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Warhammer Fantasy: Divided Loyalties - an Advisor's Quest

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[X] MEAT: Yes
[X] ARM: Yes
[X] NUT: Yes
[X] PAPERS: Yes

If the arm is indeed a light magic thing, it'd be pretty damn good in Egrimm's hands. Just look at what he did to the higher daemon. Giving him more power to better ensure our safety on the Expedition is only wise.
 
HungryHamadryad said:
We took a bunch of enchanting related feats, regularly conduct magical research, and are considering using our Transcendental Boon™ to build the Old World's greatest order library as a magical research facility. Can you see how researching an example of, at worst, Slann enchanting might teach us some new things? That's not even getting into the possibility it's Old One work.
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As one of (if not the) first people to bring up the possibility of the Arm being Old One/Slann in origin I'd point out that the 'worst' possibility is that it's actually an example of some - to borrow a saurian phrase - warmblood civilization aping the former. Which, you know... still an example of a wholly distinct and advanced magic wielding practice that would have at least been in proximity to such in order to imitate it in function and form if not in technical details, so very valuable.

Whatever it is is Mathilde has noted it contains a lot of tightly controlled power that isn't Dhar, and is thus at least an example of someone somewhere doing some high-level enchanting (in an environment wealthy enough to have a significant amount of gold to spare for such a project and artisans skilled enough to work it into an approximation of a limb). There's no doubt in my mind that the Arm is more valuable than the price being asked for it, by a significant amount; no matter what it's provenance actually ends up being.
 
Well, we got less information out of the trip than I hoped, but there was some and we did get food. So not too bad overall.

[x] HALL: No
[x] MEAT: Yes
[x] ARM: Yes
[x] NUT: Yes
[x] PAPERS: Yes

Really the only thing I think is probably a rip off is the nut. Even in that case though we more or less have the passive income to sustain our expenditures (I don't favor the library boon, but even with the consideration of having to shell out for more books in the future we're starting to run into favor costs being the limiting factor rather than gold). So I'm fine taking a chance on it being worthwhile, if we start running short in the future we've even got an easy boost to our EIC earning with the gunpowder factory on the horizon, not even mentioning the canal.
 
Andres110 said:
If the arm is indeed a light magic thing, it'd be pretty damn good in Egrimm's hands. Just look at what he did to the higher daemon. Giving him more power to better ensure our safety on the Expedition is only wise.
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Note that while the item it resembles uses the rules of a Hysh battle magic spell on the table top, that doesn't mean it's actually using that spell, or light magic at all.

Particularly as if it is what we hope, it may predate Hysh.
 
HungryHamadryad said:
We took a bunch of enchanting related feats, regularly conduct magical research, and are considering using our Transcendental Boon™ to build the Old World's greatest order library as a magical research facility. Can you see how researching an example of, at worst, Slann enchanting might teach us some new things? That's not even getting into the possibility it's Old One work.
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Alratan said:
The arm certainly can, if we use it to reverse engineer even the least of Slann or Old One enchanting techniques and share them with the Colleges.

The nut, even if it's what we think it is, almost certainly cannot. It's apparently semi-standard equipment given to Asrai spellcasters who venture outside Athel Loren. If it could do what you suggest, it very likely already would have been used for that. Acorns of the Ages don't appear to be able to grow new Oaks of the Ages.
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we've researched loads of enchanted items before, and we've never successfully reverse engineered anything, so I have my doubts on being able to do so to a completely foreign enchanting system, especially if it was Old One work, and therefore constructed when physics was different.

The nut, on the other hand, is a nut. Nuts are typically planted in the ground to grow trees. Maybe the wood elves of laurelorn have a similar sapling, that would explain why wood elves have settled there permanently rather than migrating.
 
Alratan said:
Note that while the item it resembles uses the rules of a Hysh battle magic spell on the table top, that doesn't mean it's actually using that spell, or light magic at all.

Particularly as if it is what we hope, it may predate Hysh.
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The Slann taught the Elves how to use magic before the Gates fell, and the magic that Elves use is based on the Winds. Whatever form it took, there was something analogous to the Winds even when the Old Ones were around.
 
Right, I prefer the Arm to the Nut, but, on the face of it, I prefer having one or the other to both or neither, but also neither to both; I'm not really interested in spending all of Mathilde's money in Chaos Vegas to enrich Norsican raiders and Druchi... Druchi.

In the interests of that sentiment I'm changing my vote to...

[X] HALL: No
[X] MEAT: Yes
[X] ARM: No
[X] NUT: No
[X] PAPERS: Yes
 
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Thomasfoolery said:
Our first magical research paper was reverse engineering a quasi-enchantment from a starting point of Dhar. So I wouldn't say a foreign paradigm is necessarily the stumbling block.
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note the quasi in there, as much as the Chaos Dwarves will disagree , people are not objects, and the matrix's workings are actually there to our windsight, as opposed to hidden like nechanted items.
 
I'm pretty doubtful Pan can do anything major with the Acorn of Ages, not for a lack of ability mind you but more a lack of time and fancy equipment.

We'll probably earn some mad favor if we donate it to the Colleges at least.
 
wrecksalot said:
note the quasi in there, as much as the Chaos Dwarves will disagree , people are not objects, and the matrix's workings are actually there to our windsight, as opposed to hidden like nechanted items.
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Have we ever actually done a research action on an item with a bound spell now that I think about it? I'm not sure we've ever really seen if they are hidden. The closest I can think about to this sort of thing appearing "On screen" was the Ancient Shysish blades, which Mathilde was able to view the structure of, she merely judged that it was an outdated method so not worth adapting for current use.
 
wrecksalot said:
we've researched loads of enchanted items before, and we've never successfully reverse engineered anything
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But we have? We've successfully figured out how a bunch of things work, the first of which were the historically interesting but ultimately not very useful tribal swords, in addition to loads of Skaven technology. I'm not sure I follow what you're getting at, because we've learned a lot, and most of the things we've researched weren't actually related to enchanting?
 
You know, I wonder if Cython might be interested to see the arm, if it really is a Slann or Old Ones creation. They've probably seen work like it before, and could maybe help us out with it. Especially if it's specifically a Hysh thing. If nothing else it would be a curiosity.
 
Mopman43 said:
The Slann taught the Elves how to use magic before the Gates fell, and the magic that Elves use is based on the Winds. Whatever form it took, there was something analogous to the Winds even when the Old Ones were around.
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The Slann taught the elves before the gates fell. We don't know that they taught them. It could have been mundane skills. It could have been to use the undifferentiated energy of the Geomantic Web. It could have been to channel the power of the Old Ones as if they were gods. It certainly did include their language, but that's all we can be sure of.

We don't know the details, so can't make anything like the assumption you're making here.

We also don't know if the elves retained much of what they were taught given the level of disruption the Great Catastrophe would have caused. They may well have had to reinvent almost everything from scratch, save for their arcane language.

What we can be absolutely certain of is that they didn't teach them to wield the as yet non-existent Winds of Mafic.
 
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Thomasfoolery said:
Have we ever actually done a research action on an item with a bound spell now that I think about it? I'm not sure we've ever really seen if they are hidden. The closest I can think about to this sort of thing appearing "On screen" was the Ancient Shysish blades, which Mathilde was able to view the structure of, she merely judged that it was an outdated method so not worth adapting for current use.
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the pendant from Cathay, a whole lot of skaven tech,
HungryHamadryad said:
But we have? We've successfully figured out how a bunch of things work, the first of which were the historically interesting but ultimately not very useful tribal swords, in addition to loads of Skaven technology. I'm not sure I follow what you're getting at, because we've learned a lot, and most of the things we've researched weren't actually related to enchanting?
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cool, can we make Cathayan Jet? how about Ratling Guns? Lightning cannons? those are all things we've researched and we haven't had any notification that we can recreate them. the only thing we've been able to "reverse engineer" is Shyishkebabs, and those are literally from an older version of our magic tradition.
 
wrecksalot said:
Ratling Guns? Lightning cannons? those are all things we've researched and we haven't had any notification that we can recreate them.
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It's not that we couldn't, it's that they intrinsically use Warpstone in their ammunition/construction, and thus present an unacceptable level of danger to both the operators and the environment. Skaven do it anyway because they don't care if their underlings die within a couple years of magic cancer or a field is irrevocably blighted, to say nothing of how likely they are to explode while in use. We do, so figuring out the best way to disable them during a battle is the most that can be done with them.
 
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Alratan said:
The Slann taught the elves before the gates fell. We don't know that they taught them. It could have been mundane skills. It could have been to use the undifferentiated energy of the Geomantic Web. It could have been to channel the power of the Old Ones as if they were gods.
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There was definitely magic involved.
After the Lizardmen, the first of the newly created races was the Elves, and they learned the lore of magic in the lap of the gods themselves.
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Lizardmen 8th edition, page 8

If they only adapted what they were taught to use the Winds, well, hell if I know.
 
wrecksalot said:
the pendant from Cathay, a whole lot of skaven tech,

cool, can we make Cathayan Jet? how about Ratling Guns? Lightning cannons? those are all things we've researched and we haven't had any notification that we can recreate them. the only thing we've been able to "reverse engineer" is Shyishkebabs, and those are literally from an older version of our magic tradition.
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The Cathayan Jet was pretty useless - I don't know if we could have reverse-engineered anything from it, but it would have been fairly pointless. The Skaven technology is frankly more "engineering" than "magic", even if they had warpstone to do the heavy lifting. Honestly, the enchantments-inside-people is the probably closest analogue the quest has seen.

Besides, the point isn't to necessarily recreate whatever we're investigating exactly, it would be to see if we could apply anything we learnt to our own uses, which is eminently possible.
 
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