcome.

You called on a divinity to seek something ancient and lost, and in this place, it is impossible for that divinity to find anything but this. This place was sacred to Them before the name and form that you know, before the name and form that others know, before any name still spoken on this world. This place is more ancient than anything you can name, and more lost than anything you can comprehend.
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And another, where I just want to say I'm struck here by the wonder that this might be a place where Mork and Ranald's showdown is directly relevant. It feels like the sort of place where they were likely already fighting as Mork tried to subvert the site away from one who already held it, and one where the fate of that might have been decided in the moment of that confrontation.
 
Boney said:
- Also it is often overlooked how musical the medieval world was - most people in the Empire would not go an entire day without hearing someone playing music, and you would have to go to considerable effort to avoid it for an entire week.
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Also to borrow/steal from a different quest
"When our ancestors pounded flint on flint, some watched the sparks- others, merely danced. When men and women are lost in, in music, in song and rhythm, in dance and play…"

Port trails off for a moment, the words evading him.

"... It is a reminder that there are things that cannot be taken from us- by time, or tide, tyrant or Grimm. Music will die with the last man standing."
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Really like the reminder. It´s everyday, because its simply baked into us.
 
DragonParadox said:
This one:
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I'm pretty sure that this was just a random roll by Boney, jokingly demonstrating that the philosophical discussion of what is and isn't luck is kind of pointless in the context of the quest, because we know damn well what is and isn't decided by luck since we know when Boney rolls dice ("
You're getting pretty far into some really thick philosophical weeds and it's kind of all for naught because..." and then the description of the dice roll is "you can see me doing this")
 
DragonParadox said:
This one:
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I thought that was just a rhetorical gesture not connected to anything (except the point about things being partly determined by chance). Though I wouldn't put it past Boney to use it in some way.
Actually no, he's normally pretty clear about at least the general purpose of the roll so it's clear he can't fudge things. It would be a neat and fun trick, but I don't think he'd break that rule for it, so it would only be for something where it doesn't matter. Like, how does the pie turn out (answer: it's a throwback to her first pies).
 
mathymancer said:
I'm pretty sure that this was just a random roll by Boney, jokingly demonstrating that the philosophical discussion of what is and isn't luck is kind of pointless in the context of the quest, because we know damn well what is and isn't decided by luck since we know when Boney rolls dice ("
You're getting pretty far into some really thick philosophical weeds and it's kind of all for naught because..." and then the description of the dice roll is "you can see me doing this")
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Ah, fair point, I just remembered the roll not the discussion around it. It was a month ago.
 
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