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Warhammer Fantasy: Divided Loyalties - an Advisor's Quest

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Deathbybunnies said:
Excellent! Looks like we have our strategy for holding Yar against the greenskins no matter what happens.


I think-

Yeah, that basically. If there's a regular-sized waystone, it's probably buried under all that warpstone. Now, it's probably not in danger of blowing up anytime soon given how long it's been there, but clearing it and fixing it would send the winds to the Vortex instead of just creating more warpstone.
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Why do we think there's a huge amount of warpstone there? I may have missed something.
 
TaliesinSkye said:
Why do we think there's a huge amount of warpstone there? I may have missed something.
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It was scouted a while back:
BoneyM said:
[Scouting Kvinn-Wyr: 76+15=91.]

With some effort, Titus hauls a sack onto the table. The opening slips open, and the unmistakable sight - and smell - of a Troll's head greets you. "Trolls," he says helpfully.

"The entire mountain?"

"Yep. One big ecosystem. Huge underground cistern full of river trolls, rock trolls in the middle, huge chunk of wyrdstone near the top that the trolls all fight over who gets to be closest to and slobber over. The winners end up weird."
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Garlak said:
Beyond that though... What I really want is a Tower that will help relieve our action economy a bit. Because we have so much work. And every turn feels like it adds more possibilities. So, something like the Tower of Serenity. ... Maybe a tower that will let us command our Wizard Employees and Mange Journeymen more efficiently? Thus freeing up those 3 half-slots of actions?
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Ah, I got it: a Training/Exercise Tower.

Something to let you take a "Train yourself in X..."/"Have your subordinates train in..." action per turn. Which can work out to be anything from working on a sword style, figuring out how to shoot while invisible, or studying Strategy and Tactics alongside Dreng or something. Something meant for personal improvement.

Ah. I got it.

An Atelier. A Wizard's Workshop.

Something that will let us try to vainly keep up with our backlog of artifacts, loot, and Quintessence research.

A tower that will let us take a free action for researching what I love to call, and hope to get everyone else to use, Quintessence. Because goodness knows we've only managed to take 2 actions on Aethyric Vitae research in years. So maybe once we have figured out how Quintessence might be handled or used or applied... Once we have a better idea of what it's capable of... We can set up a workshop that can start working with it.

Or maybe have it just be a general "For reverse-engineering stuff" action, perhaps. I mean, there's a tower that lets us write papers, right? Why not one that lets us explore and research our collection of Artifacts? That seems reasonable to me! It's the sort of action that feels a lot like a quality-of-life improvement to turn plans, rather than some insurmountable advantage. Also. Much like we accumulate papers over and over, we also have tons of artifacts coming in.

And, hell, if we ever ran out of artifacts and loot to study? Then we wouldn't have that free action going.

It's something that will feel really really really nice for players, by relieving the pressure of all of us worrying that we'll never get around to researching all the shinies we have. And it'll only provide one per turn.

Still though. God do I want it.
Deathbybunnies said:
I figured it was a flourescent lighting: Fluorescent lamp - Wikipedia
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Flourescent! Yeah that was the word I was thinking of. I remembered it enough to vaguely describe it but the name had gone totally out of my mind.

Honestly, this thing sounds sadly beyond us. Unless we get Max and/or Johann's help on it, too. Chemistry and Physics and Engineering aren't exactly Mathilde's strongpoints. Still, maybe we can work something out, or figure out who to send it on to.
 
picklepikkl said:
Memeing about it is one thing, but I don't actually want to use the Second Secret for anything less than an XK-class Dhar-user apocalypse. That includes just testing it.
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Could you elaborate on that ? Fells strange to want to make sure our break glass in case of apocalipse contigency will have equal odds of doing nothing or blowing in our face instead of actualy averting the apocalipse.
 
TaliesinSkye said:
Oh, wikis have mislead me. Elsewhere I read that it's a source of all the winds, is it Dhar in Divided Loyalty canon instead?
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Dhar is bad. warpstone is bad, its all crap. Noone sane wants to be anywhere near it. Source of magic is the chaos but winds of magic themselves are pure. Noone as far as anyone knows can turn dhar into any of the winds of magic.
 
Zaratustra said:
Could you elaborate on that ? Fells strange to want to make sure our break glass in case of apocalipse contigency will have equal odds of doing nothing or blowing in our face instead of actualy averting the apocalipse.
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We know how to use the Second Secret. It's not actually very hard; it just requires understanding the First Secret, which is why it's so dangerous (because understanding the First Secret makes any Dhar-user into a supervillain). The Grand Theogonist, a practitioner of an entirely different kind of magic, was able to use it correctly on the first try against the undead hordes. We do not need to worry that our break-glass-in-case-of-undead-hordes button will do nothing or blow up in our face.

However, using the Second Secret requires manipulating Dhar. I don't want to do that. I understand that the Colleges would see merely reading the Libris Mortis as a violation of Article Seven, but I think Mathilde can justify it to herself as just a source of insights, which she has already been able to separate from their source on several occasions (the Morrite burial rituals, skaven tactics and strategy, knowledge of necromantic spells) in order to help her side out without ever once touching the bad stuff herself. The line might not be meaningful to the Witch Hunters, but I think it's meaningful to her.
 
TaliesinSkye said:
Oh, wikis have mislead me. Elsewhere I read that it's a source of all the winds, is it Dhar in Divided Loyalty canon instead?
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So, the overview where it says that is entirely without footnotes, so I can't tell where they got that from.

Even in the wiki article, though, it also says this:
" The possession of Warpstone in the Empire is forbidden. While the law dates back centuries, it was rarely enforced. This changed when Magnus the Pious became Emperor. Under him, the punishment for the possession or trafficking of Warpstone was raised to the death penalty.[7a] As Warpstone is one of the substances responsible for the creation of mutants, traffickers of it are targeted by the Witch Hunters."
 
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Mopman43 said:
So, the overview where it says that is entirely without footnotes, so I can't tell where they got that from.

Even in the wiki article, though, it also says this:
" The possession of Warpstone in the Empire is forbidden. While the law dates back centuries, it was rarely enforced. This changed when Magnus the Pious became Emperor. Under him, the punishment for the possession or trafficking of Warpstone was raised to the death penalty.[7a] As Warpstone is one of the substances responsible for the creation of mutants, traffickers of it are targeted by the Witch Hunters."
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Yes, I must not have gotten that far. The line that mislead me was up closer to the top:
"Being the source of all magic, Warpstone is highly coveted by magicians, alchemists and sorcerers for its false properties of turning lead into gold and healing the sick and wounded."

Do we have any idea if our knowledge of destroying Dhar could enable us to easily destroy warpstone?
 
Note that if we take and hold Mhonar and if we kill the trolls in Kvinn-Wyr, which I want to do anyway because I hate the idea of having enemies behind our lines in a big battle, then we can leave Kvinn-Wyr empty. So holding Mhonar doesn't really cost us anything. (Assuming that Mhonar is actually empty, of course.)

I am also uncomfortable with leaving it empty. On we use the Eye of Gazul the first time, we may have groups of orcs running in different directions, and if there are orcs at Karagril and Mhonar at the same time, I would certainly want to prioritize defending Karagril, meaning the Orcs may have an easy time just waltzing into Mhonar.

In Yar they will at least have to fight their way through Skaven.

To be clear, I am not against taking Karag Yar in principle , I am just opposed to taking it as given before we have good intelligence
 
I'd be concerned that destroying warpstone that way would result in a massive explosion. Like, to the point of not being safe to use as a weapon because being able to detect and manipulate it puts you in the blast radius.
 
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TaliesinSkye said:
Do we have any idea if our knowledge of destroying Dhar could enable us to easily destroy warpstone?
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Didn't we have WoG at one point that it's not destroying Dhar as much as unravelling it? To make an imperfect comparison, instead of an ice sculpture (a zombie) you'd have water (ambient dhar and a corpse). You still have the same amount of Dhar, and dhar is not healthy for you (possible exception: Mathildes belt), but much preferable to a horde of undead.

And we'd have to test to see how that interacts with warpstone. Which is manipulating Dhar, i.e.super-extra verboten (and another step in a generaly necrotic direction, which I will fight because I don't want Mathilde to go in that direction)
 
Did the guy who wrote the Liber Mortis ever try using the Second Secret on Warpstone when he fought the Skaven? It seems like something he would try and put in the Liber Mortis.
 
Oshha said:
Did the guy who wrote the Liber Mortis ever try using the Second Secret on Warpstone when he fought the Skaven? It seems like something he would try and put in the Liber Mortis.
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It's been noted the Liber Mortis isn't actually a careful notation of magic or even a spellbook. It's a war journal. So even if Frederick Van Hel did try, he might not have written down after he told his apprentices how to do it.
 
picklepikkl said:
We know how to use the Second Secret. It's not actually very hard; it just requires understanding the First Secret, which is why it's so dangerous (because understanding the First Secret makes any Dhar-user into a supervillain). The Grand Theogonist, a practitioner of an entirely different kind of magic, was able to use it correctly on the first try against the undead hordes. We do not need to worry that our break-glass-in-case-of-undead-hordes button will do nothing or blow up in our face.

However, using the Second Secret requires manipulating Dhar. I don't want to do that. I understand that the Colleges would see merely reading the Libris Mortis as a violation of Article Seven, but I think Mathilde can justify it to herself as just a source of insights, which she has already been able to separate from their source on several occasions (the Morrite burial rituals, skaven tactics and strategy, knowledge of necromantic spells) in order to help her side out without ever once touching the bad stuff herself. The line might not be meaningful to the Witch Hunters, but I think it's meaningful to her.
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I think you are looking at the situation to simplisticaly.
Second secret isn't just ''break-glass-in-case-of-undead-hordes button'' it is ''break-glass-in-case-of-Dhar-Powered-Apocalipse button'' it an important distinciton because the testing option we have is to see how it reacts to warpstone, wich means it is a potential last reasort in case of more than just an undead horde, like for example an skaven invasion of massive proportions, and we also have to consider the realy high end necromancers likely to cause us to use second secret are also likely to be aware of it and having heard of what the Grand theogonist did.
So yes while it we be sure it would work on the same situation were it worked before there are entire dimension were it could also be decisive but we aren't sure how it would work.

Also are you sure that you aren't projecting you values and the distinction is meaningfull more to you than it would be for Mathilde ?
Because if recent disscussion showed somehing is that people have a need to feel like they are doind the moraly right that often supercedes the actual logic of the setting.
Consider you own words, '' touching the bad stuff'', do you believe touching dhar is imoral in and of itself ? Why? Why would Mathilde believe the same?
Personaly I don't think Mathilde see touching dhar as imoral so much as stupid and generaly not worth it due to the inevitable conseuences, but as a grey wizard she is logical and practical, so when in a situation the reason that lead to the conclusion don't apply then the logic doesn't apply.
 
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Zaratustra said:
Consider you own words, '' touching the bad stuff'', do you believe touching dhar is imoral in and of itself ? Why? Why would Mathilde believe the same?
Personaly I don't think Mathilde see touching dhar as imoral so much as stupid and generaly not worth it due to the inevitable conseuences, but as a grey wizard she is logical and practical, so when in a situation the reason that lead to the conclusion don't apply then the logic doesn't apply.
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For all her eccentricities, Mathilde is a loyal wizard of the colleges. She may skirt the line, but so far she has never broken the articles of magic. Using the second secret does break them, there are no ifs and buts, we had WoG on it.

I may not agree with most that it is important that she doesn't break the articles, but even I acknowledge that it is not a trivial action.
 
BoneyM said:
They'd be able to seal them off in one way or another.
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BoneyM said:
They'd be able to seal them off in one way or another.
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From this logic, if we do take Yar, we could also seal it off from the Caldera as well. In fact, we can take a number of mountains, depending on what we want to take, if we seal up the entrance to the caldera. This will also maximize the death toll of the Waaagh, as they will be stuck in the caldera or pushed towards enemies.
 
Maybe the warpstone destruction question is a moot point. The dwarves might well have a good method of safely destroying warpstone. We've got a rune that deals with Dhar, after all. Might be worth asking some time.

Edit: By the way, is anyone else interested in the idea of building a warpstone detector as a way of detecting Skaven tunneling incursions before they break through into Dwarven tunnels?
 
Abhorsen said:
From this logic, if we do take Yar, we could also seal it off from the Caldera as well. In fact, we can take a number of mountains, depending on what we want to take, if we seal up the entrance to the caldera. This will also maximize the death toll of the Waaagh, as they will be stuck in the caldera or pushed towards enemies.
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If we seal the Caldera how is the Waaagh going to get in?
 
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