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Warhammer Fantasy: Divided Loyalties - an Advisor's Quest

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Ericwinter said:
... I almost want to suggest we convert Cython to Ranald, but I can't see anything about them That would match. Shame, I want to see what would happen if a dragon worshipped a human god.
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As I understand it, there's a long running debate between elves and dragons about whether Loec learned trickery and wit from Draugnir, the Father of Dragons, or vice versa - and Dragons (or at least Forest Dragons) have a soft spot for the God of Trickery, Stealth, and Wit.

That said, it's an open question whether Loec and Ranald are actually the same person, and even if they are, that still implies that dragons wouldn't actually worship Ranald, just be alright with mortals doing it.
 
Shovern said:
Also a bit late for it, but that social with the Dragon was great. So great that I'm a little bit worried/upset. Why? Because I had a funpost ready for the next bout of Social voting where I assumed Panpan and Johann would be the only two strong candidates. But now I feel that all this:




Everyone fights in the Waifu Wars
Yeah we like ours but we sure hate your's
It's Mag-ister Gold vs Jade Wizard
Let the flames begin to flow.

Lets throw down, quote at me bro
I'll fuck you up, and your fave's a hoe
Don't be a troll and blame the rolls
These posts aren't just for show​

Is now outdated and in need of rework. But I was gonna try to tone down the last bit anyway, try to make it more friendly or something.
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Por que no los dos?
 
I think that the amount of interest that a curious new topic and sudden discovery is, should not be mistaken for romantic interest and compatibility. :V Getting excited about learning a new thing, or exploring history that nobody has before, is not the same as being a good romance target.

Also, frankly, I've always been of the opinion we should stick to somebody who we could actually hug, too. Physical comfort and love is important, dammit.
NSMS said:
Don't underestimate the value of proper scouting data. We don't even know for certain what the terrain's going to be like further along the trip (two centuries is a lot of time for a chaos-tainted landscape to change), and with it being in the wastes there aren't going to be any merchants or books that could tell us. Knowing what to expect allows us to prepare specifically for it, bring dedicated equipment, rethink parts of our route, etc. And that's just the landscape and the terrain- information on any permanent locals could be similarly valuable.
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TotallyNotEvil said:
Then I'd scout the Steppes and Skull Road. High Pass has gyrocopter coverage, Dum vicinity sounds way too dangerous and I don't see what kind of data it'd provide that a being a day way wouldn't and we'd be able to make provisions for.
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Question: you know, thinking about it, but... what if it ends up being the case, that scouting out the Road of Skulls or Steppes or Waste ends up requiring multiple AP?

That is, because the Steppes are so big, just one AP put into them does not cover it all.

Because, well... Just because we've spent one AP on a topic does not mean we've covered or completed the topic, after all. Since, well, I think we were picking which Peak to scout out and investigate, when we were still reclaiming Karak Eight Peaks. And a single peak is a hell of a lot less ground to cover than the entire Steppes or Chaos wastes. And of course we probably won't know how much more scouting we need to do, until we've first spent an action scouting it, too.

Or put another way: do you feel comfortable having a military campaign rest on the back of just one AP invested in scouting a really big terrain? =/
 
@picklepikkl If we want to split our scouting across every prep turn instead of backloading it, then I think we should do our armor enchantment before learning MMM.

Being (physically) untiring should greatly increase the amount of scouting we can get done in a month, whereas barring things going really truly catastrophically wrong, we shouldn't need battle magic during scouting.

Thoughts?
 
Garlak said:
Also, frankly, I've always been of the opinion we should stick to somebody who we could actually hug, too. Physical comfort and love is important, dammit.
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We got confirmation that Cython would not be cold enough for this to be an issue:
BoneyM said:
As you wait, you pile the snow up against one wall in the rough shape of a chair, noting that though it's certainly cold to the touch, it doesn't seem to leech the heat out of your hands, and a handful you cup experimentally in your hands stubbornly refuses to melt.
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And being hugged by people bigger than you is just as nice. They've got specialized hugging limbs( Wings) , even, so they can hug while they work. Can humans say the same? :V
 
Garlak said:
Question: you know, thinking about it, but... what if it ends up being the case, that scouting out the Road of Skulls or Steppes or Waste ends up requiring multiple AP?
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Scouting ahead in detail is likely to be a large part of what Mathilde will be doing on the expedition itself once it gets going. These actions are broad-strokes only, to look for the big issues that need to be diverted around or planned for well ahead of time. The equivalent of spotting the volcano full of dragon ogres.
 
[ ] With the help of a gyrocarriage, personally scout part of the route (specify: High Pass, Road of Skulls, Western Great Steppes, Karag Dum vicinity)
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What's stopping the expedition from doing this with gyro's and rangers themselves? Genuine curiosity. If they're on the Karaz Ankor's dime they should be able to afford it.
 
Gavin Prince said:
Scouting ahead in detail is likely to be a large part of what Mathilde will be doing on the expedition itself once it gets going. These actions are broad-strokes only, to look for the big issues that need to be diverted around or planned for well ahead of time. The equivalent of spotting the volcano full of dragon ogres.
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Indeed. Whether we advance-scout beforehand or not, I expect we will still vote for scouting actions while on the Expedition itself. Scouting beforehand means spending more actions scouting, and less on other stuff (preparations) than otherwise.
 
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Redshirt Army said:
@picklepikkl If we want to split our scouting across every prep turn instead of backloading it, then I think we should do our armor enchantment before learning MMM.

Being (physically) untiring should greatly increase the amount of scouting we can get done in a month, whereas barring things going really truly catastrophically wrong, we shouldn't need battle magic during scouting.

Thoughts?
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This makes sense to me, but if we do MMM on T32, we're going to want to be sure we have a flex AP for T33 in case it ends up needing two actions.
Alliterate said:
Indeed. Whether we advance-scout beforehand or not, I expect we will still vote for scouting actions while on the Expedition itself. Scouting beforehand means spending more actions scouting, and less on other stuff (preparations) than otherwise.
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Maybe? Boney might have some really good alternate actions in competition with the scouting. I'm just not very sanguine that we will get to the expedition and be totally fine with spending all the time scouting instead of [whatever else Boney comes up with]; some broad-strokes recon is probably called for.
 
Klaus said:
Sure, but claiming that one of the options is against the established character is exactly what someone was doing, so saying "yes, but" isn't really a refutation.
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My reading of @Vebyast is that there's some nuance here. He's not saying "a relationship with ____ would be out of character for Mathilde" in the same sense that he'd say "a relationship with an ogre would be out of character for Mathilde." He's saying something like:

"Mathilde's character establishes that she is likely to be attracted to A, B, C, D, and E in a romantic partner, and while ________ only brings A and C to the table, ________ brings B, C, D, and E to the table. Therefore, romantic interest in the latter is relatively more in-character for Mathilde than interest in the former."

Lupercal said:
Not today becaus it is 1:30am for me and I don't have the energy or mental capacity to critically analyse prose for why I found the characters in it to bounce off of each other.

I will say though that not being romantic was BoneyM's intention for all of these getting to know you actions. So Johann being an interesting character but not actively sweeping us off our feet, in that scene, is intended and not an indecation of romantic suitiblity. That same with all of these scenes. I'll remind you that there where people poo pooing Panoramia's scene and character as well.
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I mean, that's entirely fair.

On the other hand, if the kinds of things that to me read as romantic chemistry and the basis for a positive, lively relationship of equals manage to creep into interactions between Mathilde and CHARACTER_A, while under similar circumstances such things do not appear in broadly comparable interactions between Mathilde and CHARACTER_B, that's going to influence my decision-making.

For example, the dragon scene actually made me less anti-dragon-romance, and I'm pretty damn anti-dragon-romance. And I didn't have much opinion for or against Panoramia, but the cozy scene and mutual ability to only partly fathom each other's mysteries made me more pro-Panoramia.

chocolote12 said:
Actually, she doesn't. That time period is reserved for her massive backlog of doing nothing, to paraphrase.

The more we learn about him, the more Johann sounds like somebody who should have been a perpetual, but kept working and specializing until he could climb up anyways, based on the merit of the few things he's not barred from.

In contrast, Panoramia has always known her place in the world. Her whole family has always believed in her, and she's never encountered any big problems with her magical cultivation; her worst miscast was a cramped hand for a few minutes.

Reworking the farmland of the Karak is fine and all, but I think that there's definitely a drive for self-improvement that she lacks. She doesn't want to be a Magister. She sees no point in studying. She's hardworking, but content.

When we make our Xianxia-style Heaven Defying Breakthrough and tell Panoramia that we're rejecting our humanity (a jojo reference), I don't think she's going to be too enthusiastic about it. Johann would get motivated. Cython would be happy that we'd be sticking around for the long term. Roswita and Anton and Oswald would need us to help them out there, but that's part and parcel with their other strengths and focuses. Panoramia could come along that road by herself, but she doesn't want to.
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Eh. I can respect that.

On the other hand, I also like the idea of Mathilde's partner being someone who is, well, more... grounded than herself. Someone who has insights into her character, who gets her without necessarily having exactly the same interests and desires as her. Someone who's got anchors into a specific patch of land that we're going to be interested in coming back to for a long time in the future.
 
Redshirt Army said:
I believe the custom is that you take the name of the higher ranked family, so surely it would be Mathilde Cython. :V
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I don't know, Cython is emperor of Cythonia, but given that the paper is being published in the Empire, it'd make sense to have the name of the one who is higher ranked there- I don't believe Cython holds a knightly title.
 
You know, I'm curious about what Cython would make of AV. Considering it was probably around when the Old Ones first showed up, it might be able to tell us if they used something similar, like I've seen theorized occasionally.
 
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EVA-Saiyajin said:
What's stopping the expedition from doing this with gyro's and rangers themselves? Genuine curiosity. If they're on the Karaz Ankor's dime they should be able to afford it.
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If I had to hazard a guess, fuel spent on gyrocopters is fuel not being spent on steam wagons. They bought up the confiscated peat from Talabecland, after all. And on a per unit basis, Mathilde's going to be a lot more effective than an individual ranger team since she has her shadowsteed.

Mathilde's galloping speed is 25 mph, and her stamina is 10 hours, giving her 250 miles of potential range.

Average walking speed is 3-4 mph, we can bump that up to 5 mph because dorf. Let's say they have day long stamina for the duration of the mission. That gives us 5 * 24 = 120 for 120 miles of range.
 
Ericwinter said:
Question for the thread: which would make a better librarian, Dragon or We? Because I remember something about the We running the library for U of K8P.
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I think that was mine, and I am still very much in favor of getting the We to be echoer-in-chief of our fine institution.

chocolote12 said:
Actually, she doesn't. That time period is reserved for her massive backlog of doing nothing, to paraphrase.

The more we learn about him, the more Johann sounds like somebody who should have been a perpetual, but kept working and specializing until he could climb up anyways, based on the merit of the few things he's not barred from.

In contrast, Panoramia has always known her place in the world. Her whole family has always believed in her, and she's never encountered any big problems with her magical cultivation; her worst miscast was a cramped hand for a few minutes.

Reworking the farmland of the Karak is fine and all, but I think that there's definitely a drive for self-improvement that she lacks. She doesn't want to be a Magister. She sees no point in studying. She's hardworking, but content.

When we make our Xianxia-style Heaven Defying Breakthrough and tell Panoramia that we're rejecting our humanity (a jojo reference), I don't think she's going to be too enthusiastic about it. Johann would get motivated. Cython would be happy that we'd be sticking around for the long term. Roswita and Anton and Oswald would need us to help them out there, but that's part and parcel with their other strengths and focuses. Panoramia could come along that road by herself, but she doesn't want to.
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That's kinda the point of Pan for me; she would be the one who keeps Mathilde from burning out. Who tells her it is ok to take a month off and just carve little horses. Grounding.

It's a very different flavor of relationship than Johann would be. Or the ice Dragon, anything that strikes me as ultimately very limited; they can't even really go to a party together, or fit in medium-sized rooms. (Idk, could a dragon shrink itself? Like, still a dragon, just now like elephant sized instead of barn sized.)

And I have to say, I really, really liked Roswita in this last. Her giggle, her sly asides to Mathilde, her academic debut, even the way she mentions that she was a college student to imply she was a party girl before confessing otherwise- it felt like she came in trusting Mathilde as the person who was on her side and had her back. Which is cool, in that she has a TON of natural allies at a place like this and she conspired against them with us. (So to speak.) It feels like such an honest, unconscious gesture of closeness that I'm really touched by it.
 
I think... that the most important thing about a romantic partner, would be... if they care about you and have your back and be there for you. This remains true for family and close friends, and it remains true for potential love interests too.

Not, 'how interesting they are as a character.' Not, 'how impressive they are as a mage or person or repository of history or mystery.'

But how much emotionally invested they can get in you. Can you go to them for comfort? Can you bring your problems to them and be confident in knowing that they'll care about them and try to help you with them or lend a listening ear, or at least be able to understand and care about your problems? Do you share enough culture and norms to naturally understand or just sorta-easily-get, on a simple and ground-base level, what is going on in the other being's head emotionally very easily? Do you have the same rough expected age or lifespan, or at minimum would "a hundred years" be a significant chunk of their life? Can you live in the same society or household together? Look, these are very simple and practical and comfortable fundamental ideas.

But most important of all, is "Will this person cherish and love you?" We can go to, for example, Anton or Johann or Regimand or maybe even Roswita with some of our problems or issues or doubts, and expect them to care about them off the bat, just because of who we and they are. That's good. Even if a Grey Wizard wounds up keeping lots of secrets and doesn't share everything, the fact is still important that those things that aren't super-secret-agent-classified can be shared.

I think the dragon's an interesting person. And knows lots of interesting stuff. I'd be interested in hearing more about their life, more about magic, and so on. But as a romantic partner or someone to love? No.
chocolote12 said:
We got confirmation that Cython would not be cold enough for this to be an issue:

And being hugged by people bigger than you is just as nice. They've got specialized hugging limbs( Wings) , even, so they can hug while they work. Can humans say the same? :V
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Physical intimacy is what I was talking about, not temperature. Being able to sleep in the same bed. Being able to work in the same house. Being able to pick a person up and carry them in your arms if they're tired or sleepy or hurt. Being able to hug your kids.
Magnive said:
Johann, on the other hand? He's our golden punch-wizard adventuring buddy, he was immediately on board with the Karag Dum expedition, and I doubt that he's gonna be satisfied with anything less than Lord Magister. Plus, he's almost as fond of the Dawi as the thread is!
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Shovern said:
Johann only stopped when he was blinded. And even then he was gearing up for another go.

And I don't know if Mathilde has ever stopped.

This could be a matter of perspective, actually it almost certainly is, but I feel that of the two, Johann's drive is a better match for Mathilde than Panoramia's.
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Huh, yeah, I hadn't quite thought about it in that way but... One of Johann's things is that he literally can go on adventures with Mathilde. Is willing, and is able, to.

Having someone be able to have your back, in the shenanigans you get up to, is good. In a friend or comrade-in-arms or love or family.

'Course, Johann's kind of ahead on the adventures meter, because we've actually been able to go on adventures with him. Scouting and attacking Skaven. Shared experiences matter, I think. (As an aside in general and not just for right now... To connect this to even the first half of this post too... The past matters. Not just a nebulous future of uncertainties. Having shared things with people. And not just speculating on what they might be capable of psychologically.)

As an example of what I mean, in practice... Let's take a hypothethical question: if Mathilde were to die or be cursed or maimed right now, who would care? Johann and Panoramia would care. Probably a hell of a lot. Anton and Regimand would care a hell of a lot, and so would Belegar. Roswita would care. Even Kragg or possibly even Asarnil would be sad! Would the Dragon care? Not really. A sanguine shrug of disappointment is about the most I would expect.

And that, that matters. 'Who would care?' 'Who does care?'

Who do you want to build your life with? Somebody who you know can care, because they already care. I don't think going into it with 'Well maybe they'll grow to care in the future, you don't know!' is the best approach to take because, as I said, the past matters. Not just hypothethicals or theories.
 
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Glau said:
I think that was mine, and I am still very much in favor of getting the We to be echoer-in-chief of our fine institution.



That's kinda the point of Pan for me; she would be the one who keeps Mathilde from burning out. Who tells her it is ok to take a month off and just carve little horses. Grounding.

It's a very different flavor of relationship than Johann would be. Or the ice Dragon, anything that strikes me as ultimately very limited; they can't even really go to a party together, or fit in medium-sized rooms. (Idk, could a dragon shrink itself? Like, still a dragon, just now like elephant sized instead of barn sized.)
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I mean, it got itself into Skaven tunnels.

But yeah, do mostly agree with the Grounding-Pan takes presented.
 
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