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Warhammer Fantasy: Divided Loyalties - an Advisor's Quest

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BoneyM said:
There's an enormous precedent in the form of this little thing called necromancy. Using another wind to manipulate Dhar is still dark magic.
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But as seen with counterspelling, shooting a Dhar effect with another wind to destroy it has precedent as not dark magic.

So a good goal would be to work out a spell that triggers the chain reaction decay with a relatively simple shot, rather than the level of manipulation involved in necromancy. Something in a sufficiently grey area that other grey magisters might well go "this is something the other colleges won't like, but it's so useful that we'll call it just on the right side of the line, and never mention it to them."

Of course whether or not that's even possible is another matter entirely. And whether it's worth the effort and the risk - well, it's certainly a gamble!
 
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The whole debate neatly illustrates the difficulty of voter nuance in quests.
In corner A you have the faction which believes this to be revolutionary, that we should study this and ruleslawyer around the legalities of it once we have the practicalities contained.

In corner B you have the faction adamant that using any Dark Magic period is definitionally evil, oathbreaking and a short trip to running around with a flock of bound ghosts hidden in our shadow.

And in the process the practical nuanced arguments in the middle are drowned out by the far more simplistic arguments of the other two ideologically driven extremes, because you can't really debate both sides without looking schizophrenic.
 
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10ebbor10 said:
Are there necromancy equivalents for the other winds?

Like, we know that necromancy is Dhar+Ulgu, but what other combinations are possible?
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Ah, interesting question! I remember this topic coming up long ago in some threads.

People speculated or suggested that, perhaps, the Lore of the Beastmen was an example of Dhar+Ghur, for example.

They may have used other examples -- like the Lore of Tzeentch/Nurgle/Slaanesh. Maybe the Lore of the Maw was mentioned. Not sure.

The magic of the Chaos Dwarfs might be corrupted Chamon or Aqshy, Gold or Fire, magic perhaps.
 
10ebbor10 said:
Are there necromancy equivalents for the other winds?

Like, we know that necromancy is Dhar+Ulgu, but what other combinations are possible?
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Necromancy is Dhar+ Shyish, actually; it uses the lore of death.

We don't know what Dhar+Ulgu is, but the thread's term for it is ugly and I hate it.
veekie said:
and a short trip to running around with a flock of bound ghosts hidden in our shadow.
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... Sign me up for being a Sith Lord? :V
 
For a grey magister we sure seem in love with the idea of the inherent power and lack of subtlety that is Dhar.

Like a spy who wants his main method of execution to be dynamite. (/s, but Dhar is bad tho, dont touch)
10ebbor10 said:
Are there necromancy equivalents for the other winds?

Like, we know that necromancy is Dhar+Ulgu, but what other combinations are possible?
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Necromancy is Death and Dhar wasn't it?

Theoretically there probably IS an equivalent for the other 7 winds, but uh...we only know about necromancy cuz its super setting relevant.
Theories I've discussed with others would be that manipulating Dhar with a wind sort of twists its purpose yeah?

The wind of death and Dhar made undeath, the perversion of the end of things, not so much the opposite. Sort of like adding a word to the sentence that changes its meaning entirely if that makes sense.

Of course thats my headcanon based on the one canonical source we have that's explained in any detail
 
Well in a hope that we could move onto the other bit of interesting news, we can potentially affect other winds of magic with Ulgu! If we can do that, what other wind would you guys want to pick up first? (Of course I'm assuming many things but I hope it'll be a similar but reduced version of how high elves can use multiple winds. Maybe we can only use 2 at max with lesser proficiency than we have with Ulgu?)
 
kingreaper said:
But as seen with counterspelling, shooting a Dhar effect with another wind to destroy it has precedent as not dark magic.
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Let me be as clear as possible here.

Utilizing the Second Secret of Dhar means fine manipulation of Dhar in a way that absolutely cannot under any circumstances at all ever ever ever be handwaved away as 'just a counterspell'. Period full stop the end.

It would be like claiming the extremely intricate surgery you just performed doesn't prove you have any knowledge of medicine, it was just a knife fight.
 
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veekie said:
The whole debate neatly illustrates the difficulty of voter nuance in quests.
In corner A you have the faction which believes this to be revolutionary, that we should study this and ruleslawyer around the legalities of it once we have the practicalities contained.

In corner B you have the faction adamant that using any Dark Magic period is definitionally evil, oathbreaking and a short trip to running around with a flock of bound ghosts hidden in our shadow.

And in the process the practical nuanced arguments in the middle are drowned out by the far more simplistic arguments of the other two ideologically driven extremes, because you can't really debate both sides without looking schizophrenic.
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Wow, so for one thing that's incredibly rude, for another this adds literally nothing to the discussion, if you want to discuss something do it.
 
SuperSonicSound said:
There's very obviously loopholes and exceptions though because in RoS the Jade order are explicitly running through some method they have to remove dhar and warpstone taint from the land. There's no way they found out how to do that with out experimenting with the stuff. So obviously that proscription within the colleges isn't followed to the letter.
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Okay, but -- this sort of thing is probably done via books of magic held by the Colleges. It was probably done either by somebody building upon knowledge that the High Elves gave, or were some attempts to purge or purify.

Somebody holding the Liber Mortis and deciding to experiment with it is far different.

The origins of the attempts are different, and I think that that matters.


That is to say. Somebody learning about how to cleanse mutation or corruption, from College-approved sources, is coming from a very different circumstance than somebody deciding to use the Liber Mortis as a guide, you know?
 
BoneyM said:
Let me be as clear as possible here.

Utilizing the Second Secret of Dhar means fine manipulation of Dhar in a way that absolutely cannot under any circumstances at all ever ever ever be handwaved away as 'just a counterspell'. Period full stop the end.
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On the positive side, just the understanding of the Secrets probably makes it much easier to dispel Dhar in the conventional way. So that's nice.
 
SuperSonicSound said:
There's very obviously loopholes and exceptions though because in RoS the Jade order are explicitly running through some method they have to remove dhar and warpstone taint from the land. There's no way they found out how to do that with out experimenting with the stuff. So obviously that proscription within the colleges isn't followed to the letter.




Necromancy is Shyish + Dhar. There's no other combination Dhar + wind lores known.
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The beastmen lore is hinted to be Ghur + Dhar, but that's the only other one.
 
I'm a bit behind in the thread, but discussion seems to be circling around "the belt protects us from dhar corruption" "but what about the mind-set you adopt when you channel dhar? that's corruption of a sort, too!"

I'd like to get a clarification on "channeling dhar", because the way I've been reading it is if you channel dhar on it's own no tongs, no ulgu or shysh, of course you'd be corrupted by it's mental state.

But when you use another wind to handle dhar, why would the mindset you adopt be dhar's, rather than the wind you're actually channeling to handle it?

Like, say, for example, we go out to the plain of bones and do a bunch of "ulgu tongs" necromancy for a month, at the end of the month, will our mindset be Ulgu, or Dhar?
 
Doomed Wombat said:
mmm.

Learning how to use the tongs of your prefered wind to manipulate another wind seems like an interesting advance.

Seems like it'd not be a big one, you'd never be as good with another wind, but its still interesting and for the genius's a big boon.
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That seems like it'd run into the same problem as the Second Secret. Using one wind to manipulate another would make people think "what if I use it for Dhar instead?".
 
@Garlak you miss a fundamental piece of the puzzle: the Theogonist who did the dispel straight up grabbed a fistful of dhar to wield.

The argument here isn't "should we use dhar?".

It's "we should make sure that, if we are ever in a situation where using something we learned from the LM is our only option, we don't need to grab a fistful of dhar to do it."

Even if the Belt prevents corruption, I'd rather avoid the mundane effects of getting into that mindstate, and the polite fiction of "I was really just using Ulgu" is at least something to hide behind if it ever comes to light, as we'd very likely have something like "army of dead knocking at the gates of Altdorf" as justification.

Mind, WoG clarification that really getting into the mindstate to directly wield dhar isn't bad if it's done for short periods of time, and very infrequently.

But I'd still like to avoid it, and have seen no good argument as to why we shouldn't. Because the fundamental premise is "things have gone so bad, that it's the only option".
 
Garlak said:
Okay, but -- this sort of thing is probably done via books of magic held by the Colleges. It was probably done either by somebody building upon knowledge that the High Elves gave, or were some attempts to purge or purify.

Somebody holding the Liber Mortis and deciding to experiment with it is far different.

The origins of the attempts are different, and I think that that matters.


That is to say. Somebody learning about how to cleanse mutation or corruption, from College-approved sources, is coming from a very different circumstance than somebody deciding to use the Liber Mortis as a guide, you know?
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It's not at all about attempting to cleanse mutation or corruption which would be dealing with physical changes in living beings. It's about removing and containing warpstone and Dhar. The starting points are different but that's frankly irrelevant because the starting point for Necromancy wasn't Dhar. It was the Mortuary cults in Nehekara and was divine lore. That knowledge is then wrapped in the understanding of the dark elves to become necromancy.

The second secret doesn't even remove dhar, it simply detonates the enchantments created with it so it can't be used to cleanse anything which isn't the point I was making. There is obviously some room to manouvre for dealing with Dhar and Warpstone. I'm not suggesting that we're going to be fine and dandy if we make use of the 2nd secret for instance. Any way the benefit from learning about how Shyish is used by the top tier of necromancers to manipulate the other winds isn't because we'd want to replicate Ulgu+dhar mancy.

It's to give us something to build on to do something else entirely, is it possible to make magical spell structures with more than one wind with out it becoming Dhar but with out using all eight? We don't know, Nagash wouldn't have bothered because he internalised the Dark Elf ideals as they fit with his mind set perfectly. That his own Will was all that mattered.

The High Elves probably wouldn't bother either because they wield all the winds of magic at the same time and therefore never had to use one wind as a sort of magical tong to manipulate the others it's not an area of research they'd ever care about. We might well be the first Empire Wizard to have read the unredacted version of the Liber Mortis and therefore learn the technique for using your wind as a set of magical tongs to manipulate others.
 
Harried said:
Like, say, for example, we go out to the plain of bones and do a bunch of "ulgu tongs" necromancy for a month, at the end of the month, will our mindset be Ulgu, or Dhar?
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We'll be effected but in the same way that someone researching serial killers or similar horrifying things for that period of time would be. The best way to deal with that is to spend time with friends and other simple joys. Like it's something to watch out for, but not unmanageable.
 
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Deathbybunnies said:
If we can destroy Dhar and Warpstone by using pure Ulgu and our belt, thereby risking neither mental corruption nor Dhar exposure, we should do so.
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You know, thinking about it, if "destroying Dhar and Warpstone" is all you wanted... you probably could achieve it with the belt, you know? Poke it and let it burn.

Or maybe call in the Light College (or Jade College) and ask them to purify it.

That is to say: you can look into ways to get rid of Dhar or Warpstone without using the Secrets of Dhar, you know? And in fact, you should probably use those other, safer and more conventional, methods first.

Like. Let's not forget that. "How to purify clean up after dhar and warpstone" is probably not a topic totally unknown to Humans, Elves, and Dwarfs.

Therefore, we should probably call in the Light and/or Jade College first, (or a Runesmith) rather than deciding to handle it ourselves with the Secrets of Dhar.

It is probably a bad idea if our first reaction to meeting taint or Warpstone, would be to reach for the Liber Mortis. That's a sign of tunnelvisioning.

I am now worried that learning how to dispel dhar or warpstone will lead to using that as a first resort. Rather than the belt, or calling in another College or a Runesmith. =/
 
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