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Warhammer Fantasy: Divided Loyalties - an Advisor's Quest

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Turn 44 Social - 2491.5 - Part 1
  • Threadmarks
    • [*] Orb Reveal
    [*] Silk
    [*] Pan's Treehouse
    [*] Lord Seilph, the Mystic
    [*] Karak Vlag books

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    To a cartographer's eyes, Sylvania - 'Eastern Stirland' - has been fully brought to heel, with any wielder of Nagash's art bold enough to claim land either slain or driven underground. But to a more nuanced perspective the practitioners of necromancy still cling to power in every convenient crevice and niche within that cursed land, growing stronger and bolder from the innumerable wellsprings and sumps of Dhar to be found and promising similar problems for future generations. Even with the Emperor's decree still allowing for Battle Wizards to hunt freely, one can barely begin to estimate how many of them might still linger in dark corners.

    But to senses that were forged millennia ago by hunting Pleasure Cults founded by Morathi herself, the petty necromancers that still remain may as well be trying to hide a bonfire on a moonless night. You find Lords Seilph and Sarumar in a shallow cave that still glows dully with the ugly energies of whatever tainted beast dug it out, and has lingering in the air the inescapable scent of rot emanating from magical accoutrements that were once parts of living beings and were not entirely cleaned of the scraps of that former existence.

    Lord Seilph is a man constantly in motion, the movements of what once might have been frantic energy tamed and honed over millennia into something that almost seems natural and peaceful until you catch him in a rare moment of stillness and see the sadness that comes over his face, spurring him into action once more. Lord Sarumar, in contrast, has the stillness of a predator unwilling to waste energy until the proper time comes, and has such an air of restrained violence to her that it takes some concentration to see past it to the more than mere cunning behind her eyes. The necromancer that they are picking over the belongings of lies on the floor with a narrow hole burned straight through their head, and it was burned with such efficiency that it would take careful scrutiny to spot any traces of Hysh remaining, were it not instantly apparent from the way the Dhar keeps a wary distance from the corpse.

    "It is a fascinating artifice," Seilph says to you from above an ancient but incomplete skeleton atop a crude wooden workbench. "I can see the fingerprints of the Druchii in its bones, if you'll excuse the phrasing, but there are layers of genius alien to Elven thought atop that. It takes true mastery to create something that can be so debased by clumsy hands and still work at all, let alone work with such terrible efficiency."

    "The soul-workings seem to be largely untouched," Sarumar says, "but the workings of flesh and bone must have been made entirely from scratch, or adapted from the human traditions of the Vitae basin." She is not standing over the object of study as Seilph is, but her position leaning against a wall is one that gives her a clear view of it.

    "In properly trained hands, the potential power would be far in excess of what is possible through other means," Seilph says, his eyes on you. "An option in extremis, perhaps?"

    "All evidence suggests that no matter how noble one's original intentions, the corruptive influence of Dhar will create a villain." Even though you cannot reveal where you know this for sure from, it's safe to repeat it as it is also the official policy of the Colleges on the matter.

    "Eventually, to be sure, but that did not revive the enemies that Vanhel defeated, did it?" His eyes are searching, though you don't know for what. "Everyone thinks first of sacrificing life and health, and the poets do like to go on about sacrificing the skills and temperament of peacetime upon the altar of war. But there are other sacrifices one can make for victory."

    "Seilph," Sarumar says warningly, but it's not the strict tone of an overseer, but something gentler and wearier.

    "It could be that a sacrifice that so neatly and directly extracts a cost from sanity might actually be preferable to the murkier, more ephemeral abrasions of honour and morality, which seem more palatable to the unwise but in the end are just as doomed. It could be-"

    "Please don't," Sarumar tries to interrupt.

    "-that the humans have crafted their very own Widowmaker."

    "Gods, you said it. At least don't repeat it to Yngra."

    You try to weigh how much you can reveal as you look over the bones, idly noting where the past repairs are working at cross-purposes that could have been avoided with a better choice of materials. "While Vanhel was the first of his kind in the Empire, there were none of significance that followed in his footsteps. While the argument could be made that Vladimir von Carstein was not the worst of the claimants of Ghal Maraz during the Time of Three Emperors, he certainly was no martyr. And Konrad was a lunatic and Mannfred a strong contender for the worst being to ever exist." What you don't say is that the eventual and tragic failure of Vanhel might be why Vlad made no attempt to make others of his ilk, instead creating the entirely Vampiric 'aristocracy of the night' to rule Sylvania through.

    "We only ever had one, too," Seilph said, though without the intensity he had a moment ago. "I wonder how different our history would have been if we knew Aenarion's fate, whether he truly surrendered Heavenblight of his own will or whether he succumbed and it made its own way back to await a new victim. I sometimes think that if we had either answer, it would have been drawn again by now, and it is only the unknown that has kept it untouched as long as it has been." He looks at you with curiosity. "How well known is Vanhel's arc and eventual fate?"

    You sigh. "Copies of his diaries do circulate, but very often the events of his life are excised in favour of retaining just the spells and rituals, and even those are often interwoven with traps to sabotage treacherous apprentices or spite successors."

    He smiles. "Fascinating how the self-sabotaging nature of evil arises even when the Four are not involved, isn't it?"

    "Relieving, certainly. I have not enjoyed encountering exceptions to that rule."

    "Yes, that's part of what makes the seafarers to the north a problem," he says, effortlessly switching onto an entirely different topic as he begins to carefully unravel energies from around a shoulder joint. "At the larger scale they have all the ruthlessness typical of the worshippers of the Four, but on the level of individual villages and ships they're very strongly intersupporting, very able to work towards the collective good even at the cost of individual gain. It also might be what makes it possible to chip them away from the influence of the Four, as our cousins in the west seem to be doing through Marienburg. It challenged a great deal of our assumptions when the influx of Norscans were successfully integrated into Nordland instead of proving its downfall, but in the end it gets woven back into the overall tapestry of evil's self-sabotage."

    "It's a reminder too rarely heeded," Sarumar chimes in. "Evil whispers that the power is free and it's the jealous that wish you not to take it, and too often those in power simply emphasize how strongly the 'jealous' will crush you if you take, when they need to also be challenging the core premise. The Other Path will cost those who follow it everything, even when that cost isn't being extracted by the arrows of the Ghost Striders."

    "Or the teeth of the Wolf," Seilph says playfully. Sarumar just smiles.

    His curiosity apparently sated, Seilph snaps his fingers and rainbow fire consumes the skeleton, and then he turns his attention to the corpse of the Necromancer and that ignites too. The Dhar seems to unravel in the flames of what must be Qhaysh, torn into components too unstable to last for more than an instant before melting back into Dhar, but that instant is long enough to feed the flames that unravel even more Dhar. Though your Magesight can only catch a glimpse of the magics at work behind the blinding radiance of their effect on the world, it's a deeply moving sight, seeing your fundamental objection to Dhar - that of beauty turned to corruption - being reversed, if only for a few fleeting moments.

    ---

    Though your rank and reputation is sufficient to gain you a meeting with the heads of the Colleges, aligning the schedules of eight Magister Patriarchs and Matriarchs is no small task, nor is arranging for a meeting place secure enough to host them all. But luckily this is something Dragomas manages on a regular basis and there's no reason you can't ride on his thoroughly metaphorical coattails by simply extending one of these meetings a little longer and having you come in once their regular business is concluded.

    There are dramatic demonstrations you could have made, various forms of pomp and frippery you could have gilded this occasion with, but under the circumstances you believe that your achievement speaks for itself. So you simply place in front of each of them a wooden box marked with the Rune of their Wind - very well-made boxes with very well-carved Runes, admittedly, courtesy of Clan Ironspike. "Magisters Patriarch and Matriarch of the Colleges of Magic," you say as you distribute them, "it is my particular honour to present you today with something entirely known and familiar to you all."

    A Wizard is just not the sort of being that you can just leave a mysterious box in front of and have it remained unopened for more than a few seconds, and when you deliberately prod their curiosity like that, it only takes a few seconds for all of the boxes to creak open, and the air fills with a gratifyingly awed silence. For a Wizard there's no mistaking an Orb of Sorcery aligned with one's Wind when held in your hand, as you can feel the world around you become more conducive to your soul.

    "I'd hope this wouldn't be from some sort of unasked-for penetration testing," Elspeth says cautiously.

    "I'd know if one of mine had gone missing," Mira says.

    "A gift from the Eonir?" Reicthard posits, and all eyes turn to you for an explanation.

    "I have been studying the blood of Apparitions, that I have dubbed 'Aethyric Vitae', which has the mildly useful property of decaying into equal amounts of the eight Winds," you begin explaining to your now entirely focused audience. "In doing so I discovered that the Winds have differing properties in the moments immediately after their creation. With care and a specially-designed apparatus, I found that one of these differing properties is an ability to adhere to a strand of solidified Wind that makes up a Power Stone, expanding the stone and lengthening the strand. The effects begin to reverse themselves if cut off prematurely, but if allowed to reach the threshold that is the size of the Orbs of Sorcery we are familiar with, then the change becomes permanent and it stops being able to grow in this manner."

    "That answers several questions," Paranoth murmurs thoughtfully, turning the Orb over in his hands.

    "A less portable, but potentially no less fascinating a result, is to take advantage of how easy it is to apply compressive force to it despite it being very incompressible, and use this to very carefully slit open the realitymost layer of the Liminal Barrier. Once the Vitae has burrowed in to the Barrier, its disintegration into nascent Winds reveals another fascinating property: just as reality imposes the Winds onto the energies of the Aethyr, so, it seems, do the Winds impose reality onto the void between. In this manner, Aethyric Vitae can be used to create and expand liminal realms."

    There's a thoughtful silence as that is processed. "You're claiming to have solved two of the foundational mysteries of the Colleges of Magic," Feldmann observes, beginning to flip through the pages of the book that had been hiding underneath the Orb.

    "Is this idea laundering, Algard?" Dragomas asks.

    "Today is the first I'm hearing about any of it," Algard replies, turning from his Orb to coolly return Dragomas' scrutinizing look. After a moment, Dragomas nods in acceptance. But despite Algard's vouching for you, you're quite confident there's going to be an intimate encounter with a Daemon-checking orb in your immediate future.

    "There's a question to be asked about how sure we are that all of this is entirely non-Daemonic in nature," Reicthard says, "but may I take it from how I'm the first one to raise it that it's an answered one?"

    It seems to you that Feldmann and Paranoth were too busy watching each other for a reaction to react to the question themselves. After a moment's silence, it's Mira that speaks up. "For seemingly unrelated reasons, the matter has come under quiet but thorough investigation in the past, and it has survived that scrutiny unscathed." Algard nods in silent corroboration.

    With their concerns quieted, you've stripped away the outermost layers of responsible leader and reduced these eight very powerful individuals to the magic-obsessed academics that they truly are in the quiet parts of their souls. Each of them is now completely occupied with exploring their Winds under conditions that are normally always needed elsewhere, or flipping through your book on the subject of Aethyric Vitae, than they are with continuing the actual meeting, giving you a moment to think. The normal flow of this sort of thing would next go to... well, not framed as something quite as crass as a reward, but more along the lines of an academic grant. What material assistance could the Colleges give to continue the sort of investigations that gave rise to this advancement in understanding?



    But make no mistake, this is absolutely a reward. You could ask for something as practical or as selfish as you like, either something of moderate value from each of the Colleges or for something really significant from them collectively.



    [*] Battle Altar Mammoth

    [*] Plan Butterflies
    -[*] Jade: Summon and Command Butterflies Enchantment
    -[*] Amber: Make Butterflies Carnivorous Enchantment
    -[*] Grey: Makes Butterflies Invisible Enchantment
    -[*] Light: Make Butterflies Shoot Lasers Enchantment
    -[*] etc



    - I've been trying to work out what the orb reward is going to be for way too long, so I'm passing the problem to you. There will be a twenty-four hour moratorium. Voting will be in plan format when voting for one thing from each College. Have fun.
    - Favours can be banked for later, but I'd rather that only be for a portion of this. Saving it for later very often becomes never actually using it.
    - Value for individual College favours are around the level of an enchanted item or a new tower on your penthouse or a magical secret equivalent to the Apparition knowledge you got from the Golds. Value for one big reward from everyone can be reasonably bonkers.
    - As was announced by a temporary threadmark I will now be deleting, I have started a second quest: It Belongs to a Museum, where the protagonist will be managing a museum in the Warhammer setting to explore history and its study in that world and in ours. With character creation wrapping up, the museum in question has been decided to be under the authority of Luthor Harkon of the Vampire Coast, and its curator will be a Nehekharan Liche Priest who was Neferata's uncle in life, with far more love for teaching than he has ability to know when, who, and what he should be teaching.
    - Please be cautious around the word airship! A lot of people are using it to mean 'blimp' or 'dirigible' and a lot of other people are using it to mean 'oceanic warship that is now flying'. Please either use an unambiguous word or make sure that context makes it clear what you mean.
     
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  • Threadmarks
    • Clearly there's only one rational option which we can pick in a time like this.

    War.
    Yodeling.
    Mammoth.
    (It can maybe be an altar to the historically significant school of Dwarven War Yodeling, but first and foremost is making the mammoth Yodel.)
     
    Redshirt Army said:
    Huh. What do we want?

    I mean, if all else fails we can always fall back to BÖÖK, but for once I'm not particularly feeling it.

    A larger collegiate commitment to the Waystones?

    Improved funding/support for WEBMAT?
    Click to expand...
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    I don't even know. I wouldn't mind a commitment to Waystones but I don't even know what it would LOOK like.

    "Hey I made Waystones, now you all go build them ABSOLUTELY EVERYFUCKINGWHERE."

    That's cool in an abstract way but doesn't really grab attention.

    What do we want?
     
    [Χ] Plan Great Idea
    -[Χ] [All] Official permission and carte blanche to study any and all aspects of Dhar.

    Seilph has the right of it. Mathilde has a Widowmaker in her mind and she has yet to even imagine drawing on it.

    A darn shame is what it is.
     
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    [ ] Building the best possible flying tower of destruction

    This way we won't have to keep going between our house in K8P and the Elves, our new house will move us on its own!
     
    Okay, so, this is the kinda boon I think should follow Mathilde into the next chapter of her life. So, I feel it's not imprudent to ask, what should that chapter look like?

    Do we want to do diplomacy between nations? Religious pursuits with Best Dad Friend Ranald? Do we want to hardcore study some BS, and ask for a facility to study Aetheryic Vitae and other stuff? Are we gonna mount an expedition? Establish a dedicated intercollegiate Watchdog organization, beyond what the Greys already do?

    Of note: There's a lot of elf shenanigans that have been backlogging, from the very clear interest of the Dark Elf Witches to the standing invitations to Ulthuan. If there was anywhere we might look to pursue a deeper understanding of Ulgu, to the point of deliberately infesting Mathilde's soul with the stuff in the same vein as elemental dragons, it'd be there.

    So, what do we (Mathilde) want? Immortality? Ultimate power? A really nice plate of cheese pastries?

    Whatever it is, now's probably the best time for a first step towards making it happen.
     
    Moratorium, everyone.

    Boney said:
    - Value for individual College favours are around the level of an enchanted item or a new tower on your penthouse or a magical secret equivalent to the Apparition knowledge you got from the Golds.
    Click to expand...
    Click to shrink...
    For reference;

    Example prices:
    GIANT ROBOT
    Gold Magisters or Battle Wizards or Wizard Lord assistance for a specific project or expedition
    Outfitting of an entire College-scale library
    Complete Gold Order cooperation for the Waystone investigations
    Gold Order creates and supplies a 'seviroscope' - a way to provide Windsight without interacting with the brain
    Gold Order outfits a branch college (created through separate Great Deed expenditure)
    Insights on creating independent, temporary, and combat-capable constructs in the vein of Gehenna's Golden Hounds
    Gold Order influence, politicking, and bribery to assist with a vote to legitimize the worship of Ranald
    Outfit the K8P gunnery school with the best equipment, texts and tools available
    Buy me some spy networks
    A flying warship, suited for exploration, warfare, and research
    Click to expand...
    Click to shrink...

    I'm personally leaning towards aiding the waystone project, but I'm not sure what that would look like.
     
    Omegahugger said:
    [Χ] Plan Great Idea
    -[Χ] [All] Official permission and carte blanche to study any and all aspects of Dhar.

    Sarumar has the right of it. Mathilde has a Widowmaker in her mind and she has yet to even imagine drawing on it.

    A darn shame is what it is.
    Click to expand...
    Click to shrink...
    Throughout the long years of this quest, you, my friend gave proven so very reliable.

    Also I want a shadow dragon.

    Plan Shadowdragon.
     
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    Years of work—by Mathilde, by Boney, by the thread—completed at last, coming to a close not with a grand fanfare, but with quietly smug satisfaction of a job well done.

    Now all that remains is the headpats.
    [jk] Headpats from the assembled Magister Matriarchs and Patriarchs
     
    Looking over the conversation with Seilph, I can't help but wonder if he was testing Mathilde during that.

    Given the sheer depth of windsight the scene opens with, and old stories of Volans reading minds, I have to wonder if he was trying to get a read on just how much Mathilde knew about necromancy throughout the thing.

    It certainly reads like a series of probing questions, until Mathilde satisfies his curiosity.

    EDIT: Also, hunh, that feels very, very like a version of the Second Secret at the end. Dhar forcibly unraveled in a cascading failure, just using a spreading fire of Qhaysh to do it, instead of the instability of Dhar alone.
     
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