- Location
- Australia
Warhammer Fantasy: Divided Loyalties - an Advisor's Quest
- Thread starter Boney
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- Fantasy Users' Choice!
Voted best in category in the Users' Choice awards.
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- Singapore
Given the abilities and MO of Mathilde, I think the leading speculation would be that Mathilde is a deep cover Clan Eshin assassin, who uses sorcery to take the identity of a Grey Magister. The real Mathilde Weber was murdered by a Clan Eshin Assasin, who proceeded to infiltrate the Karak Eight Peaks expedition on the orders of the Council of Thirteen using the identity and appearance of Mathilde. During Belegar Quest, this theory was the reason why the vote to appoint Mathilde as Court Wizard was so hotly contested, resulted in five participants getting muted by the moderators and won by the narrowest of margins.
Oh by the way, the biggest evidence cited in support? Someone ran a simulation of Mathilde versus an Eshin Assasin in WFHB and concluded that in all editions, Mathilde doesn't stand a chance against a normal Clan Eshin Assassin without some of her more exotic gear like the seed of rebirth. Even with the seed of rebirth, a sufficiently well equipped and elite Clan Eshin Assassin still will prevail over Mathilde 9 times out of 10. And odds are, a Clan Eshin assassin infiltrating the Expedition under deep cover, is more likely to be an Elite , veteran Assassin, rather than a regular Assasin.
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chocolote12
A Penguin Flailing Against The Keyboard Of Life.
We haven't died around him or anything, so it's entirely possible that if we didn't particularly care about the parts whenever somebody tagged us with a weapon while making our reports it might not have come up.
Sinsystems
Patron Librarian
Honestly I think the more likely thing for Belegar quest to paranoia assume Mathilde's secret is would be something involving the Vampires.
So worse than he expects. Not that I would rate Liber Mortis as a drawback.
NavySeel
"I don't know what I'm doing."
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The elves flaw was actually their arrogance and tendency for obsession. Basically the traits that led to the dark elves and also to the war of the beard.
The Dwarves was that they were predictable once you understood the dwarven mindset.
Halflings and ogres seem to have been beta stages of the same product both are chaos resistant and have massive appetites but also major flaws the halflings weakness and kleptomania and the ogres stupidity and violence.
They probably were going to put all the lessons learned from each of those into a final version without those weaknesses
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Presumably all the speculation on what Belegar thinks Mathilde's drawback consists of is being done in a joking manner. In reality we all know her real weakness is being Umgi.
More seriously it's being heavily associated with the Empire and Imperial College. As such she has superiors who actually have more influence over her than he does as well as being committed to other oaths and loyalties that likely take precedence over his own.
More seriously it's being heavily associated with the Empire and Imperial College. As such she has superiors who actually have more influence over her than he does as well as being committed to other oaths and loyalties that likely take precedence over his own.
Shard
One and Many
- Location
- Malaysia
Clearly they were going to create a coalition victory.
You can make a perfect machine out of imperfect parts.
NavySeel
"I don't know what I'm doing."
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The Cathayans apparently used some massive ritual to try to destroy the ogres and summoned a massive meteor to hit their homeland.
The maw was either so massive that it was the meteor or was on it.
I think it's a natural but alien creature, like if this is the same universe as 40k maybe some kind of tyranid.
But its been empowered by Ogre worship until it became something else.
Sinsystems
Patron Librarian
I think the Dwarves are also considered too stubborn with them Pyrrhic or unwinnable situations as they refuse to back down from a course of action.
SuperSonicSound
Shadowmancer of the Shadow Cabal
I don't think this analysis is entirely correct because I feel you're missing the underlying reason for the creation of these races by the old ones. They were almost certainly looking to make self propagating low maintenance warriors for what ever conflict they were involved in. The problem with the dwarves isn't their predictability as such so much as their almost pathological refusal to adapt. With Halflings the issue is that they're magically dead as a race. Humanity is close to a success but is also way to mutable. The Elves have to low a fertility etc. Orcs and Ogres are probably the half finished attempts. The Lizardmen are entirely the opposite of low maintenance but they were supposed to be over seers.
That's mostly true, Ogres can be reasoned with on an individual level and so can orcs but good lucky getting the chance usually.
Shard
One and Many
- Location
- Malaysia
I would consider the races of WHF as incomplete products, not as failed products. Of course, an incomplete product rushed to production can be considered failed.
He would have to be Legendarily stupid to do it.
You literally can't get away with publishing on a one-of-a-kind unique reagent that only one person owns, and had been seen moving painstakingly slowly by caravan by probably half the Grey Order internal affairs watcher, and claim credit.
At least make it a little realistic and have him steal the Libris Mortis instead.
I'm not Boney but based on precedent with other binding recurring actions, its likely that we get the option to drop it once we have both ensured that the EIC will act in the interests of the Empire, is stable enough not to encounter pitfalls which can change that, and has adequate supervision attached that it can't backslide without active malicious effort involved beyond ordinary greed.
Or when the EIC goes bad and we break it up.
I think the biggest boon of Johann's situation is that if we could get him to a reasonably trusted level we could probably assign subordinates to him. He's a Magister, he can herd Journeymen, and based on his few known abilities he'd be ideal to assign Material Science research projects in general.
Theres likely a variety of options to do it with, but I do recall something of the like.
We could probably publish it directly to the Grey College for our equivalents since it'd totally be in line with Grey College to have secret research papers only those read in get to know about.
Clues:
-Anomalous shadow
-Frequently seen after combat with bloody and torn clothes, but visibly unmarked skin underneath
-Comes from the land infested with vampires
-Sneaks off and does unspeakable things to enemies.
-Wields a greatweapon despite being a small woman
-Sees in the dark
-Casts almost no offensive magic, but is absurdly good at dispelling, almost like she had centuries of practice and is hiding her offensive skills
Conclusion: Mathilde is a Lahmian vampire
NavySeel
"I don't know what I'm doing."
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...Which makes them predictable.
Predictability is a tolerable flaw in a biological weapon.
Inability to adapt however is a fatal flaw that ensures it'd become obsolete eventually
SuperSonicSound
Shadowmancer of the Shadow Cabal
Yes but it goes further than that, predictable is a subset of the issue of refusing to adapt.
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- Australia
Halflings are also completely non-magical, which is a very big weakness when magic is one of the best weapons against daemons. Ogres weren't beta projects, they were just fine physiologically; they just lacked culture, which the Old Ones couldn't give them before they ran out of time.
I don't think kleptomania is baked into the halflings' physiology. I think it's just cultural, so you can teach them different and they can learn.
Been answered already actually.
SuperSonicSound
Shadowmancer of the Shadow Cabal
I wasn't trying to say your analysis was with out merit and I apologise if that's how it came across. I was just trying to say the issue with the dwarves is deeper than simply being predictable.
chocolote12
A Penguin Flailing Against The Keyboard Of Life.
Basically, I think we can drop the EIC when we accomplish what we started meddling with it more actively for, which was making sure that we wouldn't need to end up putting it to the sword like we did the Stirlandian League.
So, company cultural actions, and also some sort of internal auditing division, at least.
So, company cultural actions, and also some sort of internal auditing division, at least.
- Location
- Australia
The dwarfs' flaw is predictability, not inability to adapt. The dwarfs can adapt, and do adapt. Hell, just look at Belegar and every Radical under the sun. They can see changed circumstances and while they do sometimes stubbornly keep going, other times they instead take a different path. Their problem is their predictability. Put an obstacle in a dwarf's way and depending on the obstacle they'll either keep going or do something different, but repeat the process a hundred times and it'll be the same result a hundred times.
Inability to adapt is the lizardmen's flaw. The dwarfs can see the decline of their race and now instead of working to bring back the glory days, they've switched gears to going out in a blaze of glory. The lizardmen have much the same problem, but they're not switching gears. They're not reassessing their abilities and their priorities, nor looking for new solutions to problems old or new like the dwarfs have done and are doing right this very moment. The lizardmen have The Plan, and they stick religiously to The Plan no matter what, and anything that falls outside The Plan is to be destroyed or corrected until everything once more falls under The Plan.
Inability to adapt is the lizardmen's flaw. The dwarfs can see the decline of their race and now instead of working to bring back the glory days, they've switched gears to going out in a blaze of glory. The lizardmen have much the same problem, but they're not switching gears. They're not reassessing their abilities and their priorities, nor looking for new solutions to problems old or new like the dwarfs have done and are doing right this very moment. The lizardmen have The Plan, and they stick religiously to The Plan no matter what, and anything that falls outside The Plan is to be destroyed or corrected until everything once more falls under The Plan.
SuperSonicSound
Shadowmancer of the Shadow Cabal
I disagree, the Lizardmen have the dwarven issue writ large because the first generations of Slann that worked with the old ones are essentially all dead, the later generation of Slann can't propogate and so they're forced into trying to follow a paradigm that they can't deviate from and slowly stagnating as they lose more and more of their leadership.
The dwarves do suffer from a lack of adaptability though, given their advanced technological achievements they should be an industrial power house on par with the skaven, they aren't because of their refusal to adapt. Instead they're still an artisan based economy, almost pathologically refusing to cleave from tradition. That gives them strength when it comes to avoiding the pull of chaos, but it also means they can't easily deal with changing threats. Belegar is a radical in large part because of player activities, make no mistake without Mathildes intervention in this expedition and the wild success it's brought he wouldn't be even close to breaking with the norms of his race as he is now and you know what happens to most radicals in the dwarven empire they get exiled. The fact that many dwarves have essentially given up on the idea that they can recover is a sign of that lack of adaptability not evidence against it.
Individual dwarves can run against the grain of their society just as that can happen with any of the races in warhammer, but ultimately the few exceptions are not evidence that these issues don't exist.