Remove ads

Warhammer Fantasy: Divided Loyalties - an Advisor's Quest

Voted best in category in the Users' Choice awards.
Reader mode
Mark Hyko said:
Thanks for the answers. Since we're here I'll ask a few more questions. What are the "factions" in this thread ? As a silent reader you get to enjoy the results of the votes but not the process, which is too voluminous to catch up to. Do people basically vote indepandtly in each individual situation, or are there "factions" , so to speak, of aligned readers who pursue the same goals ? And if they exist, could you describe the most proeminents ? What are the differences between an apocrypha and a side story ? Lastly, is there any meme or insider joke I need to know about in order not to embarrass myslef once discussion starts ?
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

Factions: no factions per se, but several people/ groups of people have an interest towards doing this or that and push the votes around towards it. Overall though, voterase is generally split as a per vote basis, with litle to no stable groups, although certain individuals do vote consistently for certain outcomes (e.g. @Omegahugger for bringing back Abelheim with evil magic).

Apart from that, though, there is an inertia in certain votes called "plan votes" (the overly complicated and long ones that decide what well do during a turn) because people tend to trust certain plan makers more. That is mostly because they are experienced enough to make a plan that satisfies everyone or to make multiple variations of a plan when certain choices make it or break it, though, so overall it doesn't stem from factionalism but rather experienced planmaking, and it still leaves more than enough choice most of the time.

An apocrypha is something that is certainly noncanon. A sidestory is something that could be canon, as long as nothing happens in the main quest to contradict it. Both are fanmade.

Meme/ inside joke: no one would call you a fool for not knowing, but there are too many to count. Most of them are self explanatory however, really. Based on my memory and the tags, here are the ones that are current (although some older one may resurface, depending)

Ranald is real: the thread basically worships Ranald for everything that goes right. The improability of some dice rolls clinches it. Imay be biased towards Ranald more than most, as this quest is the reason for my title.

seven-is-a-free-for-all: a joke based on Skaven numerology, based on the war we accidentally sparked.

start slowly;like an avalanche : is a line from the quest, but it has been used rhetorically and/or as a motto frequently enough.

Omegahugger: people are still not sure if Omegahugger is serious or joking, but nevertheless it should be known that a certain user pushes the thread every chance there is towards dhar and/or resurrecting Abelheim. Either way, this makes the thread more fun.

I cannot currently remember/ think of any more, but stuff may come up. Its unlikely stuff will be confusing tho.
 
Omegahugger said:
Joining our faction is easy. All it takes to be a member is a willingness to vote in favour of necromancy when the option pops up and the ability to smile even as you suffer crushing losses.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
While I am not oposed to necromancy on principle (sanity roll would be a big no no for me though) I don't think it would fit well with what I percieve to be the curent narative of the story. I like were we are with the dwarves and I dig the narative of Mathilde winding back the doomsday clock by herself. If the circumstances were vastly different I would totally be willing to explore necromancy.
 
Mark Hyko said:
Thanks for the answers. Since we're here I'll ask a few more questions. What are the "factions" in this thread ? As a silent reader you get to enjoy the results of the votes but not the process, which is too voluminous to catch up to. Do people basically vote indepandtly in each individual situation, or are there "factions" , so to speak, of aligned readers who pursue the same goals ? And if they exist, could you describe the most proeminents ? What are the differences between an apocrypha and a side story ? Lastly, is there any meme or insider joke I need to know about in order not to embarrass myslef once discussion starts ?
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

Factions tend to break down into three main groupings, best I can tell, who are all looking for slightly different things from the story and tend to be somewhat fluid in membership.

1) Killy Number-upers: these are the people who want the battlemagic and the assasination traits and the armor to go toe to toe with major demons. There tends to be a self-fufilling 'inevitability' arguements to their plans, wherein it is considered inevitable that we are going to encounter foes bigger and stronger than us, so we need to improve to match the next tier of enemies, which then leads to the argument for using what we've got since we CAN usually just murder things, which leads to arguements for improving killy numbers as TOP PRIORITY when we have close calls.

2: Mad Scientists: this crew wants to use the odd bits and pieces we've picked up in quest (and Boney's genius for coherent systematizing) to pry open the possibilities of magic in the Warhammer setting. This is what the Aqua Vitae, Ranald's coin/sorcery, and runic technomagic speculations encourage- but this overlapped with magic superweapon construction as well. At worst, they disregard social and political concerns entirely in favor of hermiting in our lab, at best they offer novel approaches to long-term threats. I include the necromancy faction as a subgroup here, and honestly one that is more in the best traditions of this faction than the worst. (Thanks in large part to Omega's focus on relationships. ;) )

3: Civ Builders: These people really like the idea of institutions and engineering as the way we should leverage our character, also sometimes called the stewardship faction. Wants to build out the EIC, create alliances between us and other favorably-disposed polities, and leverage the Karak to make life better for as many people as possible. At best, focused on cementing the good Mathilde had done in the world into lasting changes. At worst, willing to sacrifice Mathilde's research/self improvement towards larger goals, undermining both. Often accused of trying to "make this quest into every other civ builder quest, boooooring".

At least, as a declared Civ Builder partisan, that's my attempt at bring neutral and fair to the three main impulse-groups I see.

Issues like the bestest boy (Wolf! Everyone loves wolf) and shipping (massively divisive apparently just on principle to a lot of the thread) tend to cut cross-faction, but the real vicious fights tend to come from the push-pull of the main factions and attempts to declare 'you lost, get over it' when new options present similar dilemmas.
 
storryeater said:
Factions: no factions per se, but several people/ groups of people have an interest towards doing this or that and push the votes around towards it. Overall though, voterase is generally split as a per vote basis, with litle to no stable groups, although certain individuals do vote consistently for certain outcomes (e.g. @Omegahugger for bringing back Abelheim with evil magic).

Apart from that, though, there is an inertia in certain votes called "plan votes" (the overly complicated and long ones that decide what well do during a turn) because people tend to trust certain plan makers more. That is mostly because they are experienced enough to make a plan that satisfies everyone or to make multiple variations of a plan when certain choices make it or break it, though, so overall it doesn't stem from factionalism but rather experienced planmaking, and it still leaves more than enough choice most of the time.

An apocrypha is something that is certainly noncanon. A sidestory is something that could be canon, as long as nothing happens in the main quest to contradict it. Both are fanmade.

Meme/ inside joke: no one would call you a fool for not knowing, but there are too many to count. Most of them are self explanatory however, really. Based on my memory and the tags, here are the ones that are current (although some older one may resurface, depending)

Ranald is real: the thread basically worships Ranald for everything that goes right. The improability of some dice rolls clinches it. Imay be biased towards Ranald more than most, as this quest is the reason for my title.

seven-is-a-free-for-all: a joke based on Skaven numerology, based on the war we accidentally sparked.

start slowly;like an avalanche : is a line from the quest, but it has been used rhetorically and/or as a motto frequently enough.

Omegahugger: people are still not sure if Omegahugger is serious or joking, but nevertheless it should be known that a certain user pushes the thread every chance there is towards dhar and/or resurrecting Abelheim. Either way, this makes the thread more fun.

I cannot currently remember/ think of any more, but stuff may come up. Its unlikely stuff will be confusing tho.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
You forgot the Dwarven infection as Mathilde slowly becomes more and more dwarf-like. That's another major one from what I've seen.
 
Mark Hyko said:
While I am not oposed to necromancy on principle (sanity roll would be a big no no for me though) I don't think it would fit well with what I percieve to be the curent narative of the story. I like were we are with the dwarves and I dig the narative of Mathilde winding back the doomsday clock by herself. If the circumstances were vastly different I would totally be willing to explore necromancy.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
But Mathilde isn't currently winding back the doomsday clock on her lonesone. There's a cascade of Dawi, umgi and halflings who have been lying their lives down for the sake of Karak-8-Peaks.

If Mathilde were to have used her full potential, and deploy the necromantic might she already possesses, how many could have been saved? How many of the brave soldiers who died in the reclamation war could've instead returned to their families?

... And here I am just referring to the ones who would've survived due to Mathilde supplying expendable skeleton troops, not the ones she possibly would've brought back to life and/or helped survive what should've been mortal injuries.
 
Omegahugger said:
If Mathilde were to have used her full potential, and deploy the necromantic might she already possesses, how many could have been saved? How many of the brave soldiers who died in the reclamation war could've instead returned to their families?
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Would they want to be saved by an horde of undead though ? In fact, the more I think about it the more the problems of necromancy boil down to a question of autonomy. Necromancy negativly impacts the autonomy of those who are brought back, it probably impacts the autonomy of the casters, and it threatens the autonomy of the livings.
 
Glau said:
2: Mad Scientists:
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
I would personally split the Mad Scientists into two subgroups.
Magic and Enchanting.

The Magic group would be the faction who is heavily interested in Dhar manipulation, be it directly or by the "Ulgu tong" method.
The Enchanting group is the group that wants to delve deeper into Aethyric Vitae, Runecrafting, and possibly Dawi Archaeology.
 
Last edited:
Mark Hyko said:
Would they want to be saved by an horde of undead though ? In fact, the more I think about it the more the problems of necromancy boil down to a question of autonomy. Necromancy negativly impacts the autonomy of those who are brought back, it probably impacts the autonomy of the casters, and it threatens the autonomy of the livings.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
I mean, technically our soldiers could decide if they want to be brought back: say people who wanted to be revived as skeleton soldiers or w/e to continue protecting their people after death could go into battle carrying a black dogtag or something and we only would revive people on our side who explicitly were wearing that. It would severely hamper the ability to mid-battle go "raise a whole unit with no warning" but could be done post-battle to shore up numbers.

This doesn't address the other problems, but the question of autonomy of those who are brought back (on our side, the enemy probably wouldn't get that choice but then you get into debates about whether killing someone is already taking away all their autonomy and so on) is probably solvable.
 
storryeater said:
(e.g. @Omegahugger for bringing back Abelheim with evil magic).
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
For the record, I would like to restate that I am perfectly willing to bring back Abelhelm using non-evil magic, it's just that there's been no way to accomplish that so far.

Really, our best bet outside of using necromancy so far has been to use our stolen brass orb to enter the Warp Realm and somehow wriggle out with Abel's soul in tow. That's says something about how supportive good magic is of saving one of Stirland's greatest champions. And it's not like any of the so-called "Order Gods" have been coorperative in this many.

I am just saying, God of Theft( R a n a l d) , that I would be willing to forgive a lot of things if you were willing to steal just one tiny soul from its rightful resting place. Don't act like a master thief like haven't done so before, you've literally stolen divine energy!

Mark Hyko said:
Would they want to be saved by an horde of undead though ? In fact, the more I think about it the more the problems of necromancy boil down to a question of autonomy. Necromancy negativly impacts the autonomy of those who are brought back, it probably impacts the autonomy of the casters, and it threatens the autonomy of the livings.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
So in other words, you are in favour of necromancy as long as we get informed consent of the individuals involved beforehand, got it.

What if we developed a version of raise dead that did not enslave the resulting undead? In that case, I would argue that we increase the autonomy of those brought back, unless the process prevents them from dying or locks them out of their afterlife of choice. If they don't like being undead and getting a second shot at the life that was so cruelly robbed from them, they could just die again and be back at step one.

Of course, such a spell would have to be researched first, which requires a willing voterbase...
 
Lupercal said:
It has just as much, if not more, textual backing (Previously mentioned Elspeth but also the Gilding of gold wizards and multiple cultures in whf have unlocked some form of immortallity even if necromantic) as your pet projects of making a hybrid divine lore of Ranald and Ulgu or using Ulgu as a medium for controlling other winds.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

Not really, Elspeths immortality is not fully known, but there's basically two possibilities. One of them is that she's become a vampire. Which is hinted at, the other is the hour glass artifact she has which uses the dust and remains of a dead god, supposedly giving her control over time and death.

Not every wind of magic is going to be useful for pursuing immortality.
 
SuperSonicSound said:
Not really, Elspeths immortality is not fully known, but there's basically two possibilities. One of them is that she's become a vampire. Which is hinted at, the other is the hour glass artifact she has which uses the dust and remains of a dead god, supposedly giving her control over time and death.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
I mean, thats just throwing hypotheses at another hypothesis. I am totally digging that she became part Shyish, and for all we know, thats possible.
 
For factions, I think there's one more important distinction, this one for the social turns. I'll call them the Good Old Boys Network, and the New Is Better Gang.
The first want more social terms with the favorite established characters (mostly Kragg and Belegar. Always Kragg and Belegar), because they've proven to be awesome and interesting. The second want to social people that have never been socialed before, because they might turn out to be awesome and interesting, and it would be a shame to miss that.
 
Omegahugger said:
So in other words, you are in favour of necromancy as long as we get informed consent of the individuals involved beforehand, got it.

What if we developed a version of raise dead that did not enslave the resulting undead? In that case, I would argue that we increase the autonomy of those brought back, unless the process prevents them from dying or locks them out of their afterlife of choice. If they don't like being undead and getting a second shot at the life that was so cruelly robbed from them, they could just die again and be back at step one.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
It would be more acurate to say that I am in favor only if we use it on ourself -- provided we wouldn't go mad -- and on creatures who were never sentient to begin with. I would argue that even a clean resurection (such as one performed by divine intervantion for exemple) threatens the autonomy of the resurected. They would owe their whole new life to us and this is a significant debt. I would add that Abelhelm almost certainly would not want to be resurected throuh necromancy, if at all.

If you are so interested in a mindless army why not look into golem making ? Investigate the elemental, talk to kragg about automation through runes ect ...
Of course this would not bring back Abelhelm, but as I said, he probably doesn't want to be brought back.

Omegahugger said:
Of course, such a spell would have to be researched first, which requires a willing voterbase...
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Slipery slopes and all that.
 
pucflek said:
I mean, thats just throwing hypotheses at another hypothesis. I am totally digging that she became part Shyish, and for all we know, thats possible.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

except that all of the lore for Shyish is that with the death wind it's all about ending shit. Doing the opposite is a pervesion of it and is big part of the idea behind why Necromancy is supposed to work with regards Negashs method.
 
SuperSonicSound said:
except that all of the lore for Shyish is that with the death wind it's all about ending shit. Doing the opposite is a pervesion of it and is big part of the idea behind why Necromancy is supposed to work with regards Negashs method.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Yeah, but you don't see Shyish itself dying now, do you? IIRC wizards tend to have longer lifespans provided they don't explode themselves, so being steeped in magic likely grants longevity. I don't see why Elspeth would not attain longevity or outright immortality due to tying herself to her wind so much it essentially became part of her. And considering we don't know a damn about either of other methods that are proposed as roads to great power and possible life prolonging too, i don't grok how this one is inferior possibility to explore.
 
Last edited:
Asheram said:
The Magic group would be the faction who is heavily interested in Dhar manipulation, be it directly or by the "Ulgu tong" method.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Dhar manipulation is a fringe, really. The general idea of 'manipulate pure winds with Ulgu' is sufficiently different in intent, even if at the moment they'd get the same results ( :V ).
 
The most important thing to know about this thread: once a certain amount of time has passed since the most recent update, usually about 24 hours, the thread starts to spiral into increasingly inane and bizarre topics that make less and less sense. This is commonly known as 'thread madness', and it intensifies as time goes on.

It has been almost a month since the last update.

*mic drop*
 
Neshuakadal said:
To my recollection to have someone make a staff we need a turner. Something that the grey order lacks right now. So we can get it faster right now if we make it our self. Then because it is more attuned to our magic than a tuner would be able to do we can add more bells and whistles. At least that is what I remember from the previous conversations about making a staff.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
So how good a staff could we make if we started making it right now and with our current skill?
 
Last edited:
Could we enchant an eyepiece to help a Dwarf to see the winds? It seems like it would fall under warrior of fog. It might allow Kragg to make progress on examining that earth elemental.

I know he would definitely think of our work as shoddy, but if he could make an eyepiece to see the winds he would have already done so.
 
fictionfan said:
Could we enchant an eyepiece to help a Dwarf to see the winds? It seems like it would fall under warrior of fog. It might allow Kragg to make progress on examining that earth elemental.

I know he would definitely think of our work as shoddy, but if he could make an eyepiece to see the winds he would have already done so.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Maybe.

It would definitely require some research.
 
fictionfan said:
Could we enchant an eyepiece to help a Dwarf to see the winds? It seems like it would fall under warrior of fog. It might allow Kragg to make progress on examining that earth elemental.

I know he would definitely think of our work as shoddy, but if he could make an eyepiece to see the winds he would have already done so.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
It's a tricky thing to do since the winds aren't actual winds, it's just Mathilde interpreting them as such, and everyone interprets them differently, as noted in the holiday shorts.
Doubly tricky because gifting Kragg with an item would require us to create a magic device someone deathly allergic to magic (Dawi) could use.

In my opinion, I think we should see if we can find a spell, or something similar, that lets us project what we see.
 
SuperSonicSound said:
Not every wind of magic is going to be useful for pursuing immortality.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

My ballpark understanding is that only three of the winds really effect lifespan just through extended and pervasive use and the side-effects thereof.

Ghyran - Straight up live longer and in better health. Lore of life, so utterly unsurprising.
Chamon - Slowly turn yourself into a metal golem type thing. Manage it and you won't age...you just have to deal with being a moving statue rather than a human.
Shyish - This is less...living longer, so much as dragging out your death. The wind is inimical to avoiding an end or extra life, so really only good for staying spry as you wither.

The other five shouldn't really have any impact either way, at least in the normal course of things.
 
Reader mode
You must login or register to reply here.
Remove ads
Back
Top