Remove ads

Warhammer Fantasy: Divided Loyalties - an Advisor's Quest

Voted best in category in the Users' Choice awards.
Voting is open
Reader mode
DragonParadox said:
While insanity points to warp the mind they do not make you lose control of your character, not until you have a lot of them.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Neither does moving along the Chaos Warrior career track up until you actually reach Daemon Princehood, but the flavour text does explicitly say your character's likely forgotten just about everything about their past, including why they actually tried to catch the falling knife of service to Chaos in the first place, by the time you're becoming a full-blown Champion of Chaos.

There are exceptions to this like Mortkin, but Mortkin is explicitly unique for saying 'I got what I came for, I'm done with this'.
 
Last edited:
Natch said:
After Settra's death, Nehekhara was never united under one king until Alcadizaar. Nagash's father was king of solely the city-state of Khemri. Other cities had their own Priest-Kings, who Nagash started invading after usurping his brother. There's very little info on Araby at the time (or in general), but there were apparently still native tribes ruling it in Settra's name.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Nagash's father Khetep, founder of the 3rd Dynasty, explicitly had dominion over all of Nehekhara.

6th edition Tomb Kings, page 5 sidebar:

So it is said of Khetep: He was the regent of Queen Rasut's infant son, and he took the throne upon his death. He caused to be built the Great Pyramid which is in the Necropolis of Khemri. One million slaves labored for twenty five years upon the orders of the king. All kings fell upon their knees before Khetep in his time. The land of Nehekhara prospered as never before.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
 
BurnNote said:
IIrc, there's some ways to get rid of insanity points too? Bear piss and such?
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
What you're thinking of is the Hag Witch spell that gets rid of mutations (well, moreso locks them away; if the spell's target gets another mutation later on, the original comes back too).

The only ways that can get rid of Insanity Points reliably are a Chamon spell and a miracle of Shallya, neither of which are easy to perform even for a full Magister/Anointed Priest.

I suppose there is also trusting yourself to the mundane cures of the few physicians who are actually bothering to look into mental illnesses, but that's gambling first on whether you can afford anyone other than a quack and then on how far along the experimental stage their 'miracle cure sure to enshrine their name for all of history' actually is by the time you're quaffing it, and how much of it is literally toxic to the body.
 
Last edited:
Just wanted to take a moment and wish everyone in the thread and Boney especially a 'Happy Anniversary', as Divided Loyalties began 7 years ago at roughly this time.

(I have an alert for it on my phone)

We have a new Quest by Boney that stands as celebration of that event, and the next Social turn should be a very momentous one.
 
Last edited:
Sir_Travelsalot said:
What you're thinking of is the Hag Witch spell that gets rid of mutations (well, moreso locks them away; if the spell's target gets another mutation later on, the original comes back too).

The only ways that can get rid of Insanity Points reliably are a Chamon spell and a miracle of Shallya, neither of which are easy to perform even for a full Magister/Anointed Priest.

I suppose there is also trusting yourself to the mundane cures of the few physicians who are actually bothering to look into mental illnesses, but that's gambling first on whether you can afford anyone other than a quack and then on how far along the experimental stage their 'miracle cure sure to enshrine their name for all of history' actually is by the time you're quaffing it, and how much of it is literally toxic to the body.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
If I remember correctly, Boney did not look fondly on spells that outright cure mental conditions, which is why certain spells like the Shyish spell that removes the grief over the loss of a loved one doesn't exist in the College's spellbook. I very much understand and agree with that viewpoint.

The thing about "insanity points" that I usually take issue with is that I'm pretty sure it's not clearly defined where these points lie on the spectrum of just natural mental illness that comes about from all the horrors of the setting, or if it's supernatural shit. If it's supernatural in nature, then I guess a Hysh spell could possibly deal with it, but that still doesn't deal with the effects of the shit you might have seen. Unless the memories are removed I suppose, which is still something the Grey College isn't keen on sharing with even its Lord Magisters (aside from the indelicate Mindhole).
 
Sir_Travelsalot said:
Neither does moving along the Chaos Warrior career track up until you actually reach Daemon Princehood, but the flavour text does explicitly say your character's likely forgotten just about everything about their past, including why they actually tried to catch the falling knife of service to Chaos in the first place, by the time you're becoming a full-blown Champion of Chaos.

There are exceptions to this like Mortkin, but Mortkin is explicitly unique for saying 'I got what I came for, I'm done with this'.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

Likely isn't the same thing as certainly, it's a process, the slippery slope gets more and more slippery the father you go, but it's not until 'character goes out of PC' hands that it's technically irreversible, certainly not at the first insanity point which is something you can fix with magic even.
 
Happy threadiversarry! I can't hope to articulate how much this story and my participation means to me, so just know that despite my lack of contribution as of late, I still check regularly to see for updates and I'm always happy to see an update. I would chat more, but I've lost the love for Warhammer Fantasty that inspired me to do so much. That being said, I have never lost my love for this quest, and I will probably see it through to the end, barring unforseen circumstances.
 
Codex said:
The thing about "insanity points" that I usually take issue with is that I'm pretty sure it's not clearly defined where these points lie on the spectrum of just natural mental illness that comes about from all the horrors of the setting, or if it's supernatural shit. If it's supernatural in nature, then I guess a Hysh spell could possibly deal with it, but that still doesn't deal with the effects of the shit you might have seen. Unless the memories are removed I suppose, which is still something the Grey College isn't keen on sharing with even its Lord Magisters (aside from the indelicate Mindhole).
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
At least in 2e, Insanity Points themselves aren't yet at the level of full-blown mental illness; they're an abstraction of the general trauma, stress and mental strain, whether from supernatural or mundane sources. It's when you accumulate enough of them (6 to be exact at the baseline, 8 if you've got the Strong-minded talent) that they can coalesce into a full-on disorder.

Though, the line between the mundane and supernatural mental trauma is kind of blurred, given that you can mechanically gain it from so much as simply seeing a dragon, manticore, gryphon and the like about to attack you.
 
Mopman43 said:
Nagash's father Khetep, founder of the 3rd Dynasty, explicitly had dominion over all of Nehekhara.

6th edition Tomb Kings, page 5 sidebar:
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
That particular sidebar is an in-setting document where every king's description is preceded by "so it is said", and which goes on to call Settra the Imperishable "Wise ruler who causes the Gods to rejoice!" so it really shouldn't be used as a factual source by the wikis.
 
Codex said:
If I remember correctly, Boney did not look fondly on spells that outright cure mental conditions, which is why certain spells like the Shyish spell that removes the grief over the loss of a loved one doesn't exist in the College's spellbook. I very much understand and agree with that viewpoint.

The thing about "insanity points" that I usually take issue with is that I'm pretty sure it's not clearly defined where these points lie on the spectrum of just natural mental illness that comes about from all the horrors of the setting, or if it's supernatural shit. If it's supernatural in nature, then I guess a Hysh spell could possibly deal with it, but that still doesn't deal with the effects of the shit you might have seen. Unless the memories are removed I suppose, which is still something the Grey College isn't keen on sharing with even its Lord Magisters (aside from the indelicate Mindhole).
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

While I do agree with this policy in general, I do think that magically induced insanity should be magically curable, though. Of course, in some cases its hard to say where magically induced starts, but still...
 
Natch said:
That particular sidebar is an in-setting document where every king's description is preceded by "so it is said", and which goes on to call Settra the Imperishable "Wise ruler who causes the Gods to rejoice!" so it really shouldn't be used as a factual source by the wikis.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

All official materials are presented as "in universe documents". If we removed stuff from the wiki because "it might not be factual", we'd have an empty wiki. At some point we have to take a leap of faith and assume the lore isn't lying to us.
 
Nerdasaurus Rex said:
All official materials are presented as "in universe documents". If we removed stuff from the wiki because "it might not be factual", we'd have an empty wiki. At some point we have to take a leap of faith and assume the lore isn't lying to us.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
That's not true at all. There's a big difference between the body of the text speaking in an omniscient third-person on events that nobody in the setting actually knows (like Alcadizaar being set up to kill Nagash by the Skaven), versus the portions written in first-person and clearly delineated through layout design as documents from within the setting relaying fallible information ("The Tomb Kings whom we fear so greatly could soon be our only salvation")
 
Happy birthday to the quest ! Thanks for all the writing you do, Boney, and for all the peripheral work you do running the thread and discussing lore for weeks on end. It's been very fun and very interesting !
 
I wish we could start gunpowder factories in each imperial province, not only would that help the EIC Branch out but also it would hopefully noticeably increase the availability of gunpowder weapons throughout the empire. Given we tend to have a lot of funding available for various side projects and we are best buddies with the Dawi, we can even maybe get the Dawi to build said fortified factories to both be more defensive and be of higher quality than normal than imperial manufacturing would allow.

Also, since we are best buddies with the Dawi, is there any way we could perhaps learn how to make slightly higher quality gunpowder? If we combine that with producing more gunpowder through more factories, that could be a real game changer in improving imperial ammunition on a widespread basis. I can imagine one of our first customers would literally be the Elector Counts of each province.

Last, is there any way to potentially make magic infused gunpowder that is more powerful than normal with minimal to no disadvantages to it? Since we invented things like Rooms of Neutrality, we could encourage development of things like that to maybe develop firearms with magical effects laced into the gunpowder themselves. I don't know if we would have to conduct the research or if we could essentially provide funding for certain other institutes to do it, such as the engineering academy and outdoor, but since we are a relatively high ranking and influential Lord Magister we could diplomatically reach out from the magic colleges and possibly encourage collaborative efforts like that.
 
Last edited:
avatar11792 said:
Also, since we are best buddies with the Dawi, is there any way we could perhaps learn how to make slightly higher quality gunpowder? If we combine that with producing more gunpowder through more factories, that could be a real game changer in improving imperial ammunition on a widespread basis. I can imagine one of our first customers would literally be the Elector Counts of each province.

Last, is there any way to potentially make magic infused gunpowder that is more powerful than normal with minimal to no disadvantages to it? Since we invented things like Rooms of Neutrality, we could encourage development of things like that to maybe develop firearms with magical effects laced into the gunpowder themselves. I don't know if we would have to conduct the research or if we could essentially provide funding for certain other institutes to do it, such as the engineering academy and outdoor, but since we are a relatively high ranking and influential Lord Magister we could diplomatically reach out from the magic colleges and possibly encourage collaborative efforts like that.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

1. It is a dwarven favor to do so, as detailed in the favors and boon page. We actually did do it for the repeater rifle the roll wasn't great but the main issue is quality control as far as the issue that was found goes.
2. Magical gunpowder is... dangerous and probably a lot harder than it seems. powder wouldn't hold an enchantment like that and at some point it's diminishing returns. For ranged weapons why not just enchant the bullet or the barrel? (Since there is no idea's on what the powder would do I am assuming you just mean more powerful). For explosions you would just do the container/shrapnel.

As far as powder factory in every province... Blackpowder is a strategic good/asset. That is why quality powder is so hard to get, Wilhelmina makes a point of it. Investigating the skull river ambush shows us all the substandard ones. The only reason the factory got built was guarantee's offered to Nuln that it would mainly supply Stirland and the Undumgi. If I remember right it was stated that it's possible the factory wouldn't grow beyond that. The people who know how to make good powder are protected as strategic assets and treated as such, Nuln learned it from the dawi and considering the fact that they are known as the armory of the Empire and everyone in the province gets rich off it they aren't going to take another factory lying down.

As in
To the Emperor/ whoever is trying to build one. "It'd be a shame if the foundries started slowing down because we can't pay the workers without powder income..."
Every road and riverwarden along the Reik and the roads of Wissenland and Sudenland. "Call the Elector Count of Wissenland if you have a problem, but not one hogshead is passing along our rivers or roads without authorization."
The unrelated merchant here to congratulate the new owner and investors, he's just here as a friendly competitor, honest! "Mighty fine factory you built here, are you sure your safety standards are up to snuff? The product you make is quite voliatile after all..."
 
Last edited:
@Boney : I'm a bit unclear about the nature of power stones and Orbs of Sorcery. I believe you've said in the past that they don't actually generate Winds of Magic, they attract and store them for later use (correct me if I'm wrong here).

Is it theoretically possible, then, to use a set of eight Orbs of Sorcery to recharge a Rune? Not like the industrially-efficient AV method, but in a "when all eight orbs are sufficiently charged, bring them together into a designed apparatus (which might include enchantments to fulfill the purpose) to recharge a Rune" sort of way? I know it would be easy to suggest just using the AV for charging Runes instead of using AV to create Orbs to charge Runes, but I was thinking that Orbs of Sorcery seem to spend the vast majority of their time remaining unused.
 
SaltyWaffles said:
@Boney : I'm a bit unclear about the nature of power stones and Orbs of Sorcery. I believe you've said in the past that they don't actually generate Winds of Magic, they attract and store them for later use (correct me if I'm wrong here).

Is it theoretically possible, then, to use a set of eight Orbs of Sorcery to recharge a Rune? Not like the industrially-efficient AV method, but in a "when all eight orbs are sufficiently charged, bring them together into a designed apparatus (which might include enchantments to fulfill the purpose) to recharge a Rune" sort of way? I know it would be easy to suggest just using the AV for charging Runes instead of using AV to create Orbs to charge Runes, but I was thinking that Orbs of Sorcery seem to spend the vast majority of their time remaining unused.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Here you go, friend.
Boney said:
An enchantment that incorporates a power stone can have a more powerful effect that lasts longer. An enchantment that incorporates an orb of sorcery can have a hugely more powerful effect. Their main use is to 'power' Battle Altars, magical siege weapons that can fire off Battle Magic again and again and again while having secondary effects on the scale of an entire battlefield.

Thinking of the orbs as giant batteries is a useful shorthand but it's technically wrong. They aren't supplying magic to the enchantment they're incorporated into, they make the area around the enchantment more conducive to that particular Wind, meaning the enchantment has to fight less against the inertia of reality to achieve what it's trying to achieve. They don't get drained because there's nothing being taken out of them.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Basically, you know the theory of general relativity? How spacetime is a rubber sheet and gravity distorts it? It seems like power stones and orbs of sorcery are basically like that, except instead of bending spacetime in a way that causes things like light to follow the curvature of the sheet instead of straight lines, they bend reality in a way that makes it easier for the specific Wind to do things in that region. This lets you supercharge spells by getting an effect larger than you normally could, but it also lets you keep a powerful enchantment active longer or allows a really powerful enchantment (like on a Battle Altar) to work at all. But they don't emit the Wind or even attract it, they just radiate a Wind-friendly zone for their specific one.
 
Dark as Silver said:
Are we both saying that he was at the point of no return and then stopped before taking that last step?
In that case same difference, you're just assuming that point is at a different point than I am.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
I might be splitting hairs something fierce here, but I am saying that he was still in the process of seriously thinking of doing it and having it as a frequent ideation to the point of having proceeded to planning (but not planning with a date, more of a this is exactly how I would do it and one day soon I just might), while I am interpreting you as saying that he had already decided on doing it but didn't get far enough to start committing a crime before his circumstances changed.
 
picklepikkl said:
Here you go, friend.

Basically, you know the theory of general relativity? How spacetime is a rubber sheet and gravity distorts it? It seems like power stones and orbs of sorcery are basically like that, except instead of bending spacetime in a way that causes things like light to follow the curvature of the sheet instead of straight lines, they bend reality in a way that makes it easier for the specific Wind to do things in that region. This lets you supercharge spells by getting an effect larger than you normally could, but it also lets you keep a powerful enchantment active longer or allows a really powerful enchantment (like on a Battle Altar) to work at all. But they don't emit the Wind or even attract it, they just radiate a Wind-friendly zone for their specific one.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Thanks! Appreciate the info. That does clarify things a lot.

So it leads me to my second idea: we get to decide where the eight Orbs of Sorcery go. WEB-MAT is partially founded to study the potential of magic-runesmithing synergy.

So: team up with Thorek to design and create a deployable superweapon (not on the level of the Eye of Gazul, of course, but something with the kind of impact you'd expect Kragg the Grimm to have on a battlefield) incorporating at least one of said Orbs. Invite specialists from the relevant College to help create it. Let it be a key contribution to the ongoing campaign to retake Mount Silverspear, serve as a sledgehammer to open the door for linking the favor economies of the Karaz Ankor and Colleges of Magic, and prove that the Eye of Gazul is not a fluke in terms of the potential of wizard-runesmith cooperation.

Imagine a Battle Altar with an Orb of Sorcery, carried by a Gyrocarriage potentially, that uses runes to greatly enhance and enable powerful Battle Magic against an army of greenskins in a field battle.
 
Last edited:
Reader mode
You must login or register to reply here.
Voting is open
Remove ads
Back
Top