Iirc we asked and that's much to broad to trigger sadly.
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.
Mopman43
Mountain-Hermit of Nitpeak
- Location
- Vermont
Too long of an explanation for how that's protecting people.
Talking about the Wild Hunt, although it's described as being arbitrary, you do get timeline entries like this:
Which is quite clearly a punitive expedition.
IV, 485 - The High Elves of Ulthuan attempt a rapprochment with their estranged kin in Athel Loren. The emissaries meet with Ariel, who rejects the offer of closer ties with the High Elf court, and become lost in the forest on their departure.
IV, 556 - At the close of the year the High Elf emissaries finally emerge from Athel Loren near Quenelles, but are immediately assumed to be evil spirits by the Bretonnian peasantry. Heavily outnumbered, they are slain and their bodies burnt.
IV, 557 - The Wild Hunt inexplicably rides only through the lands controlled by Quenelles. The Duke and his family are all slain, save his youngest daughter, who is spirited away into the forest by Dryads.
Which is quite clearly a punitive expedition.
I do think ariel can guide the wild hunt if she has a target but I doubt she can actually stop it from launching if that's in the cards.
Mopman43
Mountain-Hermit of Nitpeak
- Location
- Vermont
The main example of it being more wrath than logic would be VI 278, 'The Madness of Orion'.
(Also against Quenelles- there's a reason Quenelles is very fearful of Athel Loren)
That's a particularly bad Orion, but I doubt that's the only time they've rampaged through Quenelles or other Bretonnian lands.
(Personally I expect most of the time when they kill peasants it's more 'That's their fault for existing on the straightest path between me and the Beastmen horde I'm hunting', but I expect there's been times where they did it because they could)
deathofrats0808
Don’t think of it as dying; just as leaving early
- Location
- Earth
Loremasters can utilize multiple lores in combat. I find it unlikely that's merely a matter of letting one wind fade. Especially given that the timescale for removing it from your soul is, IIRC, measured in weeks for humans, not even hours or minutes.
Even assuming the forest spirits are happy to talk, whether it's necessary depends on what you want out of Athel Loren. Waystone lore or deals for example are unlikely to benefit from talking to the forest spirits because they don't seem to use them. And of course, it does seem that Ariel has some measure of influence in that area herself, so it might become a mater of internal politics Mathilde never sees rather than her having to talk to a dryad or anything.
K von Carstein
Likes to go for a walk
- Location
- Belgium
- Pronouns
- He
Elves are also inherently less mutable than humans, which imo is doing most of the heavy lifting here.
- Location
- Finland
Yes, the way humans do it takes time.
Presumably elves have better methods for it.
The point here is that high magic, and having access to multiple winds, are not the same.
And considering elves do get arcane marks, and are then locked into one wind, assuming that they just can have multiple winds without causing dhar feels off.
As for why did Teclis not teach humans high magic?
They were in a hurry, and humans live for very short time, and elves take long time to master their magics, while making sure to not get arcane marks.
edit-
Possibly.
Or that could also mean that arcane marks if/when they happen are just more delibitating to elves.
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That sounds to me more like the Wood Elves trapped diplomats in their forest for 71 years for fun and then let them out in such a way they'd be killed in their presumably weakened state.
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Adrian XXIV
Average User, from Poland
- Location
- Poland
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Imagine some Brayherd being "lucky" (Blessing from Tzeentch?) to leave from Quellenes to one of bordering provinces, just before vengeful Asrai steamroll through the former
@MrHobbit
So it turns out I was right about my reading, cost are just the monetary part of the cost.
My other presupposition is that is that the "cost" of the component scales exponentially. Here is my reasoning. The range of price for some thing is a non-linerar mental construct. When you think of an expenditure it's not 10$ is trivial, 20$ is low expenditure, 30$ is a medium expenditure and 40$ is a high expenditure. If I have to use the term for myself, trivial would be a candy bar or a fruit, low would be a book or small product, medium would be something like a month's rent and high would be a car or a house. In my mind, to switch categories, the difference in cost should be at least 5-20 times more. Now scale that up for a ruler's budget.
Either way it means that my Mass Produced Waystone "price" estimations make sense. The cheapest models of waystone could probably be deployed tens of times faster than our current model at a MUCH MUCH cheaper cost per unit.
Perfect for low priority areas, in my mind, the most effective scenario for Mass-Produced Waystones would be to have local labour find, sculpt and erect the stone boulder base of the waystone, then send a team to build/install the other components, considering how simple and inexpensive a Mass-Produced Waytone could be (Cost (Negligible, negligible, low, low, trivial) - Difficulty (Simple, trivial, trivial, simple, simple)), I'd imagine the localy-prepared stone monolith could be turned into a Waystone in hours or days at worst.
Here is my previously developped scenario for X10 cheaper waystones (but I think Mass Produced Waystones could be even cheaper than X10 considering the difference in cost and difficulty) :
Let's say we succeed at making a waystone model ten 10X as cheap and MUCH faster to build.
Then you can use those cheap waystones as pseudo tributaries to cover insane amount of territory at low cost, especially when combined with actual tributaries.
You could have a single High Quality waystone connected to the network via a river then a serie of Mass Produced waystones branching out in all directions. Rings of Mass Produced waystones around a single High Quality one.
Let's say a waystone's range is about 7km with tributaries' help (5km = distance of the horizon at sea + tributaries) and Mass Produced are 10X cheaper.
So for the cost of the cleansing of Black Waters (40 HQ waystones) you could potentially cover about 40 000 square kilometers (the size of a small imperial province) of troll country and steepe.
Then you can use those cheap waystones as pseudo tributaries to cover insane amount of territory at low cost, especially when combined with actual tributaries.
You could have a single High Quality waystone connected to the network via a river then a serie of Mass Produced waystones branching out in all directions. Rings of Mass Produced waystones around a single High Quality one.
If we want to be sure everything gets covered, you'd want the coverage of the circles of waystone to overlap. Thus, the formula to find the area of hexagon inscribed in a circle = 6 × √3/4 × side2. Here, the radius will be considered as the side length.
One waystone (and tributaries) with an area with a radius of 7km thus covers about 127,3 square km.
One waystone (and tributaries) with an area with a radius of 7km thus covers about 127,3 square km.
Let's say a waystone's range is about 7km with tributaries' help (5km = distance of the horizon at sea + tributaries) and Mass Produced are 10X cheaper.
1 High Quality waystone (and tributaries) - Covers : 14 km circle (127,3 square km) - Cost : 1 HQ equivalent
1 HQ + 1 ring (6 Mass Produced) - Covers : 42 km hexagon (891,1 square km) - Cost : 1.6 HQ equivalent
1 HQ + 2 rings (18 Mass Produced) - Covers : 70 km hexagon (2418,7 square km) - Cost : 2.8 HQ equivalent
1 HQ + 3 rings (38 Mass Produced) - Covers : 98 km hexagon (4964,7 square km) - Cost : 4.8 HQ equivalent
1 HQ + 1 ring (6 Mass Produced) - Covers : 42 km hexagon (891,1 square km) - Cost : 1.6 HQ equivalent
1 HQ + 2 rings (18 Mass Produced) - Covers : 70 km hexagon (2418,7 square km) - Cost : 2.8 HQ equivalent
1 HQ + 3 rings (38 Mass Produced) - Covers : 98 km hexagon (4964,7 square km) - Cost : 4.8 HQ equivalent
So for the cost of the cleansing of Black Waters (40 HQ waystones) you could potentially cover about 40 000 square kilometers (the size of a small imperial province) of troll country and steepe.
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To use high magic you have to cast with eight kinds of magic at the same time. Warhammer humans are pretty impressive, but I do not think holding eight trains of thought is in their repertoire.
- Location
- Finland
And elves generally Elves require decades upon decades of training to reach high magic.
So, not going to assume humans could not do it, considering everything else they already do, given time and training.
But they have nobody to train them, and will die of old age before they can learn, so it is not going to happen.
Or maybe elves are just that fundamentally different from humans.
Could be, but i don't think we have enough information to conclude that.
We already know elves are fundamentally different from humans in other magical regards, they have an inherent magesense different from the others, as well as all of them sharing the other two soul qualities needed for casting. The most unmagical elf on the planet could still cast at least cantrips using any of the eight winds if they tried hard enough. So all in all I'd say the balance of evidence leans in favor of them being magically different on a soul deep level and a human could never use high magic. I say a human because I think 8 of them casting at once probably could if they were in perfect sinc though it would be quite dangerous.
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K von Carstein
Likes to go for a walk
- Location
- Belgium
- Pronouns
- He
Even the Fae Enchantress, the longest-lived human we know about, can't cast High Magic.
Mopman43
Mountain-Hermit of Nitpeak
- Location
- Vermont
Assuming she's human.
(I think the 6th edition Bretonnia army book basically puts a neon sign over her saying 'Secretly An Elf')
deathofrats0808
Don’t think of it as dying; just as leaving early
- Location
- Earth
I don't think it's a matter of better methods, unless there's still something different about Elves that specifically allow them to work. For one, because there's little reason for Teclis not to write said methods down or teach them (remember, he had twenty years after the end of the Great War where he was working with the Colleges) and they'd be useful even if a human doesn't live long enough to use High Magic because "drain the Winds from your soul" seems like it'd be an excellent basis for miscast mitigation.
Also, Boney has said before that Elves learn spells as fast as humans, they invent them slower (and also need a grounding in "basic severrics" as a pre-req for any magic).
Finally, Elves seem to gain arcane marks either much less frequently or in a completely different way to humans, considering every Elf we've met has reacted with shock, horror or befuddlement at the idea. They certainly can't be a common result of miscasting as they are for human wizards. Mathilde is only forty, and has four marks. Between Hatalath and Sarvoi they've probably been practicing magic for something like a hundred and fifty times as long as she has and neither has any.
- Pronouns
- He/Him
The Fae Enchantress is probably not actually human. Like...the evidence she's an elf is really strong. It's not completely definitive, but it's strong enough that referring to her as 'the longest lived human' is really not a good call.
Yeah. There's various other stuff implying it as well, honestly.
Mopman43
Mountain-Hermit of Nitpeak
- Location
- Vermont
And 2e Knights of the Grail (page 42) includes the following text:
- Location
- Finland
Humans do not live long enough is avery good reason.
If the time to leanr how to cast from multiple winds takes longer than humans are likely to live, then there is very little point in trying, and can be actively harmful to try.
And if there is even more to learn after that, then there is even less reason to.
deathofrats0808
Don’t think of it as dying; just as leaving early
- Location
- Earth
That would be a good reason to not teach them High Magic, but not to teach them these theoretical un-colouring your soul techniques. Or at least to write them down so they can adapt them.
Some more stuff from the current reread. I started with quotes I noted, but after writing down my thoughts I reorganized things a bit, so they're not full in order.
Also, @Boney if I track down the vote, will you copy them into the coresponding update? It kind of bothers me not to see the winning plan.
Thoughts on writing
I think one part is that Boney's relationship to the world has changed, because however familiar he was before this quest, nearly seven years (coming up in 12 days) of working and thinking about it would've deepened it a lot. It's more real now than it was at when it began.
But I do think it's also reflective of Boney as a writer. In some ways, it's changed remarkably little. Even across a pretty broad span, you can see the similarities (partly because Boney wasn't a fresh story teller). But there's obviously changes too. The structure in the modern quest is different. Slower, for one. Which has disadvantages, I do the faster pacing. But it also has advantages, and one of them is that individual scenes get more focus. There's more introspection, but also more consideration of the broader context.
As I mentioned, I don't think this scene would play out the same way today. More thought to where that reaction comes from, what it means for the people who react, and who are reacted to. How Mathilde lives with it, and how she can use it. I'm going to broadly gesture at Pratchett here, because thinking about this got me thinking about how he does that sort of societal examination. And also because everyone benefits from the occasional reminder those books exist, and there's at least one of them for which it's been long enough for a reread.
Anyway, partly that's also the character of Mathilde. She doesn't have the experience to ponder those questions yet. She's also too learning to swim in the deep waters to worry about the currents. No matter how useful those are to getting somewhere, you first need to make sure your lungs don't fill with water. And that's a really interesting character arc you don't see often (it requires a pretty broad span of time and words). I wondered to what degree that was planned, but after some thought I think it wasn't, but there's really not much else it could've gone. Credit here is more for the execution of portraying that really well, than the idea itself.
Incidentally, it really is neat to see early Mathilde again. She really is quite different. Modern Mathilde is a veteran, and while she's still often unsure or improvising, she's also got a well honed toolbelt and the experience with those tools that she can be confident she'll have a fitting tool, and be able to pick it. She's unsure in that she's waiting for more information, not in that she doesn't know what to do with it.
Now, it's always dangerous to diagnose a writer through their work (the Beginner's Guide stuck with me on that). "Boney has changed as a writer and now prefers more in-depth, considering/examinatory scenes at slower pace" is kind of hard to show if you only have a single work, and more so because I'm not sure how I'd show that even just for the work itself. But it's my impression (and let me note at this will apply whenever something like this comes up).
However, I do have the great advantage that the author is around, who can actually say. So, Boney, do you feel like you're style has changed in this regard? Where have the million words and seven years of DL brought you?
Game system
Still, I think these days Boney would've settled to existence and identity of a spy like this before the roll came out. To paraphrase, if you set up a mystery you have to know the answer.
Though even then, it wouldn't be quite the same, since moderm Mathilde is a power in her own right, and has more than proven herself. But it could capture the general vibe.
Though I don't know if there's still hard pass/fail requirements for most things.
Plot related
Or hell, it might not even have happened under Alberich, I don't actually remember how long he was in control before that he went to the warp. Either way, awful situation to find yourself in.
Misc
It could be poetic license, but referencing the scent makes me think this is to the specific thing.
*Not quite modern paper made of wood, but paper made from cloth rags, which except for wool would already be plant fibers made flexible. Wooden pulp actually dates back, like a startling amount of the modern world, to the 1800s.
**Fun fact: One difference of paper vs parchement is that ink soaks in, so you can't change what's written later. Bad for reuse, very useful for government documents. That's one reason paper was pushed in the islamicate context by the rulers, it was supposed to help against tax fraud.
But in another ten, she'll have a differnt robe every second! .... which isn't actually that implausible with grey marks.
Jokes are hard.
Iconic.
Also, @Boney if I track down the vote, will you copy them into the coresponding update? It kind of bothers me not to see the winning plan.
Thoughts on writing
Mathilde has gotten that sort of reaction fairly rarely, all told. Part is that she became Mathilde, Important Person (and also a wizard); part is that she publicly did cool things, wizardly. And part is where she hangs out nowadays. I do feel even so that if Boney were to write this scene again, it wouldn't go quite this way. I think it wouldn't be quite this extreme, and if it was extreme it wouldn't quite go this way.
I think one part is that Boney's relationship to the world has changed, because however familiar he was before this quest, nearly seven years (coming up in 12 days) of working and thinking about it would've deepened it a lot. It's more real now than it was at when it began.
But I do think it's also reflective of Boney as a writer. In some ways, it's changed remarkably little. Even across a pretty broad span, you can see the similarities (partly because Boney wasn't a fresh story teller). But there's obviously changes too. The structure in the modern quest is different. Slower, for one. Which has disadvantages, I do the faster pacing. But it also has advantages, and one of them is that individual scenes get more focus. There's more introspection, but also more consideration of the broader context.
As I mentioned, I don't think this scene would play out the same way today. More thought to where that reaction comes from, what it means for the people who react, and who are reacted to. How Mathilde lives with it, and how she can use it. I'm going to broadly gesture at Pratchett here, because thinking about this got me thinking about how he does that sort of societal examination. And also because everyone benefits from the occasional reminder those books exist, and there's at least one of them for which it's been long enough for a reread.
Anyway, partly that's also the character of Mathilde. She doesn't have the experience to ponder those questions yet. She's also too learning to swim in the deep waters to worry about the currents. No matter how useful those are to getting somewhere, you first need to make sure your lungs don't fill with water. And that's a really interesting character arc you don't see often (it requires a pretty broad span of time and words). I wondered to what degree that was planned, but after some thought I think it wasn't, but there's really not much else it could've gone. Credit here is more for the execution of portraying that really well, than the idea itself.
Incidentally, it really is neat to see early Mathilde again. She really is quite different. Modern Mathilde is a veteran, and while she's still often unsure or improvising, she's also got a well honed toolbelt and the experience with those tools that she can be confident she'll have a fitting tool, and be able to pick it. She's unsure in that she's waiting for more information, not in that she doesn't know what to do with it.
Now, it's always dangerous to diagnose a writer through their work (the Beginner's Guide stuck with me on that). "Boney has changed as a writer and now prefers more in-depth, considering/examinatory scenes at slower pace" is kind of hard to show if you only have a single work, and more so because I'm not sure how I'd show that even just for the work itself. But it's my impression (and let me note at this will apply whenever something like this comes up).
However, I do have the great advantage that the author is around, who can actually say. So, Boney, do you feel like you're style has changed in this regard? Where have the million words and seven years of DL brought you?
Game system
I think this is interesting because the spy gets created by the roll, as the action is happening. These days, I think the existence of the spy would've been settled beforehand, when the whole thing was set up. But then, this is a brand new quest, and winning votes still had single digit counts. I don't think anyone expected 16k pages and a million words here, so the sensible investment to set things up is different. Also, at the start you always have to invent a lot, that's another factor.
Still, I think these days Boney would've settled to existence and identity of a spy like this before the roll came out. To paraphrase, if you set up a mystery you have to know the answer.
Quoted this because the description here is just funny, and it's an example of how the modern way of doing things is overal better, some things are lost too. And not just funny result descriptions, other stuff too.
I'm not alone on this, but I do kind of want to get back to this. It was a cool idea, and remains so, and there isn't any quest ongoing I'm aware of that does it. Obviously it doesn't make sense for Mathilde right now, but reading this again actually really pushed SM for me so Mathilde could sit on the Emperor's council and we could have that sort of gameplay again.
Though even then, it wouldn't be quite the same, since moderm Mathilde is a power in her own right, and has more than proven herself. But it could capture the general vibe.
I think this is an interesting glimpse in how Boney gets to the results. Consider the task(s) required, estimate how hard it is given Mathilde and circumstances (the two auto passes are intersting in this regard), then roll and interpret the results. Rince and repeat
Though I don't know if there's still hard pass/fail requirements for most things.
This is interesting because I don't believe nowadays you'd see a roll fall below the threshold but get a pass anyway. Though it might just be early formating not being settled, and you'd either have a reduction of the requirement, or a bonus to the roll.
Plot related
So, this is something I don't understand. Why would they need a report on Anton, the one guy they'd already have information on since he's from the previous administration? A way to verify her information, since they can compare it to what they already have? That would make sense, actually.
This is pretty brutal if you think about it. They carted that stuff out over a year before Alberich did his ritual (incidentally, did you already decide he was a chaos cultist back then Boney?). It really shows how little control he had, that they could pull it off, were willing to risk it, and Alberich either didn't know or felt there was nothing he could do about it.
Or hell, it might not even have happened under Alberich, I don't actually remember how long he was in control before that he went to the warp. Either way, awful situation to find yourself in.
Misc
I noticed this, because I don't think papyrus would grow in the empire, and as an export it would be rather expensive. Better than parchement, which is hilariously pricey, but I don't think it would be cheap. Also, papyrus isn't really suited to the books and such we see. IRL, you'd already have paper* being the main thing in the comparable time period, for around 200+ years if you take the empire to be around 1500s level. Possibly quite a bit longer, since dwarfs would be quite interested in properly writing things down**.
It could be poetic license, but referencing the scent makes me think this is to the specific thing.
*Not quite modern paper made of wood, but paper made from cloth rags, which except for wool would already be plant fibers made flexible. Wooden pulp actually dates back, like a startling amount of the modern world, to the 1800s.
**Fun fact: One difference of paper vs parchement is that ink soaks in, so you can't change what's written later. Bad for reuse, very useful for government documents. That's one reason paper was pushed in the islamicate context by the rulers, it was supposed to help against tax fraud.
Mathilde's tradition of only ever wearing grey robes begins. It will be a decade before she changes her grey robes to slightly fancier grey robes and soon after get forcibly further fancified. With silk, a second robe change might come soon. If we plot this, we can expect a further ten years from now that she will have a different grey robe every day.... which isn't that unusual, having a different outfit every day.
But in another ten, she'll have a differnt robe every second! .... which isn't actually that implausible with grey marks.
Jokes are hard.
Though at this point she's still wearing other things if need be.
The first "Well, then"
Iconic.
- Location
- Earth
Third, actually. There's two occurences on Turn 1:
- Location
- Earth
I noticed a few small grammar errors while rereading.
"they", since it's talking about souls in the plural.
"His", since Nethu is a god with capitalized pronouns.
- Location
- Finland
Maybe the technique is "spend five decades training".