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Warhammer Fantasy: Divided Loyalties - an Advisor's Quest

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[X] Four Months
[X] The Nature of Ulgu
[X] Enchantment
[X] Spells of Grey Magic

We can come back for more lessons later. Right now, I just see this as us preparing for the trials, as I feel most others would. We don't need to deck ourselves out for everything we need, let's just solidify the basics.
 
DarkLight140 said:
@BoneyM, a few questions, if you would be so kind.

Runes and Runecraft is listed separately from Enchantment, but (as we just saw with our own enchanting scene) the latter makes use of the former. How exactly are the two related as the Grey Order practices them? How important is the former to the study of the latter and vice versa?
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Enchanters often use a little Runecraft to make an item better able to hold an enchantment, but they exist completely independently.

DarkLight140 said:
What exactly are the practical obligations of a newly-graduated Mathilde where apprentices, or potential apprentices, are concerned? Realms of Sorcery says "every senior apprentice (Journeyman) and full initiate (Magister) mus investigate any rumor of untrained and/or unlicensed magic use", but obviously Mathilde has been at the head of a massive spy network for years and neither she nor her agents made a habit of actually investigating such rumors even though simple statistics means that there must have been some, and that was fine. It later says that anyone found who isn't crazy/tainted should be escorted to the nearest College property and shoved toward whatever we think is the right College for them, or trained personally, but it's not clear what the culturally appropriate choice is. Is it expected that we'd take on a located potential apprentice if we don't have one, or is there no stigma attached to passing on that? How many simultaneous apprentices are looked on as reasonable?
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The 'average' number of apprentices held is distorted because there are Magisters who spend most of their life in the College as educators and there's those that spend their life in service of the Empire and have none. You can indicate your willingness to host an Apprentice and prospects will be sent to you, or you can not, and as long as you're serving the Empire in other ways you'd be left alone in that regard. The 'norm' is to escort anyone found to the College most suited to them, because seven times in eight anyone you find will not be most closely attuned to the same Wind as you are. Having more than two or three apprentices at a time would be considered unusual. As for not having heard of any already, gosh, how strange. Do you think there might be some sort of organization with a highly-placed ally that makes it their business to track down magic-users, or something?

DarkLight140 said:
There are a lot of potential topics here. Obviously it's up to Mathilde what she brushes up during this period of study or this vote wouldn't be structured as it is, but has her master made any hints or recommendations as to what he thinks would be a good idea to learn (i.e. told her what he sees as her weaknesses in need of shoring up or strengths to be built on that she might impress)?
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No. The decision is left entirely up to her. If she's not able to make the decision on her own she's not ready to be a Magister.

DarkLight140 said:
Does Mathilde already believe that she has a solid grounding in all these topics? A lot of what she already knows is largely undefined- for example, speaking Eltharin isn't listed anywhere on her character sheet but might be covered by Allies of Man's material. Can she already be expected to, say, name every large city in the Empire and its location (Empire and its Provinces), explain the basic temptations of each Chaos god and how to recognize them (Chaos and Chaos Gods), and so forth? What are the limits of this or the topics that she's utterly untrained in?
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She learned the very basics of every listed topic during her apprenticeship.

DarkLight140 said:
How common are familiars among the ranks of the Colleges? Realms of Sorcery is pretty vague on the topic.
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Uncommon, but not rare.
 
[X] Four Months
[X] The Nature of Ulgu
[X] Enchantment
[X] Spells of Grey Magic

Reverting to this then, if apprentice training is not necessary.
 
[X] Four Months
[X] Intrigue and Tradecraft. (locked in)
[X] Spells of Grey Magic
[X] Swords and Swordplay
[X] The Nature of Ulgu

EDIT: Based on clarifications by QM on how a long prep period negatively reflects on us and our master, I've cut down from ten to four.

Swords b/c between our Ulgu sword skill and training that's legitimately useful to improve for the trials. Spells because, again, very relevant to the trial.

Nature of Ulgu is the only one not directly practically useful for the trial, but I think the QM mentioned we had some deficiency in that area.
 
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BoneyM said:
As for not having heard of any already, gosh, how strange. Do you think there might be some sort of organization with a highly-placed ally that makes it their business to track down magic-users, or something?
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It is rather strange, yes. I am quite aware that the Witch Hunters exist and are very good at their job. However, if they were so effective at gathering rumors and information that they could effectively track down every single possible magic user before Mathilde even heard anything about their existence when she had a giant intel network feeding her information, then Van Hal had access to so much intelligence through the witch hunters that a large fraction of Mathilde's efforts while working under him were a useless boondoggle which was completely redundant with and less effective than his already-existing assets. I don't think you intend for that to have been the case.

Thank you for answering those questions.
 
DarkLight140 said:
It is rather strange, yes. I am quite aware that the Witch Hunters exist and are very good at their job. However, if they were so effective at gathering rumors and information that they could effectively track down every single possible magic user before Mathilde even heard anything about their existence when she had a giant intel network feeding her information, then Van Hal had access to so much intelligence through the witch hunters that a large fraction of Mathilde's efforts while working under him were a useless boondoggle which was completely redundant with and less effective than his already-existing assets. I don't think you intend for that to have been the case.

Thank you for answering those questions.
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Well, the network probably noticed, but just saw it as status quo. Unless some poor kid blew up his town it doesn't matter to Stirland. No need to mention it to us.
 
@BoneyM

Should we decided not to take the law or religion knowledge course with college, are there other sources or books we can purchase for reference? Preferably within the stay of study period.
 
@BoneyM will our master get annoyed if take a lot of classes since he's the one paying for them right? Also will how will taking a lot of classes before the exam be seen since I imagine some people would think that if you needed more than half a year of studying before the exam you should had gained more experience as a Journeyman before taking the exam?
 
[X] Six Months
[X] Spells of Gray Magic
[X] The Nature of Ulgu
[X] The Nature of Magic
[X] Enchantments
[X] Runes and Runecraft

A focus on different aspects and applications of magic is quite a healthy thing to have for a magister more so when magical studies are a rarity and quite valuable .
 
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DarkLight140 said:
It is rather strange, yes. I am quite aware that the Witch Hunters exist and are very good at their job. However, if they were so effective at gathering rumors and information that they could effectively track down every single possible magic user before Mathilde even heard anything about their existence when she had a giant intel network feeding her information, then Van Hal had access to so much intelligence through the witch hunters that a large fraction of Mathilde's efforts while working under him were a useless boondoggle which was completely redundant with and less effective than his already-existing assets. I don't think you intend for that to have been the case.
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The intelligence network that Van Hal had access to is the Sigmarite priesthood. It's what most people run to when someone manifests magic, and is indeed larger than the intelligence network Mathilde built.

VoidZero said:
@BoneyM

Should we decided not to take the law or religion knowledge course with college, are there other sources or books we can purchase for reference? Preferably within the stay of study period.
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Yes, but why is it important you purchase it during this period?

NotteBoy97 said:
@BoneyM will our master get annoyed if take a lot of classes since he's the one paying for them right? Also will how will taking a lot of classes before the exam be seen since I imagine some people would think that if you needed more than half a year of studying before the exam you should had gained more experience as a Journeyman before taking the exam?
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I was about to mention this - the classes might not be costing you anything but they are costing your Master in time and money and favours, and spending too long in training would reflect poorly both on yourself for not being ready and your Master for admitting you back despite your not being ready.
 
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BoneyM said:
I was about to mention this - the classes might not be costing you anything but they are costing your Master in time and money and favours, and spending too long in training would reflect poorly both on yourself for not being ready and your Master for admitting you back despite your not being ready.
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Just checking, where does six months fall in terms of mooching too much?
 
[X] Four Months
[X] Spells of Grey Magic
[X] Power Stones and their Creation
[X] The Enemies of Man
Maybe we could even get our treatise on the undead done?
 
Oksbad said:
[X] Ten Months
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We can come back and take lessons later on down the line. Plus reputation is very important, especially for wizards. Also, time itself is a factor. 10 months is almost a year, and nearly two turns. Really, I feel like 6 months is the longest we should take.

Edit: And even that is eye-brow raising.
 
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Can we perhaps get some help with the juice I'm sure we would get a lot of attention just for the shear fact that we seem to have an unlimited source of liquid high

magic like I don't know if even the Elfs have ever seen anything quite like it the possible uses are both endless and 0 because wtf we learned nothing about how to work high magic
 
Spending time deepening our understanding of magic is a perfectly reasonable use of our time considering we're about to take the Magisterial exam. I doubt learning how to deal with an apprentice is going to help with our passing of the magisterial exam.

Spending time learning how to be a better master for an apprentice doesn't seem like a very effective use of our time. For a start it's quite likely we simply won't take an apprentice at any time in the foreseeable future. With our box of snake juice to study and our Liber Mortis to look over it would be annoying and dangerous to have to deal with a nosy apprentice. Once we're done with those subjects I expect we'll want to spend our time adventuring, which is dangerous enough that I wouldn't want to bring an apprentice along on the ride.

Besides Mathilde spent years being an apprentice herself, I'm sure she can get through a week or two of dealing with a young magic user before she reaches the college and if she decides to take the prospective apprentice on permanently then she can take a class at that time.
 
veekie said:
Good enough then its within expectations. But not a month more.
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But since we know sooner is better, and we're at least average and going up to extremely impressive in all areas they're likely to test (barring maybe Diplomacy), we should do that instead of picking the option that is borderline unimpressive.
 
Some random musings on familiars
-a familar that can't ride along on a shadowsteed greatly decreases mobility.
-The created familiar is a wild card, but is probably still the best option for pure combat. It'll look REALLY freaky though. Like Frankensteinian *ROLLS* giant weasel with three legs level of weird. As a grey wizard, Mathilde can hide this better than most though, and in combat being a horrifying monster is an advantage.
-The best natural combat familiar presented by the book is a predatory bird. Also great for scouting in open ground. not so great for fighting in enclosed spaces though.
-bats are competently unimpeded by pall of darkness.
-a cat is great at being stealthy, but we already do that.
-a monkey familiar has hands, hands are always nice.
-a collar of dopplganger; the best worst idea.
 
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