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Warhammer Fantasy: Divided Loyalties - an Advisor's Quest

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Alright, since we're starting to edge into that time zone where thread madness kicks in, I thought I'd do my part to help stave it off. As such, here's a proposal for how to deal with the coming Waaaagh, assuming the dragon doesn't kill us and all the Skaven are generally mopped up: I say we block up the outside entrances of every Karag except Lhune, Nar, and Karagril that doesn't have a dragon in the way, so that the orcs will have no choice but to cross the entire Caldera to get at us. Thoughts?
 
Ericwinter said:
Alright, since we're starting to edge into that time zone where thread madness kicks in, I thought I'd do my part to help stave it off. As such, here's a proposal for how to deal with the coming Waaaagh, assuming the dragon doesn't kill us and all the Skaven are generally mopped up: I say we block up the outside entrances of every Karag except Lhune, Nar, and Karagril that doesn't have a dragon in the way, so that the orcs will have no choice but to cross the entire Caldera to get at us. Thoughts?
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Then we can go trogdor on the orcs and burninate the country side!
 
TaliesinSkye said:
Okay. So /why/ do the gods work that way, and how can we fix it?

For instance, could we create a network similar to the waystone network that absorbed ambient emotional energy and formatted it into the right worship shape for the Order Gods to use, feeding them and simultaneously starving Chaos?
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Just as a hypothesis, I would guess that the fact the Order Gods are generated through direct worship means that the 'image' they are given in the energies that make up their form are far more focused, so they are shaped pretty much as the worshippers imagine them as, all combined together of course, and generally you imagine a god you're worshipping to be good. Or if you're a terrible person at least till better than the Chaos Gods.

Said Chaos Gods on the other hand, as they are fuelled directly through emotion, well when you feel emotion you don't focus it through a specific form. Worship has structure, emotions don't, so the energies making up Chaos Gods encompass the entirety of those concepts, and probably bleed in with some unwanted implications in those concepts too.

It's the difference between say, take Aphrodite, Greek Goddess of Love, Beauty, Pleasure and Passion, focused through a pleasant and positive image by worship, so a nice, pleasant Order God, versus simply generating a God through the culmination of all such pleasures, and imagine what you're thinking when you feel those. Those energies are tainted with others, lust, the things you want to do to the person you're feeling those things for.

That's how you get Slaanesh.

So in a sense, Aphrodite is a focused, structures Slaanesh, whilst Slaanesh is Aphrodite unfocused and tainted with all those other emotions. Order versus Chaos.

Suffice to say, one's a lot more pleasant a god than the other, no pun intended.

Now, Order Gods aren't necessarily all pleasant, for example I imagine Khaine is something close to a focused and filtered version of Khorne and vice versa, but well Khaine is still far nicer.

Now, because it's interesting and a bit horrific, let's imagine what might happen if we try to convert an Order God into a Chaos God, whether that's possible or not, which if it is I imagine would involve funnelling related and unfiltered emotions through acts of worship to try and taint said worship with emotion over a long period, shifting the gods energies form focused worship to wild emotion, but anyway, result.

Let's take Ranald. He has four aspects/concepts associated with him; Gambling/Luck, Stealth, Deception and Protection.

Gambling I imagine would translate to emotions of Excitement most closely, plus probably Recklessness, which I'll view as the opposite of self-preservation. And a lot of Greed. Lot's of it.

Luck is I imagine more of a thing you wish for when gambling, there's not really an emotion associated with it, so I imagine that's gone, or made a lesser aspect depending on if people still worship him in that respect.

Stealth, well when you're feeling stealth it's either hiding, feeling Fear, or hunting, which is both Excitement and possibly Bloodlust, depending on if you're hunting money or lives, either for food or to kill enemies.

Of note is even if you do not focus on Bloodlust aspect whilst transforming Ranald into a Chaos God, once complete it will likely leak through from just wild hunters; that's the point of Chaos Gods, all instances of that emotion contribute, so all hunters will contribute, so Bloodlust very likely will get in.

Deception, well I couldn't really say what emotion that would be, just desire to deceive? Maybe Lies, but Deception is probably already pretty self explanatory, though there's also the reasons you're deceiving that might get included. Hatred, Lust, Greed come immediately to mind, though these would likely be in smaller quantities.

And then Protection. And often in a sense of Revolution. Basic Protection might invoke Love, Duty, that sort of stuff, but Revolution is often Anger, Hatred. Maybe Greed in the sense of protecting what's yours, which might extend Greed to people to, but that might be a stretch.

So as a guess I imagine Ranald's Chaos aspects would likely include Excitement, Recklessness, Greed, Bloodlust, Fear, something along the lines of Deception or Lies, a lesser amount of Hatred and some small pieces of Desire, Lust and Love. Maybe a lesser amount Luck.

Which sounds a lot like the reckless and greedy lovechild of Khorne and Slannesh who enjoys hunting terrified mortals in his downtime.

Absolutely, let's not do this.

We already have one Wild Hunt with the damn Wood Elves, let's not give humanity a second, daemonic one to go with it.

Now, all that said it is an interesting line of thought, and I imagine it might be possible to build some sort of hybrid, something where active worship creates a filter, or maybe a skeleton or scaffolding which could be filled in with raw emotion for a more potent but still controlled God, but even if we could figure out the theoretical stuff of something like this in our lifetime I imagine implementation would take centuries of careful societal manipulation, not to mention risks, and frankly there's probably a lot more we could do with researching Theurgy before even glancing in this direction.

Funny note though, researching the creation of new Chaos Gods, or the converting of Order Gods into them, does not seem to be strictly against the Articles of Imperial Magic. Well not yet, anyway.
 
Ericwinter said:
Uh, guys? Not to get in the middle of a great big brewing debate, but don't you think Boney would have told us if our technical Queekish was shaky, or at the very least put some sort of clarifier on the trait in our character sheet? All i remember him saying was that a linguist would help with the entire thing, since we lack the necessary traits for any sort of translation to be perfect, but otherwise it would still be servicable. Remember that he doesn't really like having to simulate all the small details for things, and isn't likely to try and pull a fast one on us.
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Questers like to 'anticipate' problems of previous actions and decisions with their intellect to prevent them appearing in the quest.

Most often this causes the appearance of the issue and a AP drain, if the QM doesn't laugh and post a disclaimer about it being handled.

Sometimes it's a good idea for critical projects (the tower for instance), sometimes it's better to let sleeping dogs lie for AP maximization (this manual example). Mechanically anyway, immersion may vary.
 
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Ericwinter said:
Alright, since we're starting to edge into that time zone where thread madness kicks in, I thought I'd do my part to help stave it off. As such, here's a proposal for how to deal with the coming Waaaagh, assuming the dragon doesn't kill us and all the Skaven are generally mopped up: I say we block up the outside entrances of every Karag except Lhune, Nar, and Karagril that doesn't have a dragon in the way, so that the orcs will have no choice but to cross the entire Caldera to get at us. Thoughts?
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Pretend the tower isn't yet operational as to draw them all in, and rely on an outpost on Mannslieb where we will have a legion of our finest soldiers to wait in an ambush while we try to convince a young shaman to turn to our side. I mean we already have the chair, might as well go full Palpatine.

"Yur smugness is yah weakness!"
"And your faith in your Waaaagh is yours!"
 
It occurs to me that Hysh might have a detect lies spell. And that the Dragon might cast it on Mat. And that the belt might burn it out of his mind. In which case, good luck treating with it. That part of the definition that says "Hostile spell" just got really relevant.
 
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Gul Damar said:
Pretend the tower isn't yet operational as to draw them all in, and rely on an outpost on Mannslieb where we will have a legion of our finest soldiers to wait in an ambush while we try to convince a young shaman to turn to our side. I mean we already have the chair, might as well go full Palpatine.

"Yur smugness is yah weakness!"
"And your faith in your Waaaagh is yours!"
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Even though I know this is a joke, I still feel it necessary to point out that It's kinda useless to pretend something isn't ready when your enemies don't even know it exists.
 
primemountain said:
It occurs to me that Hysh might have a detect lies spell. And that the Dragon might cast it on Mat. And that the belt might burn it out of his mind. In which case, good luck treating with it. That part of the definition that says "Hostile spell" just got really relevant.
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So the spell has to target the user. If it's like a zone of truth than it wouldn't trigger. Also the belt has to take the definition of hostile spell from somewhere and the most likely place is us. So if we don't see a spell as hostile it likely won't trigger.
 
Zero Gravitas said:
We could always knock the sorcerer unconscious.
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And we mine it for spells while it is unconscious how?

Andres110 said:
Cut out its tongue. To do magic in Warhammer you need to be able to speak.
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Thats defeats the purpose of learning magic from it in the first place. Also, might want to stop that right there.

I know this vote doesn ´t have much traction anyway, but going after the Eshin Sorcerer to capture it when it is not the din of battle is kind of extremely dangerous. Its like voting for Mathilde to kidnap another Mathilde. Except its intrigue is probably even higher, what with being culmination of millenia of training to be the perfect assassins.
 
Another concern to the whole "Talk to a Dragon" is it's impossible while concealed. So we'll be out of stealth if we try and talk to it, and that might just let some of the Eshin lock on to us. I do not want to find out how bad ambush by Eshin Assassin might go.

Or do you think we can stay hidden from any watchers, while talking to the Dragon? those Eyes of Truth might let him talk to us, while we are in full stealth.
 
pucflek said:
And we mine it for spells while it is unconscious how?


Thats defeats the purpose of learning magic from it in the first place. Also, might want to stop that right there.

I know this vote doesn ´t have much traction anyway, but going after the Eshin Sorcerer to capture it when it is not the din of battle is kind of extremely dangerous. Its like voting for Mathilde to kidnap another Mathilde. Except its intrigue is probably even higher, what with being culmination of millenia of training to be the perfect assassins.
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It's intrigue is probably 25, that;s what Eshin rolled for intrigue against Clan Mors on the roll we saw.
 
primemountain said:
Another concern to the whole "Talk to a Dragon" is it's impossible while concealed. So we'll be out of stealth if we try and talk to it, and that might just let some of the Eshin lock on to us. I do not want to find out how bad ambush by Eshin Assassin might go.

Or do you think we can stay hidden from any watchers, while talking to the Dragon? those Eyes of Truth might let him talk to us, while we are in full stealth.
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I would be quite happy with an eshin trying to sneak up on us while we talk to the Hysh dragon. That is one less assassin we have to worry about. Unless you think it can sneak past the dragon to stab us?
 
I still don't understand why capturing an Eshin skaven sorcerer is even a subject of discussion.

It involves:
1) neutralizing its magic during containment, a magic specifically designed for infiltration and exfiltration.
2) convincing an Eshin to betray one of the most guarded secrets of his own clan, completely, utterly not the same as a disgruntled Moulder chieftain.
3) keeping for an indeterminate length of time someone that is likely as competent as an Eshin Assassin in our dungeon, in our own fucking home.
4) hoping that we manage to separate the bullshit he will say from the maybe truth and technical truth in order to have an accurate understanding of its magic system (reminder: he is a master at intrigue and lying).

This is a bad idea. As in parlaying with a dragon in the middle of a battle seems like the pinnacle of common sense in comparison. Just write off the magic portion of the Skaven dictionary or let someone who has more time or is more insane do it using the basis we already wrote. Make the magic portion of Queekish be someone else's problem or hope to find magical papers in the ruins of Yar. We have already enough shit to do without putting up with that kind of unending headache. Good enough would already be a ground-breaking achievement.
 
Cathon Grimeye said:
I still don't understand why capturing an Eshin skaven sorcerer is even a subject of discussion.
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I suspect it's a subject for discussion for the same reason reanimating Van Hall is, in a thread this large unusual opinions will get debated too. That is by no means a bad thing since sometimes the perspective of such positions can inform the thread as a whole in ways we would otherwise have missed but I suspect in this situation there is not really much chance of it passing a vote.
 
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Actually, here's a thought: what are the chances that the Eshin we ran into in the past happens to be the Eshin Sorceror? After all, our Eshin "friend" seemed to be working alone, while the Eshin Assassins we see on the field seem to be working as a unit of three.
 
Andmeuths said:
Actually, here's a thought: what are the chances that the Eshin we ran into in the past happens to be the Eshin Sorceror? After all, our Eshin "friend" seemed to be working alone, while the Eshin Assassins we see on the field seem to be working as a unit of three.
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low, Mathilde would have noticed the ulgu+dhar.

More likely he is one of the trio.
 
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