Warhammer Fantasy: Divided Loyalties - an Advisor's Quest

[random_npc]

Eh, maybe... although i kinda doubt they can hit the industrial revolution, no fossil fuels, and things like railroads are impossible with greenskins and beast men to fuck them up.

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I'm fairly sure they have coal on malus, but if not steam tanks mean they have to have workarounds. I also would not call railways essential for an industrial revolution, helpful, but not essential. But no other race has the dynamic of every decade getting them a bit more breathing room to spend more time on getting more breathing room for the next decade. Humanity is not losing, they are slowly winning.

The power of Humanity as a whole is that we are in many ways blessed with a bunch of small advantages and few negatives.

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Everyone else is running a min-maxed specialist build that their patron made, that had to take crippling flaws to buy their advantages. Humanity is a generalist build that has the likely in the long term decisive, advantage of lacking a crippling flaw.

 

[DevilsAdvocate]

I mean... we have no idea how to accomplish theurgy.

We have a pie-in-the-sky end goal, and maybe studying the Coin would help somehow. That's not a super reliable method either.

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We have already done it... once.

When we got the whole OnlyGorkRitual thing, we channeled the energy through us, to Ranald.

God-wizardy-magic would be doing exactly that, just for smaller stuff like miscasts, and working up from there.

 

[ninjafish]

I'm fairly sure they have coal on malus, but if not steam tanks mean they have to have workarounds. I also would not call railways essential for an industrial revolution, helpful, but not essential. But no other race has the dynamic of every decade getting them a bit more breathing room to spend more time on getting more breathing room for the next decade. Humanity is not losing, they are slowly winning.

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I'm pretty sure they aren't really getting more breathing room.

The war in sylvania has not yet been one, the forest of shadows is yet another haven for the undead, and the drakwald is still full of beastmen and greenskins.

Also steam tanks are apparently an impossible to replicate one hit wonder tech that tends to messily kill anyone who tries to actually figure out how they work.

 

[veekie]

Hm. Theory: The Black Hunger is stress-related, and is therefore endemic to skaven "backstab as a greeting" society.
Stress = adrenaline = heightened metabolism = Black Hunger.
Qrech is fairly safe and in a stable social position. We both know where we stand, and his position as a prisoner prevents him from wanting to jockey for status.
weirdly, it would seem Qrech has achieved One Is Freedom

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We do know it allows battle musk supermode where they max out all metrics but starve once it ends. Probably adrenaline linked. They got the Akamichi technique built in, but kept in artificial food scarcity via breeder abuse

 

[Boney]

Eh, maybe... although i kinda doubt they can hit the industrial revolution, no fossil fuels, and things like railroads are impossible with greenskins and beast men to fuck them up.

There machinery will never be as good as the dwarfs, their magic never as good as the elves.

Those two races failed, so why would humanity succeed where they couldn't when they have nothing that the other two did not.

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The Elves and the Dwarves together built the Waystone Network, preventing the world from being overrun by unreality, which is the complete opposite of failure. The Elves taught humanity magic, the Dwarves taught humanity steel and gunpowder. The acts of the Elder Races are not proof that humanity are doomed, they are a foundation upon which humanity might stand to better the world even further. And the Elves and Dwarves are not gone from the world, and might very well be standing right there alongside humanity in the days to come.

WoG: Nihilistic fatalism is not quest canon.

 

[SuperSonicSound]

Look, it's a bad idea, because everyone else who did it ended up dead or crazy. If you can't understand that, you are a troll. Regardless, I'm done arguing about this.

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Or you are being entirely unreasonable and ignoring evidence which goes against your conclusion, no one else has the safety nets we do to try this experiments with out getting screwed to fast to pull anything off.

So the fact people tried in the past is utterly irrelevant. They ended up crazy due to dhar exposure, the belt stops that, also calling some one a troll whilst completely ignoring what they are saying is pretty damn rude.

 

[Alectai]

Hm. Theory: The Black Hunger is stress-related, and is therefore endemic to skaven "backstab as a greeting" society.
Stress = adrenaline = heightened metabolism = Black Hunger.
Qrech is fairly safe and in a stable social position. We both know where we stand, and his position as a prisoner prevents him from wanting to jockey for status.
weirdly, it would seem Qrech has achieved One Is Freedom

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I commented a while back, but Skaven Society resembles the Prisoner's Dilemma in a lot of ways.

The winning choice for everybody is to cooperate--each individual gains a relative fraction of resources but in the long run you're doing quite well, so the optimal choice is to always cooperate.

However, Skaven society is such a pressure cooker, brought on by the way they're raised, the insane overpopulation, and the dictates of a Chaos God that invariably, someone hammers the "Defect" button and gains a solid lead based on the gains of Defecting when the others Cooperate--and then even though everyone else is now hammering 'Defect' in retaliation, he's seized a strong position as long as he's willing to keep hammering the Defect button to keep someone else from competing their way up to that point. The Skaven's Black Hunger can be attributed to thousands of years of adapting around this--so that they can make use of all of the resources gained at the beginning of a 'Defect' fest to survive the subsequent shitstorm long enough to get to clearer waters again.

He's in a new situation now, so he's defaulted to 'Cooperate', and Mathilde has consistently--over the course of almost two years now--reciprocated--and it's happened long enough that his metabolism and temperament is stabilizing, since the normal Skaven societal structure in miniature rarely lasts this long because eventually someone gets in a position of power and then hits 'Defect' to go for the gold. Mathilde gains nothing from hammering 'Defect' though.

It's an interesting sociological debate to say the least, there's probably papers to be written on this topic alone.

 

[random_npc]

I'm pretty sure they aren't really getting more breathing room.

The war in sylvania has not yet been one, the forest of shadows is yet another haven for the undead, and the drakwald is still full of beastmen and greenskins.

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sylvania is less of an issue than it was, and tech ticking up means those pressures become easier to deal with. Even in cannon the empire has an upward trend. More and better weapons as time goes on. The other races tend to get new units because they are breaking out more stuff, the empire gets better weapons because they are making new shit.

 

[ninjafish]

The Elves and the Dwarves together built the Waystone Network, preventing the world from being overrun by unreality, which is the complete opposite of failure. The Elves taught humanity magic, the Dwarves taught humanity steel and gunpowder. The acts of the Elder Races are not proof that humanity are doomed, they are a foundation upon which humanity might stand to better the world even further.

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Except the waystone network is breaking down.

and it's creators are trodding the slow path to extinction.

They rose, they hit their peak and then they fell.

whose to say the same wont happen to humans.

 

[vsh]

WoG: Nihilistic fatalism is not quest canon.

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For what it's worth, it's not really a WHFB theme as well, more of a 40k schtick.

 

[Boney]

Except the waystone network is breaking down.

and it's creators are trodding the slow path to extinction.

They rose, they hit their peak and then they fell.

Humanity will do the same, likely not even reaching a fraction of what the other two achieved.

And their is no one left to take up the fight afterwards.

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You're arguing the future of the quest with the guy writing the quest.

Edit:

whose to say the same wont happen to humans.

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Mathilde.

 

[Orkus Majorkus]

(More seriously, it makes you wonder why the actual Skaven do really eat it. Is it supposed to make them stronger or something, or what?)

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Sound judgement was never the Skaven's strong suit.

 

[random_npc]

Humanity will do the same, likely not even reaching a fraction of what the other two achieved.

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I agree with the first part, but not the second. Everything eventually dies. But what reasons do we have to believe humans will not reach as high as those who came before them? or that when they finally fall they will not have found or made successors?

 

[Guile]

That's not really seen as a probable outcome, with dhar it's part of the process

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...?

We've exploded at least a couple of times now, messing around with the snake blood. I mean, not even our experiments with warpstone exposure; taking it outside when the moon is out triggers an explosion.

We have already done it... once.

When we got the whole OnlyGorkRitual thing, we channeled the energy through us, to Ranald.

God-wizardy-magic would be doing exactly that, just for smaller stuff like miscasts, and working up from there.

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Well, ignoring that turning ourselves into a tube from one Godly power to another is probably pretty different than how we'd end up doing it...

I wonder how Ranald feels about us throwing our miscasting magic out into the Warp and hoping he's there to field things? Cool with it? He's probably cool with it.

 

[ninjafish]

You're arguing the future of the quest with the guy writing the quest.

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Nah, not the quest, just the warhammer world in general.


Then again i suppose that's pretty pointless as well, since we know humanity failed without achieving anything of note in canon.

OOOOOOOh boy guess that late night nihilism is kicking in and influencing my posting, BRB gonna go take my meds.

 

[veekie]

Sound judgement was never the Skaven's strong suit.

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Two angles to view it:
1) Rodents are well known for compulsive stress eating. When stressed they eat ANYTHING, even normally inedible materials. Since Skaven use Warpstone for everything and metal is harder to chew through they just bite the nearest thing that won't bite back. Which is often going to be warpstone.

2) Warpstone causes mutations. Normally this is a bad thing, but for Skaven, if the mutation confers an advantage, then they Won the Gacha and will have an advantage over non-mutated Skaven. If not they're too dead to complain. Heck, we know with the Breeders and Moulder, that you can channel warpstone mutation in specific directions for particular benefits.

 

[DevilsAdvocate]

Eh, maybe... although i kinda doubt they can hit the industrial revolution, no fossil fuels, and things like railroads are impossible with greenskins and beast men to fuck them up.

There machinery will never be as good as the dwarfs, their magic never as good as the elves.

Those two races failed, so why would humanity succeed where they couldn't when they have nothing that the other two did not?

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Both of them are slow. They both where made with a specific thing they where supposed to do and do that well.

They started to fail because things that they where not made for came up, they lost stuff when they tried to adapt, and now are trying to recover back to where they once where.

It is like making a cathedral of stone, and then raiders came in and broke the roof and set fire to the place.

Humans, on the otherhand, had not yet gotten their "cathedral" or their 'Reason' beyond the bare basics.

So rather than a cathedral, we are more like a tree. We are not "working down" with our glory days behind us, we are "Working up" with them being up ahead.

We are not as good as dwarves, but we can innovate a lot better than them. We are not as good as elves, but we can replace our losses a lot easier and our magic experts can even become immortal like they can.

We dont have their strengths, but we also lack their debilitating weaknesses.

 

[chocolote12]

To the point where i seriously question why the fuck the old ones even kept humans around in thier current state.

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We're not geniuses at arcane magic, but we learn fast, there are a billion of us, we can actually try our hands at every possible thing in the world except one very specific discipline (and that only because the manuals take longer than our lifetimes to read), and we're absolutely fabulous at Divine Magic.

If you're looking for our niche, there it is. We have a billion imaginary friends, and we can make them beat people up. Like, Mathilde has an imaginary friend with the power to control chance. She can just pose and say a cool one liner and he'll cause somebody to try to deep fry a turkey and burn down their house. He's totally unrelated to her other ability to manipulate reality with her mind, he just sort of happened.

Our friend Kasmir has an imaginary friend who lets him shoot laser beams out of his eyes, or whatever it is Sigmar does. Priests of Verana have magic Justice powers. Ulric will give you a puppy.

Humans can basically make up magical Lores whenever they want to and they actually work. It's crazy.

 

[ninjafish]

I agree with the first part, but not the second. Everything eventually dies. But what reasons do we have to believe humans will not reach as high as those who came before them? or that when they finally fall they will not have found or made successors?

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I would argue that humanity literally can't achieve the heights that the elves and dwarves did, because the traits that enabled the elves and dwarves to do those things aren't present in humans.

because no matter how hard a human tries they will never be able to use high magic, or create runes.

maybe gromril.. but i doubt it, someone would have tried that shit by now if it wasn't some unique dwarf only thing.

 

[DevilsAdvocate]

...?

We've exploded at least a couple of times now, messing around with the snake blood. I mean, not even our experiments with warpstone exposure; taking it outside when the moon is out triggers an explosion.

Well, ignoring that turning ourselves into a tube from one Godly power to another is probably pretty different than how we'd end up doing it...

I wonder how Ranald feels about us throwing our miscasting magic out into the Warp and hoping he's there to field things? Cool with it? He's probably cool with it.

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It is basically how we start, working with something we know works and building off that to get to duelcasting with our good god Ranald.

We have something to actually build off of is what I am saying here.

 

[random_npc]

I would argue that humanity literally can't achieve the heights that the elves and dwarves did, because the traits that enabled the elves and dwarves to do those things aren't present in humans.

because no matter how hard a human tries they will never be able to use high magic, or create runes.

maybe gromril.. but i doubt it, someone would have tried that shit by now if it wasn't some unique dwarf only thing.

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no, they won't match the exact workings of the dwafs or elves. They will have their own. Humans can iterate better than any race. They can try a hundred things and find the ones that work, and actually propagate those discovers. Whatever peak they reach will be uniquely human, the same way the peaks of the dwarfs and elves where uniquely dwarven and elven.

 

[DragonParadox]

Power creep is an issue with everything. It's just particularly notable in quests because it's an interactive format for which the QM has to provide gratification to large numbers of people after making them wait for it. That's often a recipe for erring on the side of large rewards.

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As both a player and a GM I object heartily to this description of questing. I do not write quests because I'm peddling gratification to the players, nor do I think any good GM should. Quests are at their heart about collaborative storytelling.

 

[Guile]

It is basically how we start, working with something we know works and building off that to get to duelcasting with our good god Ranald.

We have something to actually build off of is what I am saying here.

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Can we throw ulgu out into the Warp for Ranald to catch? We did it, once, with godly energy. And that mostly read as opening ourselves up and letting Ranald connect like ET holding out a glowing finger.

Does he even want to deal with our shit? Being possessed by Mork is kind of an extreme situation, and he did us a solid. That doesn't mean he wants to be our lightning rod or our toxic waste dumping ground.

 

[Xsplora]

Reader here not a voting participant

Thanks, BoneyM

Great quest and great writing and for the most part I am enjoying it, however, the latest choice has left me hollow so to counteract it I went and watched cat videos.

The play loop included a cat with baby video. And then I got wondering about Mat having to deal with baby inquisitive dwarves in her workshop...

So to the rest of the participants here..

What do we know about what may work for increasing population for dwarves and what plans are in place?

There were hints that the organ vat might have led to something so are we able to check back with the collages?

Amber enchanting? A ring of turn into dwarf temporarily so that dwarves and their taller sweethearts can have dwarven babies? What are the restrictions here?

Panoramia. Herbs or similar to make more female dwarves instead of male.

Can we dig up an ancient rune or something to make new dwarves?

Pure luck. Find out when dwarves are unthreatened in their own fortress the population ratio swings the other way as there is no need for warriors?

Chaos Naa, not a good idea.

What ideas or plans do we have?

 

[ninjafish]

no, they won't match the exact workings of the dwafs or elves. They will have their own. Humans can iterate better than any race. They can try a hundred things and find the ones that work, and actually propagate those discovers. Whatever peak they reach will be uniquely human, the same way the peaks of the dwarfs and elves where uniquely dwarven and elven.

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And because of that they will be innately inferior to the heights of dwarves and elves.

It's not a matter of time, Elf mages are just plain better than human mages and that will never change, Dwarven smiths and engineers are just plain better than their human equivalent's, and that will never not be the case.

The closest thing humanity had to a peak in its supposed niche of "Making gods" was nehekhara... and for all their vaunted war statuary and divine covenant, Nagash laid them all low, god and mortal alike.