Remove ads

Warhammer Fantasy: Divided Loyalties - an Advisor's Quest

Voted best in category in the Users' Choice awards.
Voting is open
Reader mode
picklepikkl said:
Of the "cash this in for one big favor" options, I think I like the Armor of von Tarnus the best, since it saves us the effort of figuring out how to improve on our robes and stacks with our Aethyric Armour. Plus, the mental image of us rolling up to Nagarythe in armor and a greatsword, being perceived as a pure warrior, and then casually tossing out high-level Ulgu is a great one.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Pedantic (if it was the silver seal, I would say pendantic): Mathilde is kind of mid at Ulgu. All her spells are low battle magic at most, she just casts them really well so that's impressive.
picklepikkl said:
Feldmann must be nerdraging hard, I think. He has no reason to believe we were interested in Apparitions before he told us about them -- we didn't know the Hounds were Apparitions, after all. But then the Golds sold the secret to us, and it looks an awful lot from his perspective like we then started investigating it, got curious about the properties of Apparition blood, and casually solved two major secrets of the Colleges using an insight the Golds already had. Incredible levels of malding.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
I always felt we overpayed for the Apparitions (though the magical knowledge has been quite useful). Feldmann being mad about is very satisfying.
Though finding out that no, it was actually an attempt to do something else entirely, which failed but then she did it anyway, twice, might actually be worse. It could only be worse if this was the negaverse where Mathilde bound Drycha and didn't get her soul eaten for it.

But yeah, it's similar to the Waystone deal with the magic house. They got the better of Mathilde, but are kind of regretting it when they got the super complicated design to work with.
 
Boney said:
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.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
It's understandable this is getting secondary attention, but I think it's a reasonable conclusion here that Seilph knows the Second Secret of Dhar. A spell like this is uncannily similar to the use of the Second Secret, only instead of using Dhar to do so it uses Qhaysh. If this scene is Seilph testing Mathilde as people have discussed, then this is the ultimate test at the end of it: Seilph demonstrating as knowledge of the deepest secrets of Dhar, in a way that only someone else who knows those same secrets could recognize.

The spell itself is quite interesting. A Shaysh spell that can unravel Dhar constructs, without needing the caster to contaminate themselves. Only, elves live a long time, so any High Magic user taught this spell would easily be able to figure out the First and Second Secrets from it, meaning the knowledge of how to cast the spell must be kept as closely as the Secrets themselves.

All this is to say, if we ever have necromancer problems, we should absolutely seek to gain Seilph's assistance.
French Cowboy said:
The real question is if we can somehow use this boon to fuck over marienburg.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
[:V] Assistance in stealing the Great Library of Verena.
Boney said:
Probably not. I don't see something as large as an airship being one 'item' that a single Rune could encompass, I think artillery is about the size limit. Though their could be 'airship runes' in the sense of runes designed to be applied to specific parts of an airship.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Objection! The Eye of Gazul utilizes a steel pole that runs from the bottom of a mountain to the top. Even if there are no airship runes for various practical reasons, a rune that encompasses something as large as an entire mountain (or at least, as tall as a mountain) has been done at least once before.
 
Last edited:
agumentic said:
Though if it's an empty liminal realm instead of a world filled with nasties, it might be possible to build something like a railroad connecting the two points.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
So far we only know how to make spherical liminal realms. We'd need to make something the size of a Continent to make that work. And even if we figure out liminal "tunnels" it would take a ridiculous amount of magic for something that in 99% of cases is served almost as well by a normal tunnel with some reinforcement.
 
Derpmind said:
Objection! The Eye of Gazul utilizes a steel pole that runs from the bottom of a mountain to the top. Even if there are no airship runes for various practical reasons, a rune that encompasses something as large as an entire mountain (or at least, as tall as a mountain) has been done at least once before.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
There are also Karak-scale runes of Valaya, as far as I understand DL canon.
 
Derpmind said:
The spell itself is quite interesting. A Shaysh spell that can unravel Dhar constructs, without needing the caster to contaminate themselves. Only, elves live a long time, so any High Magic user taught this spell would easily be able to figure out the First and Second Secrets from it, meaning the knowledge of how to cast the spell must be kept as closely as the Secrets themselves.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
I suspect the uses of Dhar are far more common knowledge amongst the Elves than they are humans, and they see far less reason to restrict them.
 
Godwinson said:
@primemountain
Boney has been pretty clear that these aren't "Change the nature of your institution" level favors.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Huh. Must have missed that definition including the whole "religious stance for a specific Cult" angle, but now that you've brought it up, I can see how it might be seen that way.

Also...
NavySeel said:
Guys clearly this is what we need, we've been named a Loremaster by Dwarves, some Elves have called us a Loremaster, clearly we need to make the college create the purely ceremonial title of Loremaster for us specifically. :V
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
That's... not actually a totally crack idea. Between the Waystones, the Orbs, how many papers Mat's written, and her Library, the Ducklings, and the WebMat... and the Windherding... it would not be totally outrageous for Mat to ask the Colleges to define a "Loremaster" title, like the Elves and Dwarves already do. And then see if she is eligeble for it.

For mystery Cults, sharing is against their nature... but having some kind of title for "sharing with this person is safe" to mark out those they can share hidden problems with... might be useful.
 
So everyone is understandably focused on the orb reward, but I have to admit I'm not sure I understood half of that conversation with Lord Seilph. Part of it is that they were throwing arund a lot of unfamiliar names and concepts. Let me go through what I didn't get.

I can see the fingerprints of the Druchii in its bones, if you'll excuse the phrasing
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

Why is the influence of the Druchii in a necromancer's work in Sylvania. Does necromancy have some kind of ancestry from the dark elves?

"Eventually, to be sure, but that did not revive the enemies that Vanhel defeated, did it?"
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

Vanhel is the guy whose diary we read, right? Why do elven Grey Lords know about him? I mean, I guess he's famous enough they would have heard about him, but they talk like he's a guy whose career they followed with interest or something. They were alive when Vanhel was alive, right?

"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."
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

I don't know what point he was making here, I don't know what a Widowmaker is, and I don't know who Yngra is.

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."
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

I remember that Vladimir was the guy who taught Vanhel necromancy, and I think he tried to become emperor. Who were Konrad and Mannfred again? All I can recall of Mannfred is that he was the Emperor known as the Skavenslayer, and that's probably a different Mannfred right?

"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.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

Who is Aenarion, and what is Heavenblight, and in general what is Seilph talking about here? Does Mathilde know who this person is?

Then I think I basically understood the Norscan discussion.

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.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

I thought dhar was considered legit for elven archmages to use, even if they don't use a lot of it. Is it actually considered not legit for them to use, and their own people (I assume the Ghost Striders) will punish them for it? Who are the Ghost Striders?

So yeah, that conversation largely flew over my head.
 
Last edited:
Derpmind said:
It's understandable this is getting secondary attention, but I think it's a reasonable conclusion here that Seilph knows the Second Secret of Dhar. A spell like this is uncannily similar to the use of the Second Secret, only instead of using Dhar to do so it uses Qhaysh. If this scene is Seilph testing Mathilde as people have discussed, then this is the ultimate test at the end of it: Seilph demonstrating as knowledge of the deepest secrets of Dhar, in a way that only someone else who knows those same secrets could recognize.

The spell itself is quite interesting. A Shaysh spell that can unravel Dhar constructs, without needing the caster to contaminate themselves. Only, elves live a long time, so any High Magic user taught this spell would easily be able to figure out the First and Second Secrets from it, meaning the knowledge of how to cast the spell must be kept as closely as the Secrets themselves.

All this is to say, if we ever have necromancer problems, we should absolutely seek to gain Seilph's assistance.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
I am very much reminded of old discussion back when of whether it would be possible to "spoke the wheel" of Dhar to deliberately activate the Second Secret.

The flames seemed like an High Magic answer to the problem answer that wasn't "Throw a rock into the steering wheel of a truck just so." Instead being "Create a magical fire that uses the very mixture of the winds in order to burn them away and tear apart any coherent spell in the process"

The alternative is that this is just a Qhaysh thing. Whatever it was apparently simple enough to be cast out of hand, so it might be a common failure mode or countermagic. Deliberately flaring a spell up into unstable Qhaysh so that it loses all cohesion.
 
NavySeel said:
Guys clearly this is what we need, we've been named a Loremaster by Dwarves, some Elves have called us a Loremaster, clearly we need to make the college create the purely ceremonial title of Loremaster for us specifically. :V
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Technically speaking, they already have a Loremaster title.

That's the title given to a magister that has learned every spell of their Wind.
 
Briefvoice said:
I don't know what a Widowmaker is
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Briefvoice said:
Who were Konrad and Mannfred again?
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Briefvoice said:
Who is Aenarion, and what is Heavenblight,
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Boney is not responsible for linking wiki articles on well known figures and artifacts of the setting every time they come up, you know? If you need to know, Google is your friend. (I say this as someone who had known nothing about WHF before encountering this quest).
 
BurnNote said:
Runs into some problems with the hungry peasant doctrine, but maybe for Magister and up.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Silk is likely to be cheap enough that a magister (who are typically reasonably well off) looking for protection would go for We silk because it's the most protective material that doesn't interfere with magic.
If we want to take advantage of the We Silk for the colleges, we need to do it on the other side of the equation, at K8P. Next time we earn a major favor from Belegar, we can ask him to subsidize Collegiate purchases of Silk.

Or, we can do it via the EIC, given that now, members of the Grey college effectively own a majority. In return for services (to be decided) provided by the colleges to the EIC, the EIC subsidizes purchases of silk for members of the colleges in good standing.
 
Somic said:
Boney is not responsible for linking wiki articles on well known figures and artifacts of the setting every time they come up, you know? If you need to know, Google is your friend. (I say this as someone who had known nothing about WHF before encountering this quest).
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
I don't think Briefvoice was demanding that Boney do anything? Just asking for help from the thread in sorting through the mountains of canon. A lot of people have made posts of those kinds. I have myself. And the thread is generally happy to help; if I weren't in a meeting I would have already infodumped at them, because in my culture "please explain X to me" is a declaration of friendship.
 
Briefvoice said:
I don't know what point he was making here, I don't know what a Widowmaker is, and I don't know who Yngra is.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
I imagine Yngra is another Grey Lord.

Widowmaker, also known as the Sword of Khaine, is a tremendously powerful weapon that has been used by exactly one person, the first Phoenix King Aenarion, driven to despair after the death of his wife, the Everqueen Astarielle. He drew Widowmaker, which granted him substantial power and even more substantial rage and madness. He founded Nagarythe, married Morathi, fathered Malekith, died in battle, and caused his entire bloodline to be cursed. Teclis & Tyrion descend from him.

He both saved and doomed Ulthuan.
 
Last edited:
I really dislike spending this on Collegiate support for campaigns. We can get that ordinarily. Sure, getting uber support will speed it along, but that's boring. I don't really want the Armor of Von Tarnus. We don't really need to be more killy.

The ones I dislike the least are the airship and tower options, but I'm still not sure what we could really do with them.

French Cowboy said:
Forest of Gloom not Forest of Shadows - where we found that ancient holy place of Ranald overrun by goblins.

They really need to stop naming forests as forest of "darkness adjacent thing" :V

I don't think the colleges really would be tapping into the waystone network. The person in the best position to do that, and who has the knowledge to do so right now is us. I don't think most of the other colleges have the knowledge or capability to do so right now. The jades and the lights are the only ones who would properly know how.

We'd be asking them for the wizard hours needed to make a large infrastructure project happen, rather than the expertise.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
My mistake then. I still dislike it. Like this is something we can get on our own and I don't think the dwarves would be that interested at this point. They don't need to scour the entire woods for the nexus anymore. We know who has it and where the army needs to go to seize it.

Mathilde doesn't have that knowledge. She knows how to build waystones, but that's not tapping into it for projects like the Eonir or Dwarves do. That will be something the Colleges figure out over time. They're going to want to do it.

Briefvoice said:
So everyone is understandably focused on the orb reward, but I have to admit I'm not sure I understood half of that conversation with Lord Seilph. Part of it is that they were throwing arund a lot of unfamiliar names and concepts. Let me go through what I didn't get.



Why is the influence of the Druchii in a necromancer's work in Sylvania. Does necromancy have some kind of ancestry from the dark elves?



Vanhel is the guy whose diary we read, right? Why do elven Grey Lords know about him? I mean, I guess he's famous enough they would have heard about him, but they talk like he's a guy whose career they followed with interest or something. They were alive when Vanhel was alive, right?



I don't know what point he was making here, I don't know what a Widowmaker is, and I don't know who Yngra is.



I remember that Vladimir was the guy who taught Vanhel necromancy, and I think he tried to become emperor. Who were Konrad and Mannfred again? All I can recall of Mannfred is that he was the Emperor known as the Skavenslayer, and that's probably a different Mannfred right?



Who is Aenarion, and what is Heavenblight, and in general what is Seilph talking about here? Does Mathilde know who this person is?

Then I think I basically understood the Norscan discussion.



I thought dhar was considered legit for elven archmages to use, even if they don't use a lot of it. Is it actually considered not legit for them to use, and their own people (I assume the Ghost Striders) will punish them for it? Who are the Ghost Striders?

So yeah, that conversation largely flew over my head.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Nagash developed Necromancy by interrogating three Druchii sorceresses.

All of the Grey Lords were alive during the War of Vengeance. Yngra is one of the Grey Lords, he has a focus for making stuff that can used for military purposes.

Konrad and Mannfred were Vlad von Carstein's vampiric successors.

Aenarion was the first Phoenix King. Heavenblight is another name for the Sword of Khaine. Aenarion lost his wife and children to N'kari's invasion and drew the Sword of Khaine, which is very cursed. Everyone in the world, from the Chaos Gods to Caledor were telling him that it would fuck him up and it wasn't worth it. He did it and cursed his bloodline. That's why Tyrion and Teclis (and Malekith!) are so... like that.

Archmages are not allowed to delve themselves fully into the worship of the Chaos Gods and subsume themselves in dhar, because that's a recipe for evil.
 
Last edited:
Copperscale said:
Silk is likely to be cheap enough that a magister (who are typically reasonably well off) looking for protection would go for We silk because it's the most protective material that doesn't interfere with magic.
If we want to take advantage of the We Silk for the colleges, we need to do it on the other side of the equation, at K8P. Next time we earn a major favor from Belegar, we can ask him to subsidize Collegiate purchases of Silk.

Or, we can do it via the EIC, given that now, members of the Grey college effectively own a majority. In return for services (to be decided) provided by the colleges to the EIC, the EIC subsidizes purchases of silk for members of the colleges in good standing.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
The hungry peasant doctrine is "don't show off extremely valuable stuff unless you can fend off those who'll try to take it".

Silk is valuable enough that it can finance armies. It can definitely finace the robbery of a journeyman. Silk won't necessarily increase safety the same way armor made of Ithilmar won't.
 
primemountain said:
@Boney How about quiet approval/support/understanding from the Colleges for the spread of Ranald among their members? Or at least, an end to any ongoing suppression of His faith? Something like:

[]"Every time we reach for magic, when we go to battle or try to create a new spell, we are gambling. With our lives, souls, and the fates of those around us. The Elves say that not claiming ground for a God of a Pantheon is ceding that same space to malevolent forces. This, everything in that book? Its beginning comes and is only possible from a series of events I cannot repeat and would not like to try. I am mostly sure was a lucky accident." you tell them, intertwining your fingers before you to create a bunch of innocuous Xs.
-[]"Thus, my request: Remember us. For all that most of my fellows prefer to work unseen, our work mostly unappreciated by its very hidden nature, unknown... it is not because we want to avoid positive attention. It's only that we've long since grown used to avoiding negative ones. So rarely does one us get to freely stand in the open, in sight. By chance or fortune, from my first posting, I was granted the onus and priviledge of serving in the open. So I have served, so I will serve. Till fell circumstance, or Ulgu itself makes you forget me. So if we cannot be remembered as individuals, remember us as a whole: the Gamblers, the Hidden Blades, Protectors and Secret Keepers. We lived, we died, clad in grey and other colors. Even if you never knew all our works, we changed your lives. Hopefully, for the better."

It's ambigous enough that for someone unfamiliar with Ranald, Mat could just be talking about the Grey Order, hinting at all the things their Magisters Vigilant have done quietly in the background. And throwing some of the credit for her works on Ranald should help them wrap their brains about the bricks she is dropping on them.

"Oh, she's not just a crazy impossible in-need of demon checking, unnaturally lucky Lady Magister. She's a Divinely Inspired Lucky Lady Magister."

I don't know how to best frame it. An introduction between Ranald and the Colledges? "Hey, this is my annoying friend. But as annoying as he is, he's a good friend, and I think he'd be a good friend for you too, if you were good friends to him too. Look at this cool thing I found/have/figured out, with what I suppect is his help. Because he is annoying that way, and won't admit helping. Want to be friends?" is the playground, gradeschool level of message I'd like to convey, as an offer/bragging, but I'm not sure how to put that into "high level intercolledge/inter-Empire institutions Collegiate/Informal Cult" speak.

Which, presumably, Mathilde actually speaks.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

You seem to be approaching this under the assumption that the Colleges are naive (in the unaffected and inexperience sense) about religion, that they don't worship anyone just because it's never occurred to them that it might be an option to, and they just need someone to knock on their door and ask them if they've heard the good word about our lord and savior Ranald to start flipping some souls. But all the Colleges already have opinions about religion and working relationships with various Cults. They would already have a standing and informed policy about how they feel about Ranald worship. They're officially secular for extremely good reasons and the beliefs they might actually hold aren't going to cede any souls just because Mathilde asks nicely.

Derpmind said:
Objection! The Eye of Gazul utilizes a steel pole that runs from the bottom of a mountain to the top. Even if there are no airship runes for various practical reasons, a rune that encompasses something as large as an entire mountain (or at least, as tall as a mountain) has been done at least once before.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
vsh said:
There are also Karak-scale runes of Valaya, as far as I understand DL canon.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

As a general rule for any form of communication, the things that are said should be considered in the context that they are said in. In this case, the context is a reply to a question about the setting in general. The question was about whether a general thing could generally exist in the setting, rather than whether a specific thing exists in the specific context of being available to be pursued in the quest, so I gave an answer about the setting as someone familiar with it: probably not, and then shared the general vibe that gave rise to that answer: airship very big, closest thing that does something similar (Engineering Runes) is on something much smaller (siege weapons). It was not intended as a hard and universally applicable statement about the metaphysical limits of Runecraft in the DL universe and it will not stand up to interrogation if you treat it as such.
 
Mopman43 said:
Technically speaking, they already have a Loremaster title.

That's the title given to a magister that has learned every spell of their Wind.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Where's that from? Like, I know there's the Loremaster special rule in the TT which indicates a Wizard knows all the Battlemagic, but I don't recall it being a thing in the RPG. Did Boney say something?
 
Reader mode
You must login or register to reply here.
Voting is open
Remove ads
Back
Top