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Warhammer Fantasy: Divided Loyalties - an Advisor's Quest

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picklepikkl said:
The funny thing is that he's more of a Gold Wizard now than he was before. The nickname for the Golds is the Alchemists, and it is a cornerstone of alchemy that the truest transformation is the one enacted upon the self: the Magnum Opus is a quest for enlightenment first and foremost. Johan is pursuing a transhuman ideal; Max is pursuing an ideal which is the pinnacle of human skill. These are both forms of self-perfection.

(I also think about Max a lot. One day I'll finish the fic I have about him.)
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So, that's a bit complicated. The idea of alchemy also being perfection of the self and not just nature is pretty old and we find it in Zosimos. But those works don't seem to have impacted the larger practice of alchemy as a whole, and really isn't the mainstream or cornerstone until way, way later. It's pretty modern. Post-enlightenment. There's shades of the concept, and perfection of nature by art was definitely a big thing, but it's not about perfection of the self for the most part.

And frankly, pretty often it was just about making gold. Just how a lot of magic, even ones based on very pious worldview, was about finding hidden treasures or making woman love you.
 
Boney said:
Every time I mention being a writer to someone IRL and the first and only response someone has to that is interrogating how profitable it is and what I should be doing to make it more profitable, Max gets a little bit stronger.
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So what you're saying is that annoying you with a bunch of judgemental busybodies will improve one of our boys... You heard him gents, send in the Karens.
 
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Boney said:
That's why he's never objected to doing the scut work for Mathilde - because unlike Mathilde, whose job is her purpose, Max's day job is just what he does to be able to pursue his actual passion. He could become a professional blacksmith and pay the bills that way, but that would mean having to change a lot of why he wants to be doing it in the first place. Every time I mention being a writer to someone IRL and the first and only response someone has to that is interrogating how profitable it is and what I should be doing to make it more profitable, Max gets a little bit stronger.
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The funniest part for me with Max is that I always picture him as this weedy little scholar dude because he interfaces with the quest primarily through helping Mathilde write papers.

But actually the dude spends all the time he can spare pounding pieces of metal with a hammer, so like most blacksmiths he's probably got arms like tree trunks.
 
Briefvoice said:
The funniest part for me with Max is that I always picture him as this weedy little scholar dude because he interfaces with the quest primarily through helping Mathilde write papers.

But actually the dude spends all the time he can spare pounding pieces of metal with a hammer, so like most blacksmiths he's probably got arms like tree trunks.
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Probably has large but well cared beard as well, due to hanging around dwarves so much.
 
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Briefvoice said:
The funniest part for me with Max is that I always picture him as this weedy little scholar dude because he interfaces with the quest primarily through helping Mathilde write papers.

But actually the dude spends all the time he can spare pounding pieces of metal with a hammer, so like most blacksmiths he's probably got arms like tree trunks.
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Don't worry, you're in good company, he pictured himself that way for a long while too :V

Boney said:
Behold!" you say, pulling the sheet off the finished painting with a flourish. The other Wizards lean in to examine it.

"Why am I sleeveless?" Johann asks, looking at the lovingly detailed biceps on display. Well, not quite looking, but still seeing. You had the artist use a different metal as a base for each pigment.

You shrug. "Artistic license, I assume."

"Probably the same reason I was given so many muscles," Maximilian says, looking at his own representation.

You shake your head amusedly. "Max, you're a blacksmith. A blacksmith studying under a Dwarf. If anything, he understated it."

"Is that a Pistolier cuirass?" Hubert asks. "Why would I be wearing that?"

"Am I really that tall? And looming?" Gretel asks.

"At least he got the marks of rank correct," Adela notes. "Non-Wizards usually don't."
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Boney said:
He keeps a lot of them, but the ones he doesn't like, or the ones he makes a better version of, usually go to Middenheim's armouries.
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When put like that, this feels like another angle on the "history replete with Irreplaceable relics" thing in Warhammer you take issues with. In a way that lines up with the human wizards' mastery paradigm.

Why is history so full of wizards with one off wonders? These were their passion projects that just happened to be handed down or useful. Why don't people just make more? In theory a wizard with enough time to learn the ins and outs of the old masters could carry on their works, (And if it was really important enough, they would, see the waystone project) but why don't they usually? Simple: They're all busy making new and different relics and will probably keep that up until their own successors find their own passion projects.

The implied result being that the wonders don't so much run out, so much as the paradigms shift as each generation of wonder-workers shift to be replaced by the next generation. In this age airships and flying castles, in that era enchanted swords and polearms, in the another a focus on magically imbued cavalry, and so on as magic flips the scales on what ends up being "most practical" again and again.
 
@picklepikkl can you get me the Boneypost where he talks about how a solid karaz becomes a conceptual karak because the dwarfs are weakening it, because "conquering a mountain" is metaphorical and difficult to do while "conquering a dwarf hold" is something standardly done.
 
Andres said:
@picklepikkl can you get me the Boneypost where he talks about how a solid karaz becomes a conceptual karak because the dwarfs are weakening it, because "conquering a mountain" is metaphorical and difficult to do while "conquering a dwarf hold" is something standardly done.
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What's the magic word?

Boney said:
Oh, very much so. A mountain would basically be the most central and important concept in Dwarven philosophy and worldviews. Even Khazalid bends around mountains: under conventional grammar the word karaz should only be used for specific mountains, and the associated abstract concepts of strength, endurance, and age should be karak. But these are too important to be -ak, too real to be considered mere concepts, so they, too, are referred to with karaz. The only time a mountain is 'weakened' enough to be referred to as karak, merely the concept of endurance instead of actual physical embodiment of it, is when Dwarves live in it.
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Boney said:
You're thinking too literally. If you consider an uninhabited mountain, how do you conquer it? Do you mine it down to rubble? Do you riddle it with tunnels until it's no longer physically sound? That would be the work of generations. But the second you dig a hall into it and call it home, it being conquered becomes something that needs to be constantly guarded against. It goes from being a riddle to something almost routine.
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