Warhammer Fantasy: Divided Loyalties - an Advisor's Quest
- Thread starter Boney
- Start date
- Fantasy Users' Choice!
Voted best in category in the Users' Choice awards.
I want to clarify that the Ledgers actually DO perform something useful, the EIC is going to be attacking the tangle with machete and building healthier farms in its wake, but the Ledgers would firebomb the tangle.
A minor reason to not take them is that the fast way is going to be apt to be indiscriminate. A lot of those traders who did it under duress or ignorance are likely going to burn along with those who sold their fellow man out for profit.
The slow way lets the weak and the greedy untangle and pretend they were totally upstanding citizens all along. Just don't count on them in a crisis.
The important part to me about why NOT to take the Ledgers is that I think Roswita and Wilhelmina have it in the bag, though it'd take many years, it likely won't take Mathilde Weber to come down and fuck a vampire up for reasons relating to the Ledgers.
Like, any vampire we'd want to come down on personally would be highly inconvenienced by the loss of money and contacts, but it'd be because they're too sneaky, too badass or too magical, they don't need money for that.
After all this IS Divided Loyalties. The Good Of The Empire and Eight Peaks are not our only goal.
Our personal research has a spot too, and finding material relating to Theurgy or Dhar is very difficult without conducting forbidden research personally...or looting the shit out of ancient vampire wizards with Nehekaharen names.
A minor reason to not take them is that the fast way is going to be apt to be indiscriminate. A lot of those traders who did it under duress or ignorance are likely going to burn along with those who sold their fellow man out for profit.
The slow way lets the weak and the greedy untangle and pretend they were totally upstanding citizens all along. Just don't count on them in a crisis.
The important part to me about why NOT to take the Ledgers is that I think Roswita and Wilhelmina have it in the bag, though it'd take many years, it likely won't take Mathilde Weber to come down and fuck a vampire up for reasons relating to the Ledgers.
Like, any vampire we'd want to come down on personally would be highly inconvenienced by the loss of money and contacts, but it'd be because they're too sneaky, too badass or too magical, they don't need money for that.
After all this IS Divided Loyalties. The Good Of The Empire and Eight Peaks are not our only goal.
Our personal research has a spot too, and finding material relating to Theurgy or Dhar is very difficult without conducting forbidden research personally...or looting the shit out of ancient vampire wizards with Nehekaharen names.
Lealope
Not yet invincible
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Which honestly seems like an entirely new, very interesting field of study. For something like that to work consistently across the available spells of Ulgu suggests a measure of commonality that I wouldn't expect from this kind of magic. If this is a contigent spell, can we learn other universal modifiers? Quickening spells? Twinned Spells? Maximised Spells? Delayed Spells?
Can we write Mathilde's Mindblowing Metamagic Manuscript?
Moreover, stats scale very rapidly. How many Martial 12 schlubs do you think it would take to beat Asarnil? Here's a hint, it's a lot more than 5. A difference of 13 points is enough to take you from a rando to one of the Empire's greatest Heroes.
Seeing this guy's scores, I feel a lot more confident of my analysis regarding the stat scale. 20-30 are the Heroes, 30-40 are most Lords and 40-50 are worldshaking potentates.
Mopman43
Mountain-Hermit of Nitpeak
- Location
- Vermont
It's not the first time the turn ended up split. Just look at last turn, for instance. Probably the full 24 hours. As far as I'm aware, the main reason for splits like this is that Boney restricts himself to writing 6,000 words per day.
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TimEd
Meteor maker
Clearly the answer is to give Roswita the fangs of AlmanacClearly we need to maintain this streak somehow.
[X] Proof of the 'College of Necromancy'.
[X] Detailed trade ledgers.
This waves the flag for K8P in a manner that might see the Emperor turn his attention long enough to send some support against the monsters of Sylvania as what else besides a College of Necromancers might be lurking in the shadows. Also a boost in reputation among the Empire's leadership will help any flag waving Belgar asks of Mathilde in the future.
The trade ledgers for the overall boost it will have for the Empire.
[X] Detailed trade ledgers.
This waves the flag for K8P in a manner that might see the Emperor turn his attention long enough to send some support against the monsters of Sylvania as what else besides a College of Necromancers might be lurking in the shadows. Also a boost in reputation among the Empire's leadership will help any flag waving Belgar asks of Mathilde in the future.
The trade ledgers for the overall boost it will have for the Empire.
- Location
- Canada
One needs to account for traits and equipment beyond raw stats too, Asarnil sitting on top of Deathfang, or even not currently on the enormous death machine is going to hit a lot harder than just +50
- Location
- his hidden lair
Again- the ledgers utility for the entire Empire is being overstated. It's literally just Al's ledgers on whoever trades with him. This probably isn't some grand conspiracy to crack open, and might only minimally touch up on the merchants dealing with the other major vampires.
Assuming this is meaningful for the entire Empire, rather than useful for Stirland- is trusting chance just as much as rolling for books would be.
Assuming this is meaningful for the entire Empire, rather than useful for Stirland- is trusting chance just as much as rolling for books would be.
prince84
In central Dogma flirting with Lilith.
- Location
- The Madness Place
I was just rereading this again and I noticed how EFFECTIVE Matilda has been it has been roughly ten years and she is racking up accomplishments like there is no tomorrow (even if many of them are unknown to nearly everyone) and it makes me wonder what those in the know are thinking. I can see her old teacher "dropping by" unexpectedly to check up on how she was doing, officially. Unofficially, he was checking how well she is sticking to the rules.
I figure that Matilda would be saying things like this:
"No sir, the tower is not my 'personal' property it is the official residence of the holds court wizard."
"Yes, it is an impressive library and its purpose is to educate the journeymen and as a reference for the holds court wizard."
"No, the vampire skulls on the mantel are not part of the court wizards regalia. they are mine."
Even if everyone knows better as long as she is trusted by the college and her teacher I doubt that they would call her on any of that.
I figure that Matilda would be saying things like this:
"No sir, the tower is not my 'personal' property it is the official residence of the holds court wizard."
"Yes, it is an impressive library and its purpose is to educate the journeymen and as a reference for the holds court wizard."
"No, the vampire skulls on the mantel are not part of the court wizards regalia. they are mine."
Even if everyone knows better as long as she is trusted by the college and her teacher I doubt that they would call her on any of that.
Nix's Warden
Welcome to Hades
- Location
- United States
Lets ask @BoneyM then. Could you give some more details of the Trade Ledgers?
Anyway, there done, maybe they answer maybe they don't, but I'm going to vote for the option that I KNOW will help The Empire great or small.
- Location
- Edmonton
- Pronouns
- He/Him
frivolous question but uh. Have we considered....
Kill Dragon near K8P
Study dragon corpse, figure out drago-natomy
create shadow dragon spell
why settle for shadow pegasus when we could try for this?
IDK if this was posted and then debunked by @BoneyM but Dragons are cool. If it IS possible, I doubt it'd be as simple as I described.
Kill Dragon near K8P
Study dragon corpse, figure out drago-natomy
create shadow dragon spell
why settle for shadow pegasus when we could try for this?
IDK if this was posted and then debunked by @BoneyM but Dragons are cool. If it IS possible, I doubt it'd be as simple as I described.
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Excerpt from Mathilde's notes on Aethyric Vitae
BungieONI
Seven gremlins in a trench coat
- Location
- Lickwidget
- Pronouns
- She/Her
*decides fuck it lets Math I'm bored*
*Sensible people should absolutely disregard this because its about MAGIC and thus Boeny can decide it does whatever he wants and even aside from that it likely has whims which means it can decide to change on a dime and leave you holding the burning chicken*
So in our investigations of the Vitae we have identified that it is experiencing something that keeps it stable in its fluid state. Introduction of reality weakening effects means it evaporates or transforms into something else. Normally Aethyric energy is outside of normal reality, but flows through the warp rifts at the Polar Gates and is split by their distorted forms into the Winds. These Winds flow south towards the Great Vortex.
There's a relatively easy way to describe the thinning of the Winds as one heads south via a function D, for the Decay of the Winds. But D should vary over time as the winds change and blow in new ways as they do at their own whims. Furthermore D should vary significantly for each Wind at any point along the continent and over time D should in proper consideration likely be denoted as DAqshy, DShyish etc for the decay rate of each individual Wind since they blow at different strengths in the same place and at different times. This function D also has a lot of inner variables which are not worth it to attempt to describe.
Anyway that digression aside, back to the Vitae.
The Vitae does not pass through the Gates, and never undergoes the transformation to become the Winds before it passes through the remains of the Snake into the material world. Mathilde has theorized it might contain pre-Wind structures because of how it acted before transformation and bits of it started to move in different directions but this has not been confirmed.
Because it enters the world the way it does, the Aethyric energy seemingly becomes compressed into this liquid state and is left to dribble out of our Schrodinger's Captive. This state is held in place by some action or force upon the energy, something similar to the act of actively compressing something i.e a pressure like force. Let's call this force R for the presence of Reality and real things.
We can surmise that Vitae has some kind of internal action which responds to this R because it doesn't dis-corporate into nothing under the force of Reality and instead hangs out in this metastable state. We can call this force A. So, A resists R and forces the state of the Vitae to remain where it is. There does not seem to be a critical mass of Vitae at and below 14 gallons, so at and below 14 gallons we can surmise that it doesn't react with itself to increase the value of A and evaporate into something. This seems to describe that at and below 14 gallons the Vitae has a stable constant effect on the strength of Reality, so we can surmise that at and below 14 gallons A is a constant that doesn't increase with more Vitae present. (This might change at higher quantities of Vitae) Thus the first equation is:
(1) R - A = X
Where X is the remaining strength of Reality's realness.
However the presence of things which weaken R can let A become larger than it and the Vitae violently expands into the Winds or Dhar. Interestingly these are both evaporative-like processes. These things include Dhar heavy environments, the light of Morrslieb and the presence of the Winds and Warpstone. We can bundle these forces into two variables. W for the concentration of the winds, the strength at which they blow in a space. M for the effects of Morrslieb and Warpstone and Dhar. Thus with these we can modify equation (1).
(2) (R - M - W) - A = X
M is usually 0 or so close to it that it can be ignored outside the presence of Morrslieb, walking around Sylvania or Warpstone. W is more interesting. In a room where there were no Winds but what Mathilde brought with her it didn't evaporate into the Winds until she concentrated it outside her body. The Vitae also did not evaporate while travelling and existing in relatively normal Wind density.
Let's make equation (3):
(3) (R - W) = Y
Where Y is the realness of Reality after being affected by the presence of the Winds.
We can perhaps surmise that the difference between Y and A is larger than the nominal Wind density in any place of the Southern Empire but we need more info in that regard. (We already have an option that basically looks at A)
There's also our indication that lower amounts of really concentrated Winds in close proximity can have transformative effects. This is also not rigorously confirmed. This implies equation (2) is incomplete which makes sense. We don't know all the qualities and forces acting on the Vitae after all.
*falls over*
E: *Gets back up*
Oh! This does mean we can simplify equation 2 into equation 4.
(4) Y - A = X
And equation 4 is more general than the preceding ones.
*Sensible people should absolutely disregard this because its about MAGIC and thus Boeny can decide it does whatever he wants and even aside from that it likely has whims which means it can decide to change on a dime and leave you holding the burning chicken*
So in our investigations of the Vitae we have identified that it is experiencing something that keeps it stable in its fluid state. Introduction of reality weakening effects means it evaporates or transforms into something else. Normally Aethyric energy is outside of normal reality, but flows through the warp rifts at the Polar Gates and is split by their distorted forms into the Winds. These Winds flow south towards the Great Vortex.
There's a relatively easy way to describe the thinning of the Winds as one heads south via a function D, for the Decay of the Winds. But D should vary over time as the winds change and blow in new ways as they do at their own whims. Furthermore D should vary significantly for each Wind at any point along the continent and over time D should in proper consideration likely be denoted as DAqshy, DShyish etc for the decay rate of each individual Wind since they blow at different strengths in the same place and at different times. This function D also has a lot of inner variables which are not worth it to attempt to describe.
Anyway that digression aside, back to the Vitae.
The Vitae does not pass through the Gates, and never undergoes the transformation to become the Winds before it passes through the remains of the Snake into the material world. Mathilde has theorized it might contain pre-Wind structures because of how it acted before transformation and bits of it started to move in different directions but this has not been confirmed.
Because it enters the world the way it does, the Aethyric energy seemingly becomes compressed into this liquid state and is left to dribble out of our Schrodinger's Captive. This state is held in place by some action or force upon the energy, something similar to the act of actively compressing something i.e a pressure like force. Let's call this force R for the presence of Reality and real things.
We can surmise that Vitae has some kind of internal action which responds to this R because it doesn't dis-corporate into nothing under the force of Reality and instead hangs out in this metastable state. We can call this force A. So, A resists R and forces the state of the Vitae to remain where it is. There does not seem to be a critical mass of Vitae at and below 14 gallons, so at and below 14 gallons we can surmise that it doesn't react with itself to increase the value of A and evaporate into something. This seems to describe that at and below 14 gallons the Vitae has a stable constant effect on the strength of Reality, so we can surmise that at and below 14 gallons A is a constant that doesn't increase with more Vitae present. (This might change at higher quantities of Vitae) Thus the first equation is:
(1) R - A = X
Where X is the remaining strength of Reality's realness.
However the presence of things which weaken R can let A become larger than it and the Vitae violently expands into the Winds or Dhar. Interestingly these are both evaporative-like processes. These things include Dhar heavy environments, the light of Morrslieb and the presence of the Winds and Warpstone. We can bundle these forces into two variables. W for the concentration of the winds, the strength at which they blow in a space. M for the effects of Morrslieb and Warpstone and Dhar. Thus with these we can modify equation (1).
(2) (R - M - W) - A = X
M is usually 0 or so close to it that it can be ignored outside the presence of Morrslieb, walking around Sylvania or Warpstone. W is more interesting. In a room where there were no Winds but what Mathilde brought with her it didn't evaporate into the Winds until she concentrated it outside her body. The Vitae also did not evaporate while travelling and existing in relatively normal Wind density.
Let's make equation (3):
(3) (R - W) = Y
Where Y is the realness of Reality after being affected by the presence of the Winds.
We can perhaps surmise that the difference between Y and A is larger than the nominal Wind density in any place of the Southern Empire but we need more info in that regard. (We already have an option that basically looks at A)
There's also our indication that lower amounts of really concentrated Winds in close proximity can have transformative effects. This is also not rigorously confirmed. This implies equation (2) is incomplete which makes sense. We don't know all the qualities and forces acting on the Vitae after all.
*falls over*
E: *Gets back up*
Oh! This does mean we can simplify equation 2 into equation 4.
(4) Y - A = X
And equation 4 is more general than the preceding ones.
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chocolote12
A Penguin Flailing Against The Keyboard Of Life.
The version that just summons one for a few minutes already exists, but it's battle magic.frivolous question but uh. Have we considered....
Kill Dragon near K8P
Study dragon corpse, figure out drago-natomy
create shadow dragon spell
why settle for shadow pegasus when we could try for this?
IDK if this was posted and then debunked by boney but Dragons are cool.
Maybe if we summoned an Incarnation or something? But that's super ritual battle magic.
- Location
- USA
- Pronouns
- He/They
[jk] "Try it and find out." [/jk]
No, seriously, we barely had time to read the title pages of the various volumes. We're not going to get details on their contents unless we, y'know, take them along and actually read them. Please don't fuss at the QM for information they've explicitly said:
we don't have.
Heartily agreed on that, though.
- Location
- Earth
With the spellburner rune, It becomes more palatable to take the book risk.
But I do hate letting traitors go, still. They will pop back up, given time.
I'll give it a chance. If only for the chance to find something on the origin of Vamps or how to kill them for good. That's a good not to be overstated. I still think we are most likely to end up with cursed book that burn when we try to read them, or cast more than one spell at a time. But fuck it, there was a point to stop, and we've passed it a while ago. Let's see if we can take it further. Leroyyyyyyyyy Jeeenikns!
[X] Proof of the 'College of Necromancy'.
[X] Books on Vampires and Dhar.
[X] Books on Shyish and death gods.
But I do hate letting traitors go, still. They will pop back up, given time.
I'll give it a chance. If only for the chance to find something on the origin of Vamps or how to kill them for good. That's a good not to be overstated. I still think we are most likely to end up with cursed book that burn when we try to read them, or cast more than one spell at a time. But fuck it, there was a point to stop, and we've passed it a while ago. Let's see if we can take it further. Leroyyyyyyyyy Jeeenikns!
[X] Proof of the 'College of Necromancy'.
[X] Books on Vampires and Dhar.
[X] Books on Shyish and death gods.
BungieONI
Seven gremlins in a trench coat
- Location
- Lickwidget
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Its uncertain if the dragon that knocked over Thunder Mountain is still there. We'll have to go check at some point.frivolous question but uh. Have we considered....
Kill Dragon near K8P
Study dragon corpse, figure out drago-natomy
create shadow dragon spell
why settle for shadow pegasus when we could try for this?
IDK if this was posted and then debunked by @BoneyM but Dragons are cool. If it IS possible, I doubt it'd be as simple as I described.
- Location
- France
[X] Detailed trade ledgers.
[X] Books on Vampires and Dhar.
[X] Books on Vampires and Dhar.
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Who says we're letting them go? We know they exist and we have an intelligence network building and already focused on Sylvania we can set to weeding this stuff out now that we know it exists.
- Location
- his hidden lair
And that's the problem here. The ledger has WoG that it does something so people are dismissing that an ancient Necrarch from the Time of Three Emperors will have books worth taking because the dice. Never mind the fact that he was educating others, never mind his understanding of magic massively dwarfed Mathilde's given his Learning score, and this is his place of learning.
By explicitly explaining one reward and letting people impugn the opportunity to learn from the archives of someone who rivals if not exceeds a fucking Patriarch* in magical understanding on the basis of random chance Boney has biased this vote. He would have been better off not saying a damn word about the Ledger or Proof if he wasn't available to offer IC expectations on all of them. Voters as a whole have been operating under an inequality of information where literally everyone not following the party line has to make inferences and suppositions while getting hammered with 'Boney said...'. This whole vote is obnoxious.
*Hexensohn had a +40 against dispelling necromancy and likely had a trait/skill applying.
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- Pronouns
- He/Him
People shouldn't ignore the possibilities inherent in being able to dismantle the treacherous traders via the EIC. It'll just take a bit more time.
I need say nothing more.
Duty to humanity? Have you seen what we rank our duty to humanity as to the Grey College?
Liber Mortis. We haven't and won't use any necromancy, any Dhar, but it's still helped us.
I need say nothing more.
Duty to humanity? Have you seen what we rank our duty to humanity as to the Grey College?
- Location
- California
As an aside, by my estimate this Dark College probably had somewhere in the neighborhood of 60 students.
We know that the recruitment involved taking by the scores, giving a floor of 40 for two scores, but if it was over a hundred that would have likely been mentioned, giving a reasonable cap of 80 when we arrived. Since learning dark magic has attrition, especially with this kind of teacher we can reject the upper amounts. Still, with nearly a full decade and the ability to turn people who might otherwise barely have power into threats, I don't think the lower bound is a good idea either. Thus, 60, in the middle.
This also let's me split them into three rough tiers-I believe there were about 7 final stage apprentices killed, meaning we could have a pyramid of Necrarch, roughly 10 top tier, 20 below that, and 30 scrub tier, which seems reasonable.
Of course, take this with a massive grain of salt as it makes many assumptions, but I had fun doing it.
We know that the recruitment involved taking by the scores, giving a floor of 40 for two scores, but if it was over a hundred that would have likely been mentioned, giving a reasonable cap of 80 when we arrived. Since learning dark magic has attrition, especially with this kind of teacher we can reject the upper amounts. Still, with nearly a full decade and the ability to turn people who might otherwise barely have power into threats, I don't think the lower bound is a good idea either. Thus, 60, in the middle.
This also let's me split them into three rough tiers-I believe there were about 7 final stage apprentices killed, meaning we could have a pyramid of Necrarch, roughly 10 top tier, 20 below that, and 30 scrub tier, which seems reasonable.
Of course, take this with a massive grain of salt as it makes many assumptions, but I had fun doing it.