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Warhammer Fantasy: Divided Loyalties - an Advisor's Quest

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Rafin said:
All that is because the Vow of Poverty isn't really a vow at all. It's a) a PR tool to make people who know what Grey Wizards can do not shit themselves, b) an educational and corralling tool to limit excesses, put fear into Journeymen, and simultaneously pressure some into useful and Ulgu-conductive double-think while also keeping control of those who can't do that, and c) a readymade excuse to audit any member at any time and deal with anyone problematic. Ask any Karaz Ankor Dwarf whether they think Mathilde might have sworn the Vow of Poverty and they'll laugh you out of the room. Give them the wording and insist that the Grey Order has all its members swear this and they'll call you a liar and possibly declare a Grudge on you. Actually prove this to them and they'll lower their respect for Mathilde and consequently humanity as a whole by a noticeable amount.

Or maybe not quite. I don't remember the actual exact wording of the Vow (or even whether we ever got that). But I do remember that it's wording is at least supposed to very much not seem to outsiders as if it is leaving loopholes large enough to drive a mountain penthouse through.
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Honestly if explained sufficiently they'd probably declare a grudge against the person who told them. Because that's some deep guild secrets for how the Grey Order functions and if I recall similar though not quite like this kinds of riddles are exactly how Rune Smiths teach their craft to their apprentices.
 
AsuraAtlas said:
The fact that we were wildly successful at our job isn't absolution.
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It kind of is though?

Ranald actively approves, the Grey College has endorsed everything Stirland related, the Dawi will believe Mathilde over any other manling and so on.

Rafin said:
But I do remember that it's wording is at least supposed to very much not seem to outsiders as if it is leaving loopholes large enough to drive a mountain penthouse through.
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It is. The Penthouse has to be secure to house the K8P superweapon, has to be well equipped enough to serve all of Mathilde's wizardly needs and has to be luxuriously appointed enough for a Loremaster of a major Dawi hold.

Dawi will certainly respect the idea of overkill quality - that's how their Runesmiths and engineers work.

Mathilde needing to have a small mountain of gold to drop on a small mountain of books or on some crazy artefacts is entirely in line with her vow. That's a part of her job.
 
K von Carstein said:
It would be a bit disappointing to go to the trouble to create a whole new spell and have a 50% chance the weapon will just sit uselessly. We would be the laughingstock of the whole College.
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Eh, depends how destructive it is. Ulgu is pretty short on mass destruction options that aren't battle magic, so a 50/50 chance to destroy a building would probably still get some use.
 
Boney said:
"The Waystone network in Sylvania is in better shape than you might think," Markgraf Nyklaus says, unrolling half a dozen maps showing different corners of Sylvania and weighing down the corners with an assortment of weaponry he had concealed on his person. "The Von Carsteins infamously saw humans as cattle, but morality aside, that meant they had a vested interest in keeping them alive. So they kept the network in working order near population centers, and used something called 'balefire' to create wellsprings of Dhar where and when required instead of just having a constant sky-high level of corruption. There seems to have been something of a self-balancing mechanism to it - the less forward-thinking Vampires would be less prone to caring about long-term wellbeing of the human population, but they'd also be the ones that would want all of the Necromancers under them focused on conquest and expansion, so they didn't want to dedicate Necromancers to having undead do the mining and smelting and treefelling and blacksmithing that would arm and armour their armies."

You suppose that makes sense. Despite Sylvania's reputation, the continued existence of a human population within it that is sane enough to function puts a limit on how bad the taint could be. "It seems to already be concentrated along the rivers," you observe.
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This twigged my memory a little, so I went back to check. Sure enough.

Boney said:
Sadly, deploying them within Sylvania is not going to be a possibility. They need to be within a few miles of a functioning Waystone to work, and between its own history and the destruction of Mordheim, the Waystone Network has very little presence within Sylvania.
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Was this just a small author's mistake, or was Mathilde making incorrect assumptions early on without checking, or a simple retcon?
 
Boney said:
Mathilde transitions so smoothly from As We All Know to Actually That's A Common Misconception that one might not actually see her move at all.
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I simultaneously appreciate and slightly hate that aspect of her, that she always knew everything unless she blatantly didn't. I appreciate it in the sense that it makes her more complicated and I hate it in the sense she can't admit her own ignorance or mistaken beliefs even to herself, something I value in the sense of intellectual honesty and integrity. Congratulations in making a character who I love despite having character flaws I personally hate to see in anybody, good job.
 
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NexusEye said:
I simultaneously appreciate and slightly hate that aspect of her, that she always knew everything unless she blatantly didn't. I appreciate it in the sense that it makes her more complicated and I hate it in the sense she can't admit her own ignorance or mistaken beliefs even to herself, something I value in the sense of intellectual honesty and integrity. Congratulations in making a character who I love despite having character flaws I personally hate to see in anybody, good job.
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I was under the impression that it was just an outward facing mask? Like, I could swear I remember Mathilde acknowledging this habit of hers in her internal narration at some point. It's just that it's collegiate standard MO to always look like you understand what's going on.

I mean, that was the entire basis for the Waystone Project back when she knew all of nothing about them.
 
Shador said:
I was under the impression that it was just an outward facing mask? Like, I could swear I remember Mathilde acknowledging this habit of hers in her internal narration at some point. It's just that it's collegiate standard MO to always look like you understand what's going on.

I mean, that was the entire basis for the Waystone Project back when she knew all of nothing about them.
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Really? I would love for that to be true because it would remove some of my main cognitive/ideological dissonances with who Mathilde is Vs who I wish she was but my impression from both the updates and the WoBs throughout the thread was that she continuously updated her internal worldview so she was always in the right, useful when interacting with others to show you were never wrong but flawed in the sense she could never properly acknowledge when she wasn't in the right except when the facts were so against her there was no narrative in which she could be in the right. It always seemed to me to be a fundamental character flaw that while disadvantageous in a perfect world in the real world was not maladaptive, it convinced others she always knew a fact but only because the best way to tell a lie in such a way that others believe you're honest is to believe in it yourself, the only way they could tell it was wrong was if they already knew the facts you were telling them were wrong and even then they wouldn't believe you were lying to them, merely mistaken.
 
NexusEye said:
Really? I would love for that to be true because it would remove some of my main cognitive/ideological dissonances with who Mathilde is Vs who I wish she was but my impression from both the updates and the WoBs throughout the thread was that she continuously updated her internal worldview so she was always in the right, useful when interacting with others to show you were never wrong but flawed in the sense she could never properly acknowledge when she wasn't in the right except when the facts were so against her there was no narrative in which she could be in the right. It always seemed to me to be a fundamental character flaw that while disadvantageous in a perfect world in the real world was not maladaptive, it convinced others she always knew a fact but only because the best way to tell a lie in such a way that others believe you're honest is to believe in it yourself, the only way they could tell it was wrong was if they already knew the facts you were telling them were wrong and even then they wouldn't believe you were lying to them, merely mistaken.
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That's just Grey College doublethink training working as intended though? It's been established before that Grey Magister's are trained to simultaneously deceive themselves and both remain aware of it and be able to snap out of it when needed.
Here we have it come up in Mathilde's internal narrative:
Boney said:
Doublethink, then. All you have to do is look at something and hold foremost in your mind a sense of curiosity and a resolution to not investigate something further and, in theory, your shadow should turn its attention to that thing, which will look near enough to your shadow doing what a shadow normally does. Simple enough in theory for someone versed in Grey Order mindfulness techniques.
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And here we have it come up in a WoG, to show that it's not just Mathilde gaslighting herself.
Boney said:
Not reading her mind, it was reading the future, and Mathilde was using Grey College doublethink techniques to create genuine intent to do bad things while also not actually intending to go through with it, which tripped the protections because for a moment the future where Mathilde did bad things sort-of existed.
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So, while I am all for having interestingly flawed characters, in this particular case it seems more a case of the spy-trained individual using part of the "Mindgames" toolbox she was trained in as was intended.
 
Baraz is difficult. It means 'bond or promise', which is easy enough, and 'bar/barak' having their own entirely separate meanings is annoying but can be ignored, but what's really difficult is figuring out what counts as a concept and what counts as a physical thing.

Unbaraki means 'oathbreaker' and is a combination of baraz and unbak, 'break permanently'. Here the oath is broken, so the physical baraz is demoted to a merely conceptual barak. That's easy enough.

How do you write oathsworn, in the sense of "I am oathsworn"? Barak, since the word is describing an oathy state rather than an oath, baraz since you're saying "an oath binds me"? Barazbar/barakbar for a more direct translation?

I think 'swear an oath' is easier. Barakit would be 'bind' as in "bind with rope", so that leaves barazit to be 'swear an oath'. EDIT: Wait no, barit would be what you'd use for "bind with rope".

Is a debtor a baraki or a barazi? I guess you could also ask if a reckoner is a dammaki or a dammazi.


WFRP 4e: A Guide to Ubersreik page 23 describes an underground Dwarf cemetery. Here we get some new lore on Gazul:
In the centre of the cavern stands a twenty-foot statue of Gazul, great guardian of the dead, and the Dwarf Ancestor God who established ancestor veneration after the loss of his mother.
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As far as I'm aware, Gazul having a mum, or him setting up ancestor veneration after she died, doesn't appear anywhere else.

Gotrek and Felix: Slayer
Tattoos crisscrossed his body, but in contrast to the intricate designs inked onto Gotrek's skin these were atavistic, branching blue lines that traced an endless spiral around his muscular frame.

The big Slayer set an enormous rune-axe against his shoulder and studied Felix with eyes of an eternal, ever-wrathful blue. Felix could have lost himself in that gaze.

The gaze of a god.
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Grimnir had swirly tattoos.
 
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Andres said:
Baraz is difficult. It means 'bond or promise', which is easy enough, and 'bar/barak' having their own entirely separate meanings is annoying but can be ignored, but what's really difficult is figuring out what counts as a concept and what counts as a physical thing.

Unbaraki means 'oathbreaker' and is a combination of baraz and unbak, 'break permanently'. Here the oath is broken, so the physical baraz is demoted to a merely conceptual barak. That's easy enough.

How do you write oathsworn, in the sense of "I am oathsworn"? Barak, since the word is describing an oathy state rather than an oath, baraz since you're saying "an oath binds me"? Barazbar/barakbar for a more direct translation?

I think 'swear an oath' is easier. Barakit would be 'bind' as in "bind with rope", so that leaves barazit to be 'swear an oath'.

Is a debtor a baraki or a barazi? I guess you could also ask if a reckoner is a dammaki or a dammazi.
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I think the key point here is identity. -aki is just what you're doing, whereas -azi is who you are. Skaki is someone who is stealing something, skazi is someone who is a thief. Baraki is if you have sworn an oath; barazi is if the oath you have sworn is your identity. A debtor described as 'barazi' would be one that owes so much that it dictates their life.
 
NexusEye said:
I simultaneously appreciate and slightly hate that aspect of her, that she always knew everything unless she blatantly didn't. I appreciate it in the sense that it makes her more complicated and I hate it in the sense she can't admit her own ignorance or mistaken beliefs even to herself, something I value in the sense of intellectual honesty and integrity. Congratulations in making a character who I love despite having character flaws I personally hate to see in anybody, good job.
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As is ultimately the case with most first person (or in this case second person) stories, what we get to read isn't actually her own stream of consciousness. My interpretation is that it is akin to two Mathildes, one living through it in the world proper and one floating along in real time and narrating everything for a hypothetical audience. So she isn't necessarily deluded or lying to herself. She's just representing her ideal self as she would to a group of people with first row seats, who she simultaneously doesn't hold secrets from, but nonetheless are still separate people.
 
Andres said:
As far as I'm aware, Gazul having a mum, or him setting up ancestor veneration after she died, doesn't appear anywhere else.
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One of the lore posts you made recently said Gazul was the last one to leave of the Ancestor Gods because he was setting up the veneration right? So that could be referring to His adopted mother Valaya. It does say loss not death.
 
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