Warhammer Fantasy: Divided Loyalties - an Advisor's Quest

defenestrator · Dec 11, 2019

mmgaballah said:
why are people hung up about Mathilde killing over 500,000 orcs and saying she is going to feel bad about it ? she intellectually knows that orcs only have one reason for living and that is the fight , loot , pillage and burn , she has no reason what so ever to feel bad about killing them orcs don't have family or loved ones to morn them they spawn out of the ground like mushrooms and get to fighting , looting , pillaging and burning everything nearby .
it makes more sense that she is drained from casting a powerful spell and having the attention of several gods on her

It's this bit

BoneyM said:
Burning Shadows is selective in what it burns, and the criteria used can be incredibly vague or incredibly specific. The dominant theory is that the spell draws information from the caster's mind to differentiate targets from non-targets. Either something else is going on here or there's a significant flaw in that theory. Because for an instant that stretches into what feels like hours, you glimpse one greenskin after another for a fraction of a second each and mentally confirm that, yes, it is an enemy of the Dawi.

The implication then is that she saw a very huge amount (if not all) of the faces of sapient beings, confirmed that yes this one Ork/snotling needs to die, and then turned every one of them into ash.

Orks or not, that's gonna severely tax a sane person mentally and emotionally.

Miriam · Dec 11, 2019

We narrowed the odds of survival from "essentially impossible" to "quite improbable".

Or we broke the WAAAGH entirely in a single casting and turned "Die well" into the mother of all omelets on the High King's face.

Either is good.

PurposefulZephyr · Dec 11, 2019

Just want to add- the fact that Mathilde had to look at each and every single orc she killed...
a) She'll be pretty good at recognizing them now. Pretty much every new face will be familiar (and haunting) to her, to a degree.
b) She can safely say she took highest amount of greenskins through face-to-face engagements. Take that, brave warriors!
c) Imagine the terror she could inflict by describing this to other greens: "I've stared into thousands who look just like you, and you know what I did to them? Turned them to ash. Are you ready to meet your brothers?"

Aegon Targaryen · Dec 11, 2019

B_omega said:
And we seems to be quite out of mojo juice

We can recast it every 30 seconds.

PurposefulZephyr · Dec 11, 2019

Just want to point out: any ork that somehow, miraculously gets into the tower? Will be greeted with Wolf at controls.
Or in other words:

Angelazreal1 · Dec 11, 2019

Aegon Targaryen said:
We can recast it every 30 seconds.

Somebody should make a FAQ for the Eye.

Chopak · Dec 11, 2019

Those were some shitty rolls.

Blorp said:
snip

Thanks for killing the magic that was telling me it was Gork vs Mork

Abhorsen · Dec 11, 2019

@BoneyM: Do we know how many Push Wagons have entered the Caldera?

Also, it seemed that the numbers were for percentage of Orcs in the caldera. @BoneyM: Was this a percentage of the estimated numbers beforehand, or a percentage of remaining Waaagh observed? Basically, if half the Waaagh had died on the approach to the western gate, and all the rest of the Waaagh had entered the citadel, would the numbers have been 5 and 0, or some method of saying 100 (not sure if they have two 0's)?

vsh · Dec 11, 2019

mmgaballah said:
why are people hung up about Mathilde killing over 500,000 orcs and saying she is going to feel bad about it ? she intellectually knows that orcs only have one reason for living and that is the fight , loot , pillage and burn , she has no reason what so ever to feel bad about killing them orcs don't have family or loved ones to morn them they spawn out of the ground like mushrooms and get to fighting , looting , pillaging and burning everything nearby .
it makes more sense that she is drained from casting a powerful spell and having the attention of several gods on her

That's not true in WHFB and even if it was, focusing on how that might mean it's okay to WMD them is against Rule 2.

Horium · Dec 11, 2019

Zioneer said:
We narrowed the odds of survival from "essentially impossible" to "quite improbable".

Or we broke the WAAAGH entirely in a single casting and turned "Die well" into the mother of all omelets on the High King's face.

Either is good.

Even in the very worst case scenario, that "only" 250 000 orcs died, the strategic position isn't improbable survival, but manageable opposition.

In very best scenario, we have almost completely won, and we hopefully get to see Belegar, Kragg and Kazador fly to Karaz-a-Karak and constructively roast Throgrim.

Sinsystems · Dec 11, 2019

Personally considering how mentally straining this was, I think that Mathilde should probably spend her time mostly doing MAP things in order to help the Dwarves clear the Snotling Tunnels.

LilyWitch · Dec 11, 2019

Glau said:
Did she ever get any character development, or was she just pure sexy-evil trope? It might have been cool if they explored a little bit what about the elf culture and her experiences growing up made her into that.

Morathi never got much development in Warhammer Fantasy unfortinately but she has become a much more interesting and driven character in Age of Sigmar.

Ganurath said:
Upon further reflection, the absence of Sigmar is once again noted.

Well to be fair we didn't invite him and would have told him to leave, so he couldn't fuck this up too, if he had shown up.

Miriam · Dec 11, 2019

PurposefulZephyr said:
c) Imagine the terror she could inflict by describing this to other greens: "I've stared into thousands who look just like you, and you know what I did to them? Turned them to ash. Are you ready to meet your brothers?"

To be fair, these are greenskins. There is a non-zero chance that some will take that as a challenge and will want to be the one who krumped the "Ashy lady".

Pipeman · Dec 11, 2019

Deathbybunnies said:
I actually disagree - from a player perspective, Mathilde being the sort of person who deals with stressful experiences by focusing on her work is pretty much ideal, assuming she doesn't push herself into burnout.

Not sure it shakes out that conveniently, but even then the most I can see is her grabbing an unrelated project and digging herself into it deeply enough to ignore everything else, so we'd still want to place some restrictions on how the turn is spent.

Miriam · Dec 11, 2019

Horium said:
Even in the very worst case scenario, that "only" 250 000 orcs died, the strategic position isn't improbable survival, but manageable opposition.

In very best scenario, we have almost completely won, and we hopefully get to see Belegar, Kragg and Kazador fly to Karaz-a-Karak and constructively roast Throgrim.

Good point, I underestimated how many orcs we killed. Either way Thorgrim's gonna get a roasting.

Boney · Dec 11, 2019

Abhorsen said:
@BoneyM: Do we know how many Push Wagons have entered the Caldera?

About forty.

Abhorsen said:
Also, it seemed that the numbers were for percentage of Orcs in the caldera. @BoneyM: Was this a percentage of the estimated numbers beforehand, or a percentage of remaining Waaagh observed? Basically, if half the Waaagh had died on the approach to the western gate, and all the rest of the Waaagh had entered the citadel, would the numbers have been 5 and 0, or some method of saying 100 (not sure if they have two 0's)?

Percentage of the Orcs attempting to enter the Caldera that have currently entered the Caldera.

OneirosTheWriter · Dec 11, 2019

Nice speech, Warboss, real inspirational stuff. Bet it'll go down in legend.

Deathbybunnies · Dec 11, 2019

I noticed that apart from the possibility of literal divine intervention, there wasn't even an attempt at counterspelling. It looks like the theory that they were out of Shamans, possibly for Mork-related reasons, was correct.

Derpmind · Dec 11, 2019

BoneyM said:
[??? vs ???: 23 vs 20]

We really dodged a bullet there. Last time we had a "divine (bad) attention" roll, one of the results was "every orc everywhere knows your name and hates you." This time the stakes were even bigger. I'm really glad all our rolls more-or-less worked out.

BoneyM said:
(one, encompassed within a single body but no less powerful for it, moves through halls of stone long remembered, a pat on a shoulder here, a gruff word of encouragement there)

Interesting confirmation that the White Dwarf isn't just a really old Dwarf with gear from the Old Days.

Aegon Targaryen said:
That was Quex, not Mazdamundi. And the most destructive spell ever cast was the Deliverance of Itza, which killed over 2 million daemons and keeps at it for over 5000 years.

I tried to look up what the Deliverance of Itza was, but all I found was this:

Source

Sinsystems · Dec 11, 2019

Derpmind said:
I tried to look up what the Deliverance of Itza was, but all I found was this:

The Deliverance of Itza was the last and greatest spell of Lord Kroak while he was alive, effectively it was a massive purifying Nuke that completely annihilated (as in true death levels) every demon within kilometers of Itza during the time before the creation of the great vortex. The spell was so powerful that even all these years later the echoes of it are used by Lord Kroak's mummified corpse are equal to Kragg going all out on his anvil at destroying enemy armies.

Alratan · Dec 11, 2019

Thinking a bit about what we've learned about the Glimmering Realm, I wonder if Thungni's craft allows his descendants to sever the Winds from their natures and impose the order of the Glittering Realm in a manner analogous to how Gazul claimed part of the Aethyr. If Gazul claimed the Glittering Realm, I wonder if Thungni imposed structure on the place - perhaps building on whatever the Old Ones did to imprint their arcane language on the Aethyr.

I also wonder if there are any connections to how the high elves that don't fancy their chances in Mirai with Erech Khial made it possible for the souls of their dead to travel through the Waystone network back to Ulthuan and stay there. Admittedly, I personally find the more modern lore about the fate of elven souls rather annoying as the 8th Edition author clearly forgot that this wasn't 40K, and Slaanesh has no special claim on elven souls.

Zero Gravitas · Dec 11, 2019

Deathbybunnies said:
I noticed that apart from the possibility of literal divine intervention, there wasn't even an attempt at counterspelling. It looks like the theory that they were out of Shamans, possibly for Mork-related reasons, was correct.

Or that it'd take divine intervention for the orc Shamans to do something about it. Mathilde has her anti-greenskin trait and the top tier tower supporting her and Gazul on top of that. An orc Shaman would have to detect the spell and instantly react against some formidable opposition.

Angelazreal1 · Dec 11, 2019

Zero Gravitas said:
Or that it'd take divine intervention for the orc Shamans to do something about it. Mathilde has her anti-greenskin trait and the top tier tower supporting her and Gazul on top of that. An orc Shaman would have to detect the spell and instantly react against some formidable opposition.

See I figured the first shot caught the shamans by surprise. The next one may encounter some interference.

Abhorsen · Dec 11, 2019

BoneyM said:
Percentage of the Orcs attempting to enter the Caldera that have currently entered the Caldera.

Well, then. The number of Orcs in the Caldera is tiny.

There were approximately 400k Orcs. We know that more than 250k Orcs were just killed, about 20% were split off by the Howlaz, and about 20% of the remaining Waaagh haven't entered the Caldera.

That means only 80% of 80%, or 64%, of the original Waaagh entered the Caldera, with a further 16% outside of the Caldera. 64% of the Waaagh, if it has an equal makeup to the rest of the waagh, would have ~256k Orcs, and approximately ~512k Gretkin.
If we subtract 250k from the Orcs, we are left with ~10k Orcs, and that's only if we evenly split Orcs and Gretchin. Anything more than 50% (even 52% Orc to Gretchin ratio), and we can assume we killed almost all of the Orcs in the Caldera.

Regardless, this leaves about 16% of Orcs remaining, or about 64k, outside the Caldera.

Alternatively, the 20% left outside were the 20% chased by Da Howlaz, or the Orcs in the Caldera were of a greater percentage Orc than the total Waaagh.

Garlak · Dec 11, 2019

BoneyM said:
(one, brooding and angry and indecisive, has a fraction of His attention here, but in the same way that a fraction of your attention might linger on the throb of an old scar)

Thinking about it, aside from the Horned Rat... this could be Only Gork or the Bad Moon. That talk of a "scar" made me think of Only Gork, where we dealt him a blow here. However, since he might not exist at all since the ritual was interrupted... who knows. As for the Bad Moon, that's because of all the Goblins that got killed here. If any of them worshipped the Bad Moon instead of Gork and Mork, then, well... yeah.

Or, hell, it could be Grimnir for all we know. And so "an old scar" would refer to the way the fall of Karak Eight Peaks was a scar upon the Dwarf realm and psyche. But while I can see "brooding and angry" fitting, I'm not sure that "indecisive" would. Nor the talk about fractions of attention.

But it's... probably the Horned Rat, yeah. Of all the Gods that would have cause to be here, or to have had been here, and which have been brought up and touched on in the narrative so far... he's one of 'em. (Like, Bad Moon might have a place if you assume the Goblins -- or the Snotlings! -- were Bad Moon worshippers. But, the Bad Moon has literally never come up in quest at all. Just no narrative weight or focus at all. So.)

Warhammer Fantasy: Divided Loyalties - an Advisor's Quest

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