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Warhammer Fantasy: Divided Loyalties - an Advisor's Quest

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Alratan said:
Durthu lied to the elves about where the Ever Daughter was kept. He told them that she was kept in a sacred, protected location within Averlorn:

Article: "She is Yvraine," said Oakheart*, his voice a melodic noise like the sighing of a light wind through branches. "Though Astarielle remained to protect Avelorn against the daemons, she bid us to take her children to safety. To the Gaen Vale** I carried them, where no other elf has trod. There my kin and I fought the daemons and kept Yvraine and Morelion safe those many years. Source: Malkieth novel

* Durthu assumed the identity of Oakheart while pretending to be an Averlornean Treeman, IIRC.
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Or Gav Thorpe just made a continuity error when writing Malekith. And Oakheart is explicitly a name the Asur gave to Durthu, not some kind of secret identity he assumed.
 
BurnNote said:
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.
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Yes.

BurnNote said:
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?
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I don't believe it's a preference thing. My QM 'style' has certainly evolved over time and become more straightforward; early on the more comedic tone in the mechanics was largely due to the influence of other quests I read giving me the impression that that would be expected, but also probably at least partially a mask for self-consciousness, but I do it the way I do it because I think it works best that way. Another big variable is Mathilde herself, who is of course omnipresent. She's grown as a character, as a person, as a Wizard, and as a scholar, and that has compounded the amount of thoughts and options and avenues for investigation she has when faced with any given issue. There's everyone else as well - early on I resisted letting the plot cross the Stir into Averland for a while, and now we've got moving parts from throughout the continent and beyond. You can see a pain point there with how the dramatis personae threadmark has been basically mothballed.

The pace we've arrived at is the amount of detail people seem to want (recall the vote for whether to add social actions) multiplied by the rate of writing I'm able to sustain, which is ironically less than it once was as a result of improved mental health. I started the quest at a point where every other facet of my life was in various states that I was eager to ignore, and so I was spending days to weeks at a time doing nothing but the quest. Character creation to the big hiatus at the gates of Karak Eight Peaks was 76 updates over five months. I was writing an update, posting it, responding to questions, opening the vote, going to bed, waking up, closing the vote, and writing another update. It was a good thing at a point when I needed a good thing, but the circumstances that created it weren't. With the rest of my life now being something I'm happy to be a participant in, the quest gets less of my waking hours.

So all in all, the quest is conceptually thicker, flowing more like honey than water. The mindset where I can encompass all the moving parts is one that takes a lot more of a run-up than it once did. I'm about to write a scene with eight Magister Patriarchs and Matriarchs when the quest initially had about eight named characters total. An inevitability, perhaps, but there's definitely an unused middle point of available mental effort, where I might not be at full power but there's still the potential for writing to be had. A lot of mini-essays about esoteric historical or setting topics that thread madness had stumbled upon was the product of that sort of thing. I have Thoughts for harnessing that, there might be something to see on that front before much longer.

BurnNote said:
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.
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The process remains unchanged, it's just laid out in prose or kept behind the scenes instead of laid out in that format. And yeah, apart from directly opposed rolls, the results of a die are usually more vibes-based than having hard breakpoints these days. Defining what a DC for a given task 'should' be was never my strong suit as a GM or a QM, I'm much more about seeing the diceroll you get and telling you what it means than seeing the task and telling you what diceroll you need to accomplish it.

BurnNote said:
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.
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At that point you weren't being reeled in, they were just tugging on the line to see how deep you'd been hooked. They (and I) were planning to let you get comfortable and then slowly crank up what was going to be required of you, but then fate and dice intervened and Sigmar didn't.

BurnNote said:
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.
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None of the details were nailed down, but that he'd been calling on them for help against the doom that had accounted for the rest of his family and accidentally brought him to them instead of them to him was decided very early on.
 
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Boney said:
A lot of mini-essays about esoteric historical or setting topics that thread madness had stumbled upon was the product of that sort of thing. I have Thoughts for harnessing that, there might be something to see on that front before much longer.
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When you bring it up like that, I'm suddenly struck by the image those essays existing in-character. A result of Mathilde perusing her library or reading papers by other academics as her free time and inspiration allows where every blurb or essay is a fragment of some text.
 
Boney said:
They (and I) were planning to let you get comfortable and then slowly crank up what was going to be required of you, but then fate and dice intervened and Sigmar didn't.
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Huh, that certainly explains why our shadowy/vampire manipulators seemed to have little presence, Matilda was meant to be a long-term asset they slowly ensnared. Then Abelhelm kicked it, rendering those plans moot.
 
Optimistic: We have the perfect audience for our presentation. The Emperor doesn't have the magical knowledge to be properly appreciative of our smugness, but the Patriarchs are the perfect target for Mathilde's big moment !

Pessimistic: We've been put on trial for daemonology due to Starke's uncharitable reading of our book.
 
Speaking of those orbs, I always thought Matilda viewed the Aethyric Vitae (god I hope I spelled that right) as her Grandmasterpiece-to-be for her promotion to Lord Magister. I am not sure if anyone else thinks that, but it makes sense to me.

On a similar note, what was Matilda's official Grandmasterpiece? Or is it just something Lord Magisters tell regular Magisters is a requirement so they'll be productive?
 
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Boney said:
The process remains unchanged, it's just laid out in prose or kept behind the scenes instead of laid out in that format. And yeah, apart from directly opposed rolls, the results of a die are usually more vibes-based than having hard breakpoints these days. Defining what a DC for a given task 'should' be was never my strong suit as a GM or a QM, I'm much more about seeing the diceroll you get and telling you what it means than seeing the task and telling you what diceroll you need to accomplish it.
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My absolute favorite instance of your use of the dice rolls to convey something about the narrative to the players would be this:
Boney said:
[Does Regimand help? Roll: 78-10(busy)-20(college politics)+100(wants to spend time with Mathilde)=148.]
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You could have easily just ignored rolling dice for it, but instead you made use of the non-diegetic dice rolls to convey information that would not otherwise be nearly as obvious in simply reading the narrative because Grey Wizards are compulsively sneaky.

This specific roll is one of my favorite uses of that approach across all structured interactive media, frankly.
 
FalloutCow said:
Then Abelhelm kicked it, rendering those plans moot.
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I still wonder if it was on purpose on Sigmar's part. I mean, not that Abelhelm died, we know that was probably 'on purpose', but that it was because of Mathilde.

Think about it: by letting him die there, Mathilde was able to give Regimand what he needed to wipe out the Lahmian conspiracy, which had ensnared even the then-pregnant Empress. And which would probably have tried to do with the yet unborn Karl Franz, well, what Heidi is kinda doing with Mandred. Only with Lahmians instead of the overall (mostly) benevolent Ranald. Which could be... pretty bad. But if Abelhelm dies there, Mathilde finds the list, and the conspiracy gets Grey Wizard'd.

And while Sigmar is certainly no Tzeentch, I can't help but notice that Abelhelm's death also indirectly took Mathilde to Belegar's host, in a chain of events that would eventually stop the ever closer [Low Power Reserves]-caused demise of the Karaz Ankor, Sigmar's BFFs who he took an oath to help...

Edit: hmm
Boney said:
"There's an old belief. I think it originally came from Norsca, and was adapted to Ulric, then to Sigmar. It says if a man is struck by lightning and killed, it was because the God needed his assistance urgently."
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So maybe it wasn't that Sigmar needed Abelhelm's assistance. It was that He needed Mathilde's.
 
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Ergosum said:
I still wonder if it was on purpose on Sigmar's part. I mean, not that Abelhelm died, we know that was probably 'on purpose', but that it was because of Mathilde.

Think about it: by letting him die there, Mathilde was able to give Regimand what he needed to wipe out the Lahmian conspiracy, which had ensnared even the then-pregnant Empress. And which would probably have tried to do with the yet unborn Karl Franz, well, what Heidi is kinda doing with Mandred. Only with Lahmians instead of the overall (mostly) benevolent Ranald. Which could be... pretty bad. But if Abelhelm dies there, Mathilde finds the list, and the conspiracy gets Grey Wizard'd.

And while Sigmar is certainly no Tzeentch, I can't help but notice that Abelhelm's death also indirectly took Mathilde to Belegar's host, in a chain of events that would eventually stop the ever closer [Low Power Reserves]-caused demise of the Karaz Ankor, Sigmar's BFFs who he took an oath to help...
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There is an omake from kasmirs perspective where he attributes sigmar refusing the call that day to what Mathilde grows to become.
 
Mathilde's reaction to the idea that Sigmar might have let Abelhelm die because hammer-boy wanted her specifically to do something else would be. Uh. Apocalyptic might actually be the right word given what Mathilde has access to.
 
Boney said:
The pace we've arrived at is the amount of detail people seem to want (recall the vote for whether to add social actions) multiplied by the rate of writing I'm able to sustain, which is ironically less than it once was as a result of improved mental health. I started the quest at a point where every other facet of my life was in various states that I was eager to ignore, and so I was spending days to weeks at a time doing nothing but the quest. Character creation to the big hiatus at the gates of Karak Eight Peaks was 76 updates over five months. I was writing an update, posting it, responding to questions, opening the vote, going to bed, waking up, closing the vote, and writing another update. It was a good thing at a point when I needed a good thing, but the circumstances that created it weren't. With the rest of my life now being something I'm happy to be a participant in, the quest gets less of my waking hours.
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Glad to hear it, you've got to take care of yourself first and foremost, and besides that I've seen a lot of good quests crash and burn. Often without even a hint as to what happened to the author.
 
infinityDivided said:
I think there was an omake based on Kasmir considering that, and also considering how utterly stupid an idea it would be to even bring the idea up to Mathilde. I think it was titled "The Conversation You Could Never Have" or something along those lines?
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pucflek said:
There is an omake from kasmirs perspective where he attributes sigmar refusing the call that day to what Mathilde grows to become.
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Found it! And yeah, it's similar to what I had thought. If anything, the subsequent Waystone Project and healing of Praag, Sylvania, the Black Water and many more places in the future only add more weight to the argument: what is the life of an Elector Count compared to the Old World being saved from the inevitable decay of the Waystone Network? What is one life, even that of Abelhelm van Hal, compared to all the ones that will be saved and live safer all across the continent? If Mathilde's actions here do more to prevent the End Times than she, or Abelhelm, ever could have done if Drakenhof had ended differently, why wouldn't Sigmar push for this outcome?

And in some ways, this would be even worse for Mathilde than Sigmar 'just being an asshole'. Because if she was in His position, knowing what He knew... would she have done differently?
And yet, knowing there was a reason doesn't diminish the pain of losing Abelhelm. And knowing it was because of her, because of her future accomplishments, would make all said accomplishments, of which Mathilde is so proud of, feel bitter.

Regardless, I don't think there's any way for Mathilde to ever learn what made Sigmar act (or rather, not act) as he did(n't)... and maybe this is for the best.
 
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