Remove ads

Warhammer Fantasy: Divided Loyalties - an Advisor's Quest

Voted best in category in the Users' Choice awards.
Voting is open
Reader mode
[X] [ROMANCE] Elector Countess Roswita van Hal
[X] Regimand, to finally get the full story behind the Lahmian plot you were both ensnared by.
 
BoneyM said:
Look at Mathilde's wealth, the book budget she gets, and the likelihood that she might do anything involving Ranald in the future, and decide if that's really a useful way to spend all of our time.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
  1. Well the wealth is not infinite so there is no reason to keep some of it locked up in worthless books
  2. The action economy crunch and voting record for doing anything about divine magic even before the latest disappointment speaks for itself so I consider the odds of those books ever being put to use basically nil
  3. I was imagining a line in library purchases, unless it would somehow take a full month long action to sell of said books in which case suggestion withdrawn
Also taking those books off the front page will likely prevent the sunk cost fallacy from biting too deep which will produce far more non-actionable discussion than my one question.
 
DragonParadox said:
  1. Well the wealth is not infinite so there is no reason to keep some of it locked up in worthless books
  2. The action economy crunch and voting record for doing anything about divine magic even before the latest disappointment speaks for itself so I consider the odds of those books ever being put to use basically nil
  3. I was imagining a line in library purchases, unless it would somehow take a full month long action to sell of said books in which case suggestion withdrawn
Also taking those books off the front page will likely prevent the sunk cost fallacy from biting too deep which will produce far more non-actionable discussion than my one question.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

No, I'm not going to make selling books a thing. That leads to a hundred pages of 'well, do we think we'll need Mountains of Mourn geography?'. And I really don't like the idea of doing so as a sort of concealed proxy vote on what to research and what not to in the future.
 
DragonParadox said:
Also taking those books off the front page will likely prevent the sunk cost fallacy from biting too deep which will produce far more non-actionable discussion than my one question.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

Note that WOG is that new options are opened up in the Theurgy tree, and BoneyM does not offer trap options. The conclusion isn't Divine Magic research is forbidden period, it's lines of research that are conducted by staring directly into the Warp and into the domain of the gods - which, let's face it is a really dumb thing to do because the warp tends to stare back at you. It's like staring at the sun with your naked eyes, only replace the sun with the warp and eyes with the mind.

Ranald is perfectly fine with Mathilde studying the connections between the gods and their worshipers, or their artifacts, but not the destination the connections lead to, as Ranald blessed Mathilde's attempts to catch the connection flows at the right time. And I don't think any of the goals of Project Theurgy actually requires Mathilde to directly study the gods, but rather the links between gods and their followers - you don't need to know what's behind the address you send miscast down to beyond getting the right address, only that the delivery and letter was robust for example. Moreover, Mathilde may soon be heading to the Chaos Waste, where her connection with Ranald is likely her strongest and last line of defense for her soul. Selling off Ranald's books feels both narratively impious.... and risky, because I doubt this is the last time Mathilde's connection with Ranald comes into play.
 
Last edited:
[X] Karak Kadrin, to get to know the leaders of the Expedition.
[X] Francesco Caravello, proud Viceroy of the Undumgi.
[X] Stirland, to see for yourself how the war against Sylvania is progressing.
[X] Regimand, to finally get the full story behind the Lahmian plot you were both ensnared by.
[X] [ROMANCE] Chief Bombardier Oswald Oswaldson
[X] Julia, to see what she has gotten up to as Stirland's most experienced spy master.
[X] Wilhelmina Hochschild, to check in on her and see how she feels about the Marienburg situation.
[X] [ROMANCE] Baron Anton Kiesinger II
[X] Hubert, as he settles in to his niche with Ulrikadrin.
[X] Barak Varr, to watch the progress of the canal.
 
BoneyM said:
They're a literal God. Offering them an amount of power a single human could manage is unlikely to be convincing.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Maybe if we got another deific juice heist, but I put low odds on surviving one if we want to actually seek one of those out.

BoneyM said:
You'd have to add yet another layer of magic to befuddle the wearer into not realizing the invisibility has worn off.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
When making cursed items, K.I.S.S. is key.

I'd probably just put a stress triggered Bewilder secondary enchantment without messing with the invisibility.
Or I suppose...a Mindhole targeting themselves as if they were the caster if I wanted to get fancy. Turn invisible, forget everything about yourself after a few minutes.

Not sure WHY we'd actually go to all that effort for it, but thats GM-veekie's thoughts.
BoneyM said:
There's technically a town council, but nobody's under any illusions. The holy warriors riding on giant wolves that saved everyone are calling the shots.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Hmm, so the council handles all the boring stuff like alloting food, adjucating living spaces, and building infrastructure while the Knightly Order handles Justice and Politics?
MooseHowl said:
That sounds really close to how Johann senses magic and objects around him. I could imagine him getting confused if he were somehow using Breach the Unknown to skip straight to answers. "Oh, this sensation of theirs is a lot like how magic feels. Must be magic."
Especially before we got him to properly F L E X his windsense.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Its really using a highly refined sense of touch to 'hear' with, but keeping in mind that sound travels REALLY well through solid objects and taut threads(like say, webbing). And you need to know about ultrasonics.

We could test this well enough if we wanted, based on this theory the We's communication ranges would be:
-Highest when inside an enclosed rigid object. Sound would propagate extremely long distances without dispersal, down a sufficiently narrow and hard tunnel.
-Lowered when the ground is soft.
-Lowered when in open spaces.

If true, the We should have perfect wifi when inside a Karak, but the range should drop dramatically in open space on soil, but since every We is a signal repeater, you would not notice the difference inside a colony proper.

Which means if true, an engineering solution for the We fragmenting over longer ranges is to set up a network hub of extremely hard(as in hard to the point of brittleness) steel speaking tubes, for hub operator spiders to sit between and 'echo' the sounds and keep the hive continuous.
 
BoneyM said:
No, I'm not going to make selling books a thing. That leads to a hundred pages of 'well, do we think we'll need Mountains of Mourn geography?'. And I really don't like the idea of doing so as a sort of concealed proxy vote on what to research and what not to in the future.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

Fair enough, though I would like to note that I do not consider that to be any kind of concealed proxy vote, but very much an IC decision of 'well that is a dead end, spring cleaning time'.
 
BoneyM said:
No, I'm not going to make selling books a thing. That leads to a hundred pages of 'well, do we think we'll need Mountains of Mourn geography?'. And I really don't like the idea of doing so as a sort of concealed proxy vote on what to research and what not to in the future.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Can we at least sell off the 'Liber Mortis' one? The thread's made it clear we're never gonna use it anyway. And antiques fetch good prices.
 
DragonParadox said:
Fair enough, though I would like to note that I do not consider that to be any kind of concealed proxy vote, but very much an IC decision of 'well that is a dead end, spring cleaning time'.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
It has been repeatedly said already that its not a dead end. Just that staring directly at the aethryric form of a god is not a good idea even when said god likes you.
 
veekie said:
Hmm, so the council handles all the boring stuff like alloting food, adjucating living spaces, and building infrastructure while the Knightly Order handles Justice and Politics?
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

Pretty much, yeah.

fictionfan said:
@BoneyM : What did we practice when being a good example?
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

Shadow Knives and Throttling, but Mathilde is leagues beyond the point where practicing individual sub-Battle Magic spells will produce noticeable results. She was doing so to encourage the Ducklings.
 
BoneyM said:
Shadow Knives and Throttling, but Mathilde is leagues beyond the point where practicing individual sub-Battle Magic spells will produce noticeable results. She was doing so to encourage the Ducklings.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
This option still exists would it not be helpful?
BoneyM said:
[ ] Practice shooting while invisible. (applies to Substance of Shadow and Invisibility)
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Also yes I realize the reason we didn't learn anything is that we can't expect improvement from a duckling half action.
 
Andmeuths said:
Note that WOG is that new options are opened up in the Theurgy tree, and BoneyM does not offer trap options. The conclusion isn't Divine Magic research is forbidden period, it's lines of research that are conducted by staring directly into the Warp and into the domain of the gods - which, let's face it is a really dumb thing to do because the warp tends to stare back at you. It's like staring at the sun with your naked eyes, only replace the sun with the warp and eyes with the mind.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

And yet in spite of how seemingly everyone agrees how ill conceived the idea was this was the first and only action to begin the presumed research chain, an inevitable failure. I do not think that speaks of the great potential for studying divine magic. Keep in mind we did not vote for 'stare at Ranald' nor was doing so the result of a bad roll, it just happened by GM fiat. I agree that the GM does not do trap options in the sense of things that seem innocuous and are dangerous but the way this was handled seems like a pretty solid narrative hint that to coin a dwarf expression 'we are trying to dig a mine in a mud hole'
 
DragonParadox said:
And yet in spite of how seemingly everyone agrees how ill conceived the idea was this was the first and only action to begin the presumed research chain, an inevitable failure.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

What you see as failure, I see as priceless problem scoping. The biggest challenge in any field of research is to know what the right questions to ask, and Ranald has told us that inquiring about the nature of the gods in depth is the wrong research question. Studying the links to the gods though - how to structure it, secure it, how to fortify it, how to subvert it, how to disrupt it, and maybe even how to spoof it....that, he bestows his favor on Mathilde. We know there are links. We know Mathilde can perceive the routes. We know that Mathilde should not be probing deeper into the destination.

Now, I see people asserting that Mathilde must fully perceive and comprehend the nature of the gods for Theurgy to be possible. I suspect this is a highly mistaken assertion (and for that matter, an impossible requirement, because of the limits of the human mind and soul) - no Priest using Divine Magic ever did things that way, and I suspect all Priests grew more skilled in their Divine Magic abilities by cultivating their connections to their gods, not stare and perceive the warp with greater fidelity.
 
Last edited:
Andmeuths said:
What you see as failure, I see as priceless problem scoping. The biggest challenge in any field of research is to know what the right questions to ask, and Ranald has told us that inquiring about the nature of the gods in depth is the wrong research question. Studying the links to the gods though - how to secure it, how to fortify it, how to subvert it, how to disrupt it, and maybe even how to spoof it....that, he bestows his favor on Mathilde.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

As a research action is seems to have been a pretty clear failure, we learned nothing that was not either confirming common knowledge 'divine artifacts are part of gods' or obvious to the thread as being bad 'staring into the Warp is bad'. It is possible to re-frame it as learning that we should not inquire as to the nature of gods except that we did not vote to inquire that, we voted to study the coin as a manifestation of divine magic. If you had asked practically anyone here 'do you think staring into the warp is a good idea?' the answer would have been a resounding no.
 
DragonParadox said:
If you had asked practically anyone here 'do you think staring into the warp is a good idea?' the answer would have been a resounding no.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

I'm interested to know what the next steps that BoneyM has come up with if there will be new options.

I think it's time we tried the Ulgu tongs entry level research to see if its a dead end though, especially as the information gleaned from doing so will be highly useful when in an environment where Ulgu is in close contact with all the other winds due to just how much magic is in the air. This action would have ancillary benefits for out chaos wastes scouting trip.

Edit: wow I badly misread the end of your post. Sorry, guess I need to wake up more before replying to posts.
 
Last edited:
[X] Barak Varr, to watch the progress of the canal.
[X] Karak Kadrin, to get to know the leaders of the Expedition.
[X] Wilhelmina Hochschild, to check in on her and see how she feels about the Marienburg situation.
[X] Pay a visit to your fief, to see if anything has changed. It probably hasn't.
 
DragonParadox said:
As a research action is seems to have been a pretty clear failure, we learned nothing that was not either confirming common knowledge 'divine artifacts are part of gods' or obvious to the thread as being bad 'staring into the Warp is bad'. It is possible to re-frame it as learning that we should not inquire as to the nature of gods except that we did not vote to inquire that, we voted to study the coin as a manifestation of divine magic. If you had asked practically anyone here 'do you think staring into the warp is a bad idea?' the answer would have been a resounding no.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

I don't think anyone in the thread had the slightest idea of whether there was a distinction between connection and destination when it comes to Divine Magic before this action clearly spelled it out there was - no-one even knew what the scope of the problem remotely looked like before this update. Now, you might argue there's no way to study the connection without comprehending the nature of the gods in their totality by staring into the warp, but I don't think anything in Mathilde's studies so far has pointed to this conclusion in the slightest. Of course, the whole thread probably would have agreed staring at the warp is bad - but if that's the case, no-one would have supported the coin action to begin with, if they all knew that - clearly, the hope was that the action would give clues about what exactly to more specifically study.

And I doubt studying the connection is the dead-end you seem to be implicitly asserting here (else Divine Magic cannot be wielded by mortals, period) unless I misunderstand your argument. Not only that, I think in principle, given who Mathilde is and how she pulled off so many of her feats, it's perfectly in character for Mathilde to study the much narrower question about how gods and man are linked, an act of piety and devotion and further guarding her soul against the ruinous powers.
 
Last edited:
BoneyM said:
Being invisible while on a shooting range with Journeymen would almost certainly be educational, but probably not in the ways you want.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
No if their spell hit us it would activate the rune of Spellburner burning the spell out of their mind. That is the opposite of educational.

Edit: Your point is well taken.
 
Last edited:
DragonParadox said:
As a research action is seems to have been a pretty clear failure, we learned nothing that was not either confirming common knowledge 'divine artifacts are part of gods' or obvious to the thread as being bad 'staring into the Warp is bad'. It is possible to re-frame it as learning that we should not inquire as to the nature of gods except that we did not vote to inquire that, we voted to study the coin as a manifestation of divine magic. If you had asked practically anyone here 'do you think staring into the warp is a good idea?' the answer would have been a resounding no.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

I've reiterated a number of times that the take-away is not 'staring into the warp is bad' and I'm getting sick of seeing it repeated. It's that Ranald objects to examination of Him, which is something Mathilde did not know or expect. And yes, the vote did not say to examine Ranald, but I doubt the thread would be happy if I cut the action off at 'it works in a way too complicated for Mathilde to comprehend' and left 'examine the link between the Coin and Ranald' as another action.

I get that you're not happy with how this turned out, but the way you're continuing to express that unhappiness is starting to disrupt the thread.
 
Last edited:
Reader mode
You must login or register to reply here.
Voting is open
Remove ads
Back
Top