Warhammer Fantasy: Divided Loyalties - an Advisor's Quest
- Thread starter Boney
- Start date
- Fantasy Users' Choice!
Voted best in category in the Users' Choice awards.
- Location
- Poland
- Pronouns
- He/Him
[X] The We, to check on how they're settling in to the new arrangement.
[X] Oswald Oswaldson, newly-minted Chief Bombardier of the Undumgi.
[X] Wilhelmina, to see how she's going when she's not a terrifying financial juggernaut.
[X] Follow up on your donation of the Skaven organ-vat, and see what has been made of it.
[X] Oswald Oswaldson, newly-minted Chief Bombardier of the Undumgi.
[X] Wilhelmina, to see how she's going when she's not a terrifying financial juggernaut.
[X] Follow up on your donation of the Skaven organ-vat, and see what has been made of it.
Vebyast
Nascent Transhuman
Praestantia is a mutually intelligible dialect of Eltharin. The fact that it's also strongly resonant with magic is therefore super weird; it's extremely unlikely that a natural language would have developed close enough to being magical that you could accidentally blow yourself up with it if you had the wrong accent. This suggests to me that Praestantia, and therefore Eltharin, actually aren't privileged: there should be mutually intelligible magically-resonant dialects of most or all other natural languages. For example, presumably High Queekish is stable and uniform partially because it's close to such a magical language which will drift much less quickly due to its history and focus on flawlessly enunciated ritual phrases. I wouldn't be surprised if Khazalid has similar thaumolinguistic engineering in its past to make it safer for dwarves with their lethal magic allergies. Do Reikspiel or Cathayan have similar projects?
If he was a cat he could be a Nekomancer!
I figured as much. We ARE basically obligated to propose Waystone Network Investigation, because:
-Its immediately and significantly relevant to Belegar's interests.
-There are no time sensitive opportunities except for Karak Drazh.
-There are no immediate threats except for Karak Drazh.
-There is a weakness to cover in our fortifications, but the dwarves are working on it already.
So for our proposal, what makes sense to propose seems to be:
-Waystone Network Investigation/Eonir Collaboration
-Bok Investigation
-Scouting Karak Drazh
-A second Doom Tower, overlooking the second Gate
Aethyric Vitae potentially has great utility, but its currently at "Loremaster's Pet Project" level with no immediate deliverables that would be relevant in the next three years.
In this case the Perpetual's most important quality is their reliability. The second most important is their education.
Keep in mind that intrigue is a field where most practitioners are either self taught(and thus greedy, ambitious or untrustworthy) or hold loyalties towards an organization which is able to train them(which means Imperial Intelligence service, College Intelligence service, Provincial Intelligence Service, Witch Hunters, Lahmians, Underempire, Tileans, Kislevites, Druchii, etc)
And the difficult part? You can't distinguish someone who's self taught from someone who was trained and then 'released' as bait.
Which is why for someone we have to trust, the options are essentially:
-Train your own handler from scratch. They'd be loyal to nobody but you, but it costs extensively in your personal time.
-Recruit a handler from your own parent organization. They'd be loyal to your organization, they'd be trained well. You'd have to pay your parent organization for spending their time in your place.
-Recruit an independent handler and hope their particular forms of divided loyalties don't risk what you consider important.
Eltharin itself is magically resonant as its adapted from an even more magical tongue.
Anoqueyan, Eltharin and Praestantia should be all considered constructed languages tailored for use with magic.
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WinterLantern
Smoked bird
- Location
- North England
[X] Wilhelmina, to see how she's going when she's not a terrifying financial juggernaut.
[X] Kasmir, to see how he's keeping himself busy in Sylvania.
[X] Johann, as both of you reflect on the events both of you went through together over the past year, that began with the hunt for a Clan Skyre gasmask.
[X] Roswita, as she campaigns through Hunger Wood.
[X] Kasmir, to see how he's keeping himself busy in Sylvania.
[X] Johann, as both of you reflect on the events both of you went through together over the past year, that began with the hunt for a Clan Skyre gasmask.
[X] Roswita, as she campaigns through Hunger Wood.
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- Pronouns
- He/Him
Well, we still have whatever results we can get next turn when we finally call in Kragg or Thorek (25 Dwarf Favor) to work on it. I imagine the success of that venture will determine the proposals for the turn after that, as far as the Vitae's inclusion or not. I wouldn't be too surprised if after all the work we did in preparation for the actual work, the possibilities that might arise skyrocket in number.
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fictionfan
Please sir, may I have some Meows?
- Location
- Tempe, AZ
I personally don't want to spend favor getting them interested. We likely don't need one of the best rune smiths in the world.
- Location
- New Brunswick, NJ
- Pronouns
- He/Him/His
It's, uh, not 25 Dwarf Favour to call them in on it. It's 10, or was last time this came up:
Also I think we might want to do other tests before calling someone in to look at it. Specifically, the dwarf rune interaction seems like a reasonable place to start.
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- He/Him
Ah, my bad.
We've basically done all the steps that could translate over to runecraft, anything else is an entirely different field. Though I do want to learn Powerstones so we can work on that conventionally and with Vitae, it's not really something that works with the Dwarfs.
i personally think not involving them when they're the ones that throw around Ancestor Runes is necessary.
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- Location
- Australia
@BoneyM, something I learned from the GM of We Stand in Awe: don't give the players an option that you don't want to write, even if it would "make sense" for them to have that option. Just fiat don't give it to them. It might make "sense" for us to go to Cathay now, but you can and should flat out deny us the option if you don't want that to be a thing.
- Location
- New Brunswick, NJ
- Pronouns
- He/Him/His
Boney said this earlier in response to a request to add writeins to the chapter:
I edited my post, so you missed it, but I specifically had in mind the "interaction with dwarf antimagic runes."
Tangentially, do you think we ought to spend the Favour to guarantee they take a look, or should we take the option of trying to get them interested, first?
chocolote12
A Penguin Flailing Against The Keyboard Of Life.
Escalating to favors seems a bit more awkward than just doing it from the start ('You don't want to? After all I've done for the Karak?' It just feels a bit weird). Plus, if they do it out of interest they get more of the credit for it, and if they don't take interest it's a waste of an AP.
It's a better and more likely result if we just pay out to begin with, and what it costs in favors it makes up for in AP and consistency.
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- He/Him
Ah...yeah, I suppose that could be an option.
Take the guarantee. It just wastes time if we get stuck with a suboptimal choice which could be anywhere from one step below to bottom of the rung depending on our luck, which means wasted AP, and it sounds like "Fine, if you don't want to, here's my Favor in exchange." Obviously its not gonna be like that but the whole idea of it is awkward.
- Location
- Canada
There is also the somewhat intangible benefit that having Kragg and/or Thorek F L E X I N G competitively at each other ought to be really good for Dwarf morale in the Karak.
Plus, if there are any kind of fortification runes that Vitae might help with, now would be the ideal time to use it. The fortifications are going up right now - and all the bills are being forwarded to Thorgrim.
- Location
- New Brunswick, NJ
- Pronouns
- He/Him/His
Really impressive how close this continues to be after more than twelve hours. 3rd/4th tied at 49 votes, 5th/6th at 48.
- Location
- Seattle
I'm so pleased by the phrase "thaumolinguistic engineering"
13th Bee
Worker
- Location
- Tennessee, USA.
[X] Kasmir, to see how he's keeping himself busy in Sylvania.
[X] The We, to check on how they're settling in to the new arrangement.
[X] Wilhelmina, to see how she's going when she's not a terrifying financial juggernaut.
[X] Roswita, as she campaigns through Hunger Wood.
[X] The We, to check on how they're settling in to the new arrangement.
[X] Wilhelmina, to see how she's going when she's not a terrifying financial juggernaut.
[X] Roswita, as she campaigns through Hunger Wood.
- Location
- The Surface Of A Hostile Planet
As I understand it, Eltharin and Khazalid actually share a lot of similarities, since they're both strongly influenced by the Old One's speech. For similar reasons, both of those languages are also related to the Dark Tounges of daemons, and thus to Queekish, which is a modified form of the Dark Tongue.
- Location
- Aotearoa
I believe Mathilde already noticed a clue to their possible relationship, in the polite Eltharin word for Dwarves, Daroir, being similar to Dawi.
But aside from the political sensitivities of pointing this out, while we're a xenophiliac, we're not a (xeno)linguist.
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- Location
- Hyperborea
Okay, didn't see that before.
- Location
- Around here
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Ah, for missed Polyglot opportunities.
Scouting Karak Drazh is a waste of our time unless Belegar wants to attack it. (He doesn't.)
Bok is Kragg's pet project and is unlikely to show results any time this decade. Also Mathilde knows jack all about runes, elementals or dwarf-elf runic elementals.
The Sword of Gazul is not the sort of thing you replicate casually. Plus a good chunk of its utility is defending the pass rather than the Karack itself. Dwarf fortifications can hold the gates easily. The entire length of Death Pass? Not so much.
As for AV, Belegar is a dwarf. He isn't going to bat an eyelid at something that needs years to complete. Nor is he going to gainsay Mathilde if she says it is worth doing.