Warhammer Fantasy: Divided Loyalties - an Advisor's Quest

[DragonParadox]

I think Mathilde still has that candle thing that we could craft much more interesting variant of if we really applied ourselves but yeah. Maybe we could add to the Reikland's prince Panoply with a really, really cool armour thought. As some kind of gift, later on.

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It should be noted enchantments are not consistent which means that even if we make candle+ there is no guarantee we would get as good of an activation condition on the Hysh part of the enchantment.

Especially with the silk I think our best bet to windherd is the robes, what we have right now is... pretty bad. Personally I am inclined to Mockery of Substance+Move which Boney has OK-ed since it would give Mathilde the wholly novel and as far as we know unique among Grey Wizards ability to go ethereal when it's not dark. Not only is that unmatched mobility it avoids situations like the Monitor 'if you roll a 1 you die'.

 

[picklepikkl]

I was under the impression that it succeeded as a proof of concept, but we didn't do any more because people were sold on the process rather than the results. So we found out we *could* windherd multiple enchantments with multiple winds into the same object, then realized we didn't really have anything that we wanted to do with the technique.

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Not quite. Here's what happened:

You return to work, and eventually you manage to eke out possibly the worst enchantment you've ever performed, and only because Egrimm had managed to squeeze his own enchantment into the pommel and left almost the entirety of the saddle for your own sloppy work. Still, the fact that there's no leakage between the two and no disruption of either effect proves that there's merit to what you're attempting, you're confident that if you manage to contribute at least basic competence to a future enchantment you'd be capable of even better things.

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So we succeeded at creating the item, but we didn't learn anything from it about what Windherding might be capable of beyond just "have two spells in one enchantment." The bolded text is Boney saying what needs to happen for us to learn something: we need to contribute at least basic competence to a future Windherded enchantment.

However, convincing the thread to do this has been a challenge. The closest we came was in the T42 turnvote, where we were resolved to Windherd something, but what exactly was extremely controversial. The Cloak of Flashy Escapes, a combo between Shadowcloak and Dazzling Brightness, was an early contender, but people didn't like the idea of taking baby steps and wanted to do something more impactful with an AP. So instead then there was support behind doing Horstmann's speculum as a Windherding project, but people weren't sure about that either. Finally, the thing that won was finally taking a stab at the Seviroscope, which as we saw succeeded dramatically, but unfortunately while it's great work it isn't really unlocking new understanding of Windherding because they aren't enchanted: the two we've built are magic-sensitive, but not themselves magical, and so while it's leveraging our great knowledge of how Winds interact, we aren't advancing the "tech tree" of Windherding.

Don't get me wrong, I think that the Seviroscopes were a great choice to make, both because I love doing things for Kragg and for the wider setting and because I have never been super enthused about Windherding (I didn't vote for it, way back in 2019/2020). But for the people in the thread who do want to be exploring Windherding, I feel it's important to mention that there is a specific thing we've been told to do if we want to learn more about how it works and get better at it, and we have been repeatedly doing anything else.

 

[SaltyWaffles]

High-level Wizards don't die of old age unless they really want to.

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How does that explain the likes of past Magister Patriarchs/Matriarchs and such? Did they all just get that bored of life? Wizards who make it to that level seem like the kind to be driven, interested in life, and motivation to accomplish ever more things.

I get that the bulk of them would not have the knowledge, inclination, or connections to do a major series of favors to the Cult of Shallya to get de-aged, but if powerful wizards don't die of old age unless they really want to, why do they all die of old age regardless?

 

[Boney]

I mean, that's not exactly inaccurate, given how Ranald was essential to our obtaining AV (slash not dying to the snake just beforehand). And as far as ways of coming out about our dedication to Ranald goes, pairing it with "here's two revolutionary gold mines I'm presenting to you" seems pretty smart.

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Also the central conceit of Two Gifts Day started getting tedious to write before I'd finished writing it once and I'm not keen to rehash it.

How does that explain the likes of past Magister Patriarchs/Matriarchs and such? Did they all just get that bored of life? Wizards who make it to that level seem like the kind to be driven, interested in life, and motivation to accomplish ever more things.

I get that the bulk of them would not have the knowledge, inclination, or connections to do a major series of favors to the Cult of Shallya to get de-aged, but if powerful wizards don't die of old age unless they really want to, why do they all die of old age regardless?

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Who said they did?

 

[redpotato4]

We already saw one Patriarch bite it at Drakenhof. I imagine they all go out like Mathilde will eventually:

"As long I don't roll terribly this will probably go well"

 

[Glau]

I wonder if we could herd a celestial precog alert and a mastered athyric armor into something low profile for the prince, or for Heidi. An item that detected when you are about to be injured and activates mage armor right beforehand, in the shape of something like a belt or a vest.

Also, it might please the bursar if, when we divest of direct EIC management, we put the shares in trust to find a couple of chairs at WEBMAT- so there's a research subject and assisted sinecure to ensure the beach college continues even if we don't.

 

[DragonParadox]

I wonder if we could herd a celestial precog alert and a mastered athyric armor into something more profile for the prince, or for Heidi. An item that detected when you are about to be injured and activates mage armor right beforehand, in the shape of something like a belt or a vest.

Also, it might please the bursar if, when we divest of direct EIC management, we put the shares in trust to find a couple of chairs at WEBMAT- so there's a research subject and assisted sinecure to ensure the beach college continues even if we don't.

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We probably could in the technical sense, but we would not be allowed to do so since it would upset Ranald to meddle with fate beyond what he gives us.

As for the Bursar... hell no, that is our book money. I'd say she can pry that out of our cold dead hands except we have a certain book for that.

 

[Natch]

We already saw one Patriarch bite it at Drakenhof. I imagine they all go out like Mathilde will eventually:

"As long I don't roll terribly this will probably go well"

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You know, not only did Mathilde never find out what killed Hexensohn, but like... did we ever tell Roswita there was a thing to be concerned about there? Did we tell anyone? The surviving Amethysts presumably filled their College in, but from what they said at the time Hexensohn was alone when he died, so they didn't actually know what the threat was.

 

[SaltyWaffles]

Not quite. Here's what happened:

So we succeeded at creating the item, but we didn't learn anything from it about what Windherding might be capable of beyond just "have two spells in one enchantment." The bolded text is Boney saying what needs to happen for us to learn something: we need to contribute at least basic competence to a future Windherded enchantment.

However, convincing the thread to do this has been a challenge. The closest we came was in the T42 turnvote, where we were resolved to Windherd something, but what exactly was extremely controversial. The Cloak of Flashy Escapes, a combo between Shadowcloak and Dazzling Brightness, was an early contender, but people didn't like the idea of taking baby steps and wanted to do something more impactful with an AP. So instead then there was support behind doing Horstmann's speculum as a Windherding project, but people weren't sure about that either. Finally, the thing that won was finally taking a stab at the Seviroscope, which as we saw succeeded dramatically, but unfortunately while it's great work it isn't really unlocking new understanding of Windherding because they aren't enchanted: the two we've built are magic-sensitive, but not themselves magical, and so while it's leveraging our great knowledge of how Winds interact, we aren't advancing the "tech tree" of Windherding.

Don't get me wrong, I think that the Seviroscopes were a great choice to make, both because I love doing things for Kragg and for the wider setting and because I have never been super enthused about Windherding (I didn't vote for it, way back in 2019/2020). But for the people in the thread who do want to be exploring Windherding, I feel it's important to mention that there is a specific thing we've been told to do if we want to learn more about how it works and get better at it, and we have been repeatedly doing anything else.

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Windherding enchantment is a huge gold mine of possibilities that is begging to be explored. I feel like we could get away with an archived post with links to posts containing valid ideas for Windherding enchantments.

For example, there's Wings of Heaven and Take No Heed, giving a person the ability of flight and the ability to avoid notice so long as they don't push it, giving someone a very powerful scouting tool for warfare or a scouting and infiltration tool for a Grey Wizard.

Or we could go with a proven combo of Burning Shadows and a Light spell that creates a powerful flare of light behind the user, giving the wielder an on-demand Burning Shadows at a swathe of foes in any light conditions.

It could be a way to generate lots of College Favor on demand, too, which we can spend on other projects. Could even work as a gift/idea to be presented to Laurelorn--they've got High Magic enchantment, but High Magic is in high demand already and mages capable of enchanting single winds is way more readily available. I could see College-Eonir collaboration for making windherding enchantments paid for by both parties making two items together, one for each side, so both sides are satisfied with each project/contract.

 

[DragonParadox]

For example, there's Wings of Heaven and Take No Heed, giving a person the ability of flight and the ability to avoid notice so long as they don't push it, giving someone a very powerful scouting tool for warfare or a scouting and infiltration tool for a Grey Wizard.

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Wings of heaven puts the wearer at one dispel from death, not really ideal.

 

[picklepikkl]

Windherding enchantment is a huge gold mine of possibilities that is begging to be explored. I feel like we could get away with an archived post with links to posts containing valid ideas for Windherding enchantments.

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My sibling in Ranald, the very post you quoted has two separate links to @LawsOfRobotics's post in which he has made exactly the archive of which you speak.

And yes, I think that, now that we're no longer CF-crunched by saving for the Orbs, if we want to take another stab at Windherding something then paying for a Collegiate enchanter to collaborate us opens up a lot more possibilities than just doing it with Egrimm. The problem is that it would then cost a regular AP instead of a WEB-MAT AP, and those are highly in demand.

 

[SaltyWaffles]

Also the central conceit of Two Gifts Day started getting tedious to write before I'd finished writing it once and I'm not keen to rehash it.

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Fair enough. Just thought this occasion was too fitting an opportunity to not ask.

Who said they did?

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I mean, Melkoth is approaching retirement despite being really powerful and experienced. Even if he doesn't die of old age, becoming physically decrepit from old age to the point that you stop being productive doesn't seem like a huge distinction. The Supreme Patriarchs of old would surely be doing something of note if they were still around. If nothing else, when the Colleges were outlawed, they would have had to come back to the Colleges to have a safe place to sleep, and that would mean people would see and know about their continued existence.

Furthermore, Mathilde, when summing up the numbers of the Colleges, doesn't even mention the "really powerful wizards in retirement but still able to come out of retirement to kick some ass if needed" theoretical group (or if she did, she didn't attribute the numbers you'd need for "most high level wizards past retirement age throughout the history of the Colleges").

But lastly, surely you'd see at least some of these top-level, highly productive and accomplished wizards publishing some papers from time to time if they were still around and still able to play with their respective winds like masters?

My sibling in Ranald, the very post you quoted has two separate links to @LawsOfRobotics's post in which he has made exactly the archive of which you speak.

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Apologies, I somehow missed that in my eagerness.

And yes, I think that, now that we're no longer CF-crunched by saving for the Orbs, if we want to take another stab at Windherding something then paying for a Collegiate enchanter to collaborate us opens up a lot more possibilities than just doing it with Egrimm. The problem is that it would then cost a regular AP instead of a WEB-MAT AP, and those are highly in demand.

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Why wouldn't se be able to use WEB-MAT AP? Even if we had to split the CF, surely we'd get a lot of CF from producing unique combination enchantment items made to order? And we'd only have to split the CF between the wizards making a given Windherding enchantment, which would mean likely three at most.

Say, @Boney : Can windherding enchantments work by providing two separate enchantments that do unrelated things on command instead of doing them both together? For example, an item that can either be activated to cure poisons or activated to provide Wings of Heaven, rather than both spells at once? Sort of like dual-purpose tool?

Wings of heaven puts the wearer at one dispel from death, not really ideal.

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Hence the Take No Heed aspect. If you're high up to the point that you just look like another bird, then Take No Heed means no one pays any attention to you. No one would even attempt a dispel.

Also, unless you're low to the ground, you'd have time to recast Wings of Heaven before you fall too far. It'd be another dispel roll to try and disrupt that, so you're still playing with dice, but it means you aren't one dice roll from death.

 

[French Cowboy]

I was under the impression that it succeeded as a proof of concept, but we didn't do any more because people were sold on the process rather than the results. So we found out we *could* windherd multiple enchantments with multiple winds into the same object, then realized we didn't really have anything that we wanted to do with the technique.

Giving away the saddle to the hochlander was a good move, but who else do we know that even needs magical items?

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Part of me wants to enchant the hat. It's an iconic part to Mathilde's look and whole deal, and having an enchanted witch hunter's hat would be awesome.

 

[DragonParadox]

Hence the Take No Heed aspect. If you're high up to the point that you just look like another bird, then Take No Heed means no one pays any attention to you. No one would even attempt a dispel.

Also, unless you're low to the ground, you'd have time to recast Wings of Heaven before you fall too far. It'd be another dispel roll to try and disrupt that, so you're still playing with dice, but it means you aren't one dice roll from death.

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Take No Heed can be seen though with enough willpower and enchantments are worse than any wizard at mental manipulation since there is no mind there shaping the spell.

Also there is no guarantee you could cast it in time anymore than the hypothetical smoke and mirrors to the ground, casting takes time and hurtling to the ground is not the best state to get it out.

 

[ReImagined]

I mean, Melkoth is approaching retirement despite being really powerful and experienced. Even if he doesn't die of old age, becoming physically decrepit from old age to the point that you stop being productive doesn't seem like a huge distinction. The Supreme Patriarchs of old would surely be doing something of note if they were still around. If nothing else, when the Colleges were outlawed, they would have had to come back to the Colleges to have a safe place to sleep, and that would mean people would see and know about their continued existence.

Furthermore, Mathilde, when summing up the numbers of the Colleges, doesn't even mention the "really powerful wizards in retirement but still able to come out of retirement to kick some ass if needed" theoretical group.

But lastly, surely you'd see at least some of these top-level, highly productive and accomplished wizards publishing some papers from time to time if they were still around and still able to play with their respective winds like masters?

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Not dying of old age doesn't mean they're not dead, it means they died from things like participating in battles and exploding from miscasts.

Or they're just quietly retired like Olorin. And yeah, I'd assume that being retired generally means you're not counted in the rosters.

As for Melkoth, where does it say he's approaching retirement? He's old, but he seems physically fine. Are you sure you're not thinking of Kupfer?

 

[pucflek]

I mean, Melkoth is approaching retirement despite being really powerful and experienced. Even if he doesn't die of old age, becoming physically decrepit from old age to the point that you stop being productive doesn't seem like a huge distinction. The Supreme Patriarchs of old would surely be doing something of note if they were still around. If nothing else, when the Colleges were outlawed, they would have had to come back to the Colleges to have a safe place to sleep, and that would mean people would see and know about their continued existence.

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Melkoth has probably been concealing how he hobbles on a cane for longer than Mathilde has been wizarding. Hell. Alive. And he might well be hobbling in century more, and it won't stop him from being a terror whenever he actually steps out from the college for a stroll.

As for Melkoth, where does it say he's approaching retirement? He's old, but he seems physically fine. Are you sure you're not thinking of Kupfer?

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IIRC Mathilde noticed that he is probably ilusioning away a walking stick. Didn't stop him from shaking down pirates from the entire stretch of border princes up to K8P when he went to give us a lesson.

 

[Saidoro]

Melkoth is approaching retirement despite being really powerful and experienced.

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I don't recall where this was stated in the text, but I'd strongly suspect that if Melkoth is going into retirement it'll be in the same sense that Hayao Miyazaki keeps going into retirement.

 

[pucflek]

I don't recall where this was stated in the text, but I'd strongly suspect that if Melkoth is going into retirement it'll be in the same sense that Hayao Miyazaki keeps going into retirement.

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Algard retired in favour of Olorin ages ago. You will note that Olorin is no longer a patriarch and yet Algard is right back... probably doesn't even have more wrinkles.

 

[Thebigpieman]

I don't recall where this was stated in the text, but I'd strongly suspect that if Melkoth is going into retirement it'll be in the same sense that Hayao Miyazaki keeps going into retirement.

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No that's Mathilde's master. Melkoth would be the guy who is perpetually 3 days from retirement.

 

[Angelform]

How does that explain the likes of past Magister Patriarchs/Matriarchs and such?

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Wizards are expected to at least occasionally either march forth and smite the enemies of the Empire or find some hitherto undocumented thread in the fabric of reality and give it a sharp tug. Both activities have a significant chance of someone or something objective in a lethal way.

 

[Boney]

I mean, Melkoth is approaching retirement despite being really powerful and experienced. Even if he doesn't die of old age, becoming physically decrepit from old age to the point that you stop being productive doesn't seem like a huge distinction.

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Is he?

Furthermore, Mathilde, when summing up the numbers of the Colleges, doesn't even mention the "really powerful wizards in retirement but still able to come out of retirement to kick some ass if needed" theoretical group.

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Mathilde hasn't experienced such an era.

But lastly, surely you'd see at least some of these top-level, highly productive and accomplished wizards publishing some papers from time to time if they were still around and still able to play with their respective winds like masters?

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What makes you think they aren't putting out papers?

Say, @Boney : Can windherding enchantments work by providing two separate enchantments that do unrelated things on command instead of doing them both together? For example, an item that can either be activated to cure poisons or activated to provide Wings of Heaven, rather than both spells at once? Sort of like dual-purpose tool?

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If there's some sort of thematic parallel that can be drawn between them.

 

[picklepikkl]

Why wouldn't se be able to use WEB-MAT AP? Even if we had to split the CF, surely we'd get a lot of CF from producing unique combination enchantment items made to order? And we'd only have to split the CF between the wizards making a given Windherding enchantment, which would mean likely three at most.

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If we're hiring an external Collegiate mage to provide a non-Ulgu non-Hysh Wind to enchant with (reminder that the golden boys are not enchanters), that's not a WEB-MAT action. This is e.g. why researching the Seed with Panoramia was a personal action: she's not part of WEB-MAT. The only things that are a WEB-MAT action are ones taken with some non-null subset of Max/Johann/Egrimm and nobody else, or recruitment.

 

[French Cowboy]

@Boney does Mathilde think the eonir would be interested in their own orbs of sorcery? Has she seen Eonir have one in their staff or anything?

And if so, do she think they might be willing to trade a high magic enchantment for it?

 

[Boney]

@Boney does Mathilde think the eonir would be interested in their own orbs of sorcery? Has she seen Eonir have one in their staff or anything?

And if so, do she think they might be willing to trade a high magic enchantment for it?

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Something primarily used as a power core for superweapons is the sort of thing the Empire frowns very heavily upon trading away to foreign powers.

 

[thamuzz]

I hope Mathilde delivers the MOrbs by yeeting them through the front doors of their respective colleges and then running away cackling.

Joking, but I am looking forward to whatever element of mischief she manages to interject into the process.