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Warhammer Fantasy: Divided Loyalties - an Advisor's Quest

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picklepikkl said:
Younger than I expected. If he's ~55 and picked us up when we were ~10, he was around thirty then, so probably a fairly fresh Magister.

We are now more experienced than Regimand was when he first found us. Gosh. If magic parents are like real parents, he's going to start hinting to us about grandapprentices real soon :V
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I mean, isn't Mathilde currently in her 30s right now? While yes, there's been speculation in regards to her qualifying for Lady Magister, it's still up in the air and we don't know how experienced Regimand in his 30s.
In fact, I'd be willing to bet he was in his prime years back then adventuring like Mathilde currently is, considering he's in semi-retirement nowadays and he found Mathilde while off on some business in Stirland, probably Vampire related.

Also, does someone know where the story post containing info on how Mathilde awakened her magic and almost got burnt at the stake is? I remember reading it but forgot the details such as:
  • How old was Mathilde was she when that happened and got saved by her Village Watch guy?
While it seems Mathilde has coped with that traumatic past by embracing her Wizard identity and then forging new ones such as Dame Weber, Dawongr Weber, etc.. I'm wondering if there is still some lingering buried trauma.

There is admittedly little proof that would hint at that, but it's always been presented as background information that didn't really dive too deep into the aftermath, iirc.
 
BoneyM said:
Not without also fuzzing the two physical objects in question into an undifferentiated puddle on the floor.
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Huh... so we can only completely fuzz the boundaries instead of only doing it one place.

All or nothing!

TIME TO BEGIN TO HUMAN INSTRUMENTALITY PROJECT!

The other races cant hope to withstand every human fused into one being!

ONE IS ALL ALL IS ONE!
 
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ninjafish said:
So you can't fuzz the boundary only in certain places? its only all or nothing?
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You're using Ulgu-flavoured keywords but what you're describing is an infinite-range binary signal, which is possibly the least Ulgu thing imaginable. If you weren't skirting so close to the Delicious Burrito zone you might have something to work with, but in this case no, you get a puddle.
 
ninjafish said:
Huh... so we can only completely fuzz the boundaries instead of only doing it one place.

All or nothing!

TIME TO BEGIN TO HUMAN INSTRUMENTALITY PROJECT!

The other races cant hope to withstand every human fused into one being!

ONE IS ALL ALL IS ONE!
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It's fascinating how all extreme positions of change inevitably seem to come around to supporting the sublimation of the world into the immaterium.

Chaos Alone Complex, or something.
 
chocolote12 said:
It's fascinating how all extreme positions of change inevitably seem to come around to supporting the sublimation of the world into the immaterium.

Chaos Alone Complex, or something.
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Nah I say we fuse all humans together,

Humans and only humans, no one else allowed.

Become greater than gods!

ONE HUMAN THAT EXISTS WITH THE WEIGHT OF ALL HUMANS. ONE WILL TO EXERT UPON THE IMMATERIUM!

EVEN CHAOS SHALL BOW OR BE BROKEN!
 
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@BoneyM, are K8Ps Runesmith Clan(s) still around, or if they've been absorbed and not exterminated, descendants in other Runesmith Clans that might be persuaded to refound the Clan(s)?
 
Resonant said:
While it seems Mathilde has coped with that traumatic past by embracing her Wizard identity and then forging new ones such as Dame Weber, Dawongr Weber, etc.. I'm wondering if there is still some lingering buried trauma.

There is admittedly little proof that would hint at that, but it's always been presented as background information that didn't really dive too deep into the aftermath, iirc.
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Mathilde certainly has the quite understandable tendency to seek out father figures- Regimand, Abelhelm, Belegar, Kragg, Algard- of someone with a childhood curtailed by parental betrayal, and rescue by her first surrogate parent. And you see glimpses of it in her occasional comment, like how she understood Adela's drive to be close to her family- in theory. Want to acknowledge that she adopts other surrogate family members too, like Anton, and the ducklings.

It might also manifest in the way her loyalties tend to play out- fiercely loyal to the individuals she adopts, even as she's more flexible about institutions and their norms- the attitude you might even expect from the wind of smudged boundaries, plots and trickery.

If I were to venture further into speculation, in my piece on that fateful day in Kelham some twenty-five years ago, I postulate that event was the catalyst of her character-defining Brave trait. It's a laudable virtue, but it's also possible that a ten-year-old deciding that the best way to handle the trauma and fear of parental abandonment, is to never let it show, and extending that approach to all situations where you're scared... well, it could point to some possible short-cutting of the trauma resolution process, yeah. She's still not comfortable talking about that part of her life.
 
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SCO said:
That fight was lost way back in the start with the abelheim vote
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Not to re-legislate extremely old votes, but having just been in a backward-looking, reflective mood- the thread vote back then was against romantic involvement, in preference to romance with Abelhelm or any other candidate. The result wasn't exactly one thing or the other.
 
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I look it at other way, it was the writing in the wall. The romance 'now' lobby couldn't get enough support - because of lack of candidates with enough support - but the people voting 'delay' tactically with 'maybe aromantism can prevail' were also underestimating how the thread popularity would increase and thus the romantic vote power too.


Maybe if the thread hadn't voted to play tower-wizard in K8P after the reconquest things would still be in limbo.
 
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And thus the Dragon romance remains the most pure and selfless campaign the voters have ever engaged in, no shady alliances, no political compromises, no delays or nega-voting to spite others.

Just voters united in their honest desire for more Dragon.
 
NexusEye said:
@BoneyM, are K8Ps Runesmith Clan(s) still around, or if they've been absorbed and not exterminated, descendants in other Runesmith Clans that might be persuaded to refound the Clan(s)?
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They were reabsorbed into the Karaz-a-Karak Thungnissons Clan, which is considered the original Runesmith Clan. Runesmith refounding is much harder to negotiate than any other because of the Clan/Guild/Cult triple bond, and because demand greatly outstrips supply.

fictionfan said:
That seems like could be made into the base of an attack spell.
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It is. Burning Shadows.
 
SCO said:
It is what it is.
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It's not really a post meant to induce discussion (in the sense of proposing an overhaul of the thread or anything). NecRomancy puns aside, there's really nothing that can be done. Certain topics burn with bitterness, like salt on the fragile snail of one's emotions. My emotions are certainly a fragile snail, anyways. Getting them over with quickly gets the bitterness out; what's done is done, and all. Things start getting toxic when bitter topics can't be purged; relitigating a vote brings back all the salt of the previous fight, as if it'd never passed away, but similar topics can inherit quantities of it.

Panoramia-the-romance-vote is done. We're through with it, locked in and all that, no backsies, and that's basically fine. Panoramia-the-thread-topic-back-then is toxic in an ecological sense, in that it actively spreads and sours similar thread-topics long after the vote that poisoned it was concluded. Somebody starts insisting that Panoramia is super cool or whatever, and how dare you compare her to a journeyman'ling', and it's like the last fight never stopped, and I hate her again just as much as I did in the darkest hours of back then.

Meanwhile poor Panoramia-in-the-actual-official-quest is just trying to grow some nice cabbages or whatever. But at this point I'm trying to describe some vague thing that makes me feel bad, not anything that can actually be helped with.
 
chocolote12 said:
Meanwhile poor Panoramia-in-the-actual-official-quest is just trying to grow some nice cabbages or whatever. But at this point I'm trying to describe some vague thing that makes me feel bad, not anything that can actually be helped with.
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If it helps I kind of feel the same way about people insisting Panoramia's achievements are equivalent to what Mathilde has done. It feels like cheapening everything we did. Risking our lives multiple times, retaking the greatest fallen dwarf Karak, helping to forge a divine super weapon, twenty lines total about growing crops are held up as the equivalent of all that and I apparently hate farmers if I don't agree.
 
For any given X, some people will like X and some people will not like X. If you don't like X but the majority voted to go for X, then I'm sorry but that's just how the format works. People grumble but accept that's just how things work and accept it. And if they can't, if that's a deal-breaker for them, then all there is for it is to move on to a new quest. If X was Warhammer or being a Wizard or working with Dwarves, then a theoretical X-disliker would almost always move on after maybe one post expressing that opinion. I have no hard feelings for that X-disliker. Thank you for giving my quest a shot, and may the next be more relevant to your interests.

But when the deal-breaking X is romance, either in general or with a specific person, for some reason people think that the thing to do is to make the point that they don't like X, over and over and over again. Sometimes when it's relevant to the topic at hand, sometimes when it's not. Sometimes directly and honestly, sometimes obliquely by trying to paint the romance partner negatively. And I've tried to be patient with it because a lot of the people doing it are long-time and valued contributors to the thread, and I rather hoped that once they got it off their collective chests it would die down. But it's one day short of six months since the thread collectively voted yes to romance, and it just keeps happening and I only have so much patience to give.

And I see people treat this as an inevitability. Unavoidable. A fact of life. It will always happen, it will never stop happening, this is just how things are now. The price of admission for romance in a quest is this new eternal background noise.

I rather fucking hope not.

At this rate there'll come a point, and that point may not be too terribly far off, where I find myself at a crossroads. On one path, this quest dies a quiet and ignoble death as my will to write for it finally runs dry. On the other path, I start invoking QM powers to eject from the thread anyone who can't stop themselves from expressing their displeasure at romance in general or a romance partner in particular.

I don't like either of those paths. I don't want to find myself at that crossroads. I ask that people please stop blazing a trail to it.
 
BoneyM said:
I don't like either of those paths. I don't want to find myself at that crossroads. I ask that people please stop blazing a trail to it.
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I was going to give a comprehensive account of why it's not the romance or Panoramia herself that annoys me, but then I realized that is not really relevant to this sentiment. For the sake of not making the thread harder to write in for other people I'm just going to stop engaging with all things Panoramia related from now on. They don't really intersect with my interests in the thread much anyway.
 
A common problem with romance in quests is that people try to make the romance take over all aspects of the rest of the quest, shoehorning the romantic partner into more and more things, or worse, wanting to devote more and more time to supporting the romantic partners perceived IC objectives or to their benefit.

That means that every vote starts to come down to a choice where one of the options is always 'Why don't we devote ourselves to help X?' This I feel, is what leads to eternal relitigation. It's what kicked it off here, with people proposing that we should invest AP in Panoramia to get her one promotion to justify giving her another one by putting her in charge here in Mathilde's absence.

What the best answer to this is I don't know. Possibly just saying that romance costs Mathilde an AP that will always be spent on Panoramia whatever happens, and splitting that off into a separate vote, so that the question of how much AP to spend on her doesn't arise and so doesn't pollute the rest of the discussion, as was done with social votes.
 
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I, for one, welcome the added romance updates with various suitors. In fact I was slowly getting annoyed at the lack of romance options because I didn't want Mathilde to grow into a spinster. That would've contradicted with her earlier characterization where she demonstrated that she wasn't an aromantic by showing interest in Abelhelm. The recent developments with Panoramia is a good character growth as well, showing that Mathilde's moved past the trauma of losing Abelhelm and is opening herself up again. Dunno why people are complaining or tarnishing this with husbando debates.
 
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HanEmpire said:
I, for one, welcome the added romance updates with various suitors. In fact I was slowly getting annoyed at the lack of romance options because I didn't want Mathilde to grow into a spinster. That would've contradicted with her earlier characterization where she demonstrated that she wasn't an aromantic by showing interest in Abelhelm.
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To be fair Mathilde is not exactly a static character, she is a soul slowly being transmuted by Ulgu and the Grey Wind is not particularly conductive to romantic sentiments. Being aromantic would not have struck me as OOC.
 
Alratan said:
A common problem with romance in quests is that people try to make the romance take over all aspects of the rest of the quest, shoehorning the romantic partner into more and more things, or worse, wanting to devote more and more time to supporting the romantic partners perceived IC objectives or to their benefit.

That means that every vote starts to come down to a choice where one of the options is always 'Why don't we devote ourselves to help X?' This I feel, is what leads to eternal relitigation. It's what kicked it off here, with people proposing that we should invest AP in Panoramia to get her one promotion to justify giving her another one by putting her in charge here in Mathilde's absence.

What the best answer to this is I don't know. Possibly just saying that romance costs Mathilde an AP that will always be spent on Panoramia whatever happens, and splitting that off into a separate vote, so that the question of how much AP to spend on her doesn't arise and so doesn't pollute the rest of the discussion, as was done with social votes.
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I'll give you the benefit of the doubt and assume you thought that this was a helpful examination of the problem, but it's very much part of the problem. It's a hell of a strawman to say 'people try to make the romance take over all aspects of the rest of the quest', and you're ascribing that as a motivation to people wanting to get Panoramia promoted, which people have been arguing for since long before romance was on the agenda and seems a pretty justifiable precaution when all the ranking Wizards are nipping off to Hell. Word choices like 'shoehorning' and 'pollute' don't help, either.
 
I don't really care for romance, and was somewhat annoyed by it taking an entire turn of social options... so I said that once and moved on. I agree the endless bickering is pointless and irritating.

My not having been engaging with the quest as much is probably unrelated.

EDIT: That is, the bickering is probably unrelated - the romance is definitely unrelated, because it doesn't really get in the way of anything else.
 
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