Warhammer Fantasy: Divided Loyalties - an Advisor's Quest
- Thread starter Boney
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- warhammer warhammer fantasy fantasy be gay do crimes (gay) female protagonist pansexual protagonist ck2 quest divided loyalties mountain vietnam ranald is real this is a dwarf quest (dwarfs) this is maybe an elf quest this is not a vampire quest this is not an empire quest try it and find out open voting
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- Location
- Seattle
We should learn some of that Elvish Dhur.
Ericwinter
Definitely not a Skaven Infiltrator
- Location
- America
Because we still don't really know what Ulgu-Dhar casting can achieve, or if it's even possible, and so there's not much to compare the solid and certain gains to?
Omegahugger
Inattentive Idiot
Only one of them is confirmed capable of bringing the dead back to life, which is vital for Mathilde's love life.
chocolote12
A Penguin Flailing Against The Keyboard Of Life.
The Lore of Stealth only does stuff that we can basically already do; any incremental benefits aren't quite worth the costs. It's also a couple thousand years old, if I remember correctly, given that it was developed by clan Eshin, so it's not exactly new nor innovative.
Necromancy, meanwhile, lets you live forever, which is far cooler. It's like, if you're going to commit war crimes, you might as well do it for something that will help you avoid the consequences.
Vebyast
Nascent Transhuman
Like my parents always told me: Never commit any crime that you won't retire off of. When you're committing crimes against nature and creation, immortality is pretty much a necessary component of a peaceful retirement.
If you live forever, consequences are much more likely to catch up to you. They've got a lot more time to work with, after all.
Granted, I'm in the camp that wants to figure out Ulgu-based transcendence of mortality- but that likely comes with a built-in boost to Not Being Found.
- Location
- Chicago
- Pronouns
- She/They
More relevant to previous Word of Boney, what evidence do we have in story that there is a way? Winds do different things: for all winds to have a way of granting immortality seems odd. Wind of death and wind of life seem like they would be the easiest, but metal can because of the way metal lasts. Celestial? Possible, likely to be an ascension into a constellation to partake of that permanence. Bright or Grey? I would be very surprised, because it is the nature of for and flame to be transient.
- Location
- Earth
Grey makes Death forget you exist, so you won't ever get collected. Duh!
Mopman43
Mountain-Hermit of Nitpeak
- Location
- Vermont
I don't know if there's any canon info on how old the Lore of Stealth is. It's known that Eshin learned their ninja tricks from Nippon a few millennia ago, but it's entirely possible that that was just the mundane ones, and the Lore of Stealth was developed more recently.
Ericwinter
Definitely not a Skaven Infiltrator
- Location
- America
Shadows are everywhere, and you can never really get rid of them. Just move it temporarily.
On the other hand, you can't truly "hurt" fog or flame. They don't age either. And if you put "can't be hurt" and "doesn't age" together, then you've got everything you'd want.
And that's before you add Dhar. I rather like the take that adding Dhar to a wind sort of inverts it. Wind of Death gives life. So what would Bright or Grey be? I really liked the take on Dhar-Ulgu being the wind of bullshit (opposite of truth isn't lies, because then you are still very concerned with truth, it's bullshit, ie no care whatsoever about what is or isn't true), which basically does tangible illusions. So there's your Ulgu version of a vampire. Maybe not quite as hard to kill, but much harder to pin down.
For Bright: It's the wind of fire, and often one of the most significant aspects of fire is that it consumes. Invert that, and you get an everburning flame (Dark Souls 3 did that). Fire is also often associated with purifying, so that's another avenue, though Purity itself is more a light wizard thing.
I guess the takeaway message is that every wind has a sufficiently broad spectrum of associations that you can probably manage something.
Quest
The Great One
- Location
- Everywhere
Didn't we see the Eshin Sorceror use Ulgu-Dhar just before he died? I suggest you go reread that fight to get an idea of what this could achieve.
Ericwinter
Definitely not a Skaven Infiltrator
- Location
- America
...Fair. I was thinking more along the lines of Necromancy and its counterparts among the other winds, since I'm not sure if that and Lore of Stealth would be different things. Considering how Stealth seems to do almost the same stuff as regular Ulgu, if a little different, while Necromancy and Shyish are pretty different, chances are there's a lot more to it than the brief glimpse we got of Stealth.
Asheram
Not quite altogether
- Location
- Δ Hidden Forbidden Holy Ground
Obfuscation, if were to put a word to it. The Autonym would be to Clarify, revealing, finding truths and seeing what's hidden.
Edit: Ah, my mistake. I missed the Dhar in the Dhar-Ulgu there and thought we were talking about Ulgu as a whole, which could be called the wind of obfuscation.
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It's also possible that Ulgu just hasn't had a Nagash. That is, someone of great talent, in a position of power and resources, with access to advanced magical traditions (Elven and the Death Cult, in Nagash's case), and crucially, willing to share it. Even if it's with hooks attached. That last one already basically disqualifies the Skaven. Their lifespan is also a problem, if you're not on the council you have a sharply limited amount of time.
If it wasn't for Nagash, Dhar-Shysh would probably just be killing people somewhat faster and more messily.
That's more the Ulgu/Hysh dynamic.
Nagash was also a Liche-Priest to start off with, so was already the never dies of old age kind of immortal when he started. He just wasn't satisfied with that limited form of immortality.
deathofrats0808
Don’t think of it as dying; just as leaving early
- Location
- Earth
He sort of was. AFAIK his invention of necromancy had little to do with a desire for better immortality (although that was a nice side-effect) and more to do with his megalomaniacal wish to be god-king of the world.
- Location
- Greece
Personally, I am against Dhar in general not because its evil, but because it's a dead-end power-wise, being unstable and all. True power creates, but Dhar only corrupts or destroys.
Moreover, even if we were to decide that we just want to be killy, it could never allow us to kill the Horned Rat, which is my endgame as a priest of the god of cats. The Horned Rat is just better at it, like all chaos gods (except maybe Khorne?) If we wish to surpass the entrenched, we must innovate, not copy, and I am pretty sure no form of dhar is unknown to the chaos gods.
Also, all dhar users are insane to the point of tactical blundering, including most chaos gods (yes, even the big T seems suboptimal no matter how much it seems like everything is part of the plan, as chaos could have won multiple times but keeps losing, and even then Horned Rat could... just win, if he wasn't so focused on its betrayal society.) The only exception is Nagash, but if we wanna pull a Nagash, we must only start studying Dhar after building a ton of foundation and our own patented elixir of ulgu to protect us from the side effects the way Nagash's vampire elixir did.
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Mopman43
Mountain-Hermit of Nitpeak
- Location
- Vermont
I rather like the idea that built up in this thread.
Basically, if the Skaven actually operated as a functional society, and especially if they ever actually managed to conquer the world... they wouldn't need the Horned Rat anymore. The Horned Rat basically acts as the abuser in an abusive relationship, keeping the Skaven weak and divided and convincing them that they need the Horned Rat.
Grey? See the Green Knigh.
Bright? See phoenixes.
Immortality is a broad category, not a specific effect. Plus each wind has a number of concepts tied to it. Plenty of ways you can play any of them into an indefinite lifespan.
True Immortality is rather tricky in Warhammer. Plenty of weapons around that will obliterate souls, fell gods and True Death demons.
I'll have to check, but I'm pretty sure that at least one of his canon motivations came from his realisation that if someone killed him his soul would disintegrate into pieces/be eaten by daemons, which is what made him go after cutting himself off from the Aethyr and isolating his soul from the influence of gods and daemons.
- Location
- Chicago
- Pronouns
- She/They
Hmmm- it seems that both of those suffer from the same conceptual weakness to immortality that shadows and flames do in general.
Is it the same one?
A shadow is cast, then disappears: when it is cast again by a different light, is it the same shadow? A phoenix burns and is reborn: is it the same phoenix or a successor?
Easy to track identity with statues and constellations, hard to do so with fog and the like. Something that is always there but never the same- where does the longevity draw from?
Flip side is I expect effects of impermanence to be much easier with transient winds: teleportation, for example. But I don't think immortality should be equally possible for all winds, it would be very odd.
Mopman43
Mountain-Hermit of Nitpeak
- Location
- Vermont
All right, can you lay it out for me? I don't see what the Green Knight has to do with Ulgu. As far as I'm aware, his immortality is tied to the Lady.
More the mechanics than the specifics. The Green Knight is an ethereal being that turns up in the material world when certain circumstances are met.
Someone looking to achieve Ulgu-based immortality may well reach a similar state. Slipping between the physical world and some corner of the etheric world as needed.