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I don't think we're Chosen, but we definitely have a much closer relationship with him than, say, most people with Sigmar (Incidentally, we also accidentally picked up Anti-Sigmarism because he was so useless where it counted in Sylvania, except for maybe that one time with the ghoul king.)
Heh. Gotta love the title Mathilde picked up from that. I mean, of all the hardcore ways to get noticed as a music critic...
IIRC, that also avoids crit-fails.
Yeah, Ranald's blessing has saved us from several nasty ends.
Oh yeah oof thats bad for us.

Being Anti Sigmar is bad juju.

Also what is this book everyone is talking about?
Re-read this update. Prepare to cry. The book is at the end.
 
Also like, I... hmm. Like, I actually have less problems with your ideas because you specifically don't want to use anything related to Dhar and I've been doing you a disservice so for that I apologize. I still have problems though, and they relate to the Liber Mortis itself, which is that point blank I don't trust it to stop there, regardless of yours, mine or quite a few other sensible people's opinions. This has to do with any quest's structure, which is that outside of novelty quests with a tiny handful of readers the largest proportion of readers in a quest are those who read the updates and then look at the tally or scroll down to find the leading plan on the first page and then vote for that with very little actual interaction. Most folks don't have time to get in-depth in my experience, like we are right now. I'd really rather not have to deal with the fallout of reading it, learning some of the stuff in there and then someone who actually is interested in using Dhar throwing out a vote that grabs up enough of those folks to win and then there were are.
I dare say this sort of debate tactic only serves to ridicule your own position because it polarizes the discussion into No Book Ever vs Yes Book.

Which kills the sort of discussion thats needed to actually do it properly because the Maximum Sith angle isn't hurt at all and its demoralizing the moderates who would normally rein them in.
 
The seed would heal us yeah. Oh I know the snake juice isn't Dhar, I've seen that quote by the QM, I had quite a bit of fun digging through that info collection. I think its a really cool take on the whole idea of how the Warp works inside of warp entities.

The reason I have the issue with the Liber is because I frankly don't see it as doing the exact same thing. The matrix was taking a look at what was probably a lore of Necromancy or vampire lore spell, ripping all the Dhar requirements out and then making something out of that. Its a process of finding Spell X that works off Wind X and then adapting it to Ulgu, and this is basically the root of one wizard looking at another and going "Hmm, how do I do that?". Using the Liber Mortis to learn how to manipulate the snake juice with Ulgu is instead very similar to using Wind X on Material Y affected by another Wind Z to manipulate that Wind Z. That process I look askance at, because its like trying to paint blind. I don't want to go mucking about on a similar path of "enlightenment" to Nagash.

Also like, I... hmm. Like, I actually have less problems with your ideas because you specifically don't want to use anything related to Dhar and I've been doing you a disservice so for that I apologize. I still have problems though, and they relate to the Liber Mortis itself, which is that point blank I don't trust it to stop there, regardless of yours, mine or quite a few other sensible people's opinions. This has to do with any quest's structure, which is that outside of novelty quests with a tiny handful of readers the largest proportion of readers in a quest are those who read the updates and then look at the tally or scroll down to find the leading plan on the first page and then vote for that with very little actual interaction. Most folks don't have time to get in-depth in my experience, like we are right now. I'd really rather not have to deal with the fallout of reading it, learning some of the stuff in there and then someone who actually is interested in using Dhar throwing out a vote that grabs up enough of those folks to win and then there were are.

Or to put it another way, the Liber Mortis forms a chunk of narrative that weighs down the rest of it in directions I have active negative interest in and so I am championing positions that excise most of it from relevance beyond the idea that its a Cool Item she needs to Protect because if the darkness addled chucklefucks get ahold of it we got Problems. And gives BoneyM options of like, Oh It was Stolen! Time to get it back! for story arcs. Those are fun!

Now to poke at an implication, if you just want to read it and use that to improve her use of Ulgu then I'm like "Well okay" but see my meta textual reasoning.

As for the Journeymanlings I wasn't operating from the perspective of Mathilde just out going "Weee!" and using whatever. Studying it would involve tests and such. Its how she's done things so far. The problem is that its manipulating Winds outside her own with Ulgu. This is a thing that is not possible outside of Alchemy and probably a few other things. Not something the Grey should likely have access to inside the context of what the Journeymanlings know that Mathilde knows. Its also visible so... *open hands* yeah its preeeeetty iffy.

Ah, thanks for the clarification on Dhar.

I really genuinely don't see it as the same process. Like the most prominent example of, "Use Ulgu on the snake juice to make it cough up a mist of some other Wind that then does something" isn't taking a look at one spell fueled by Dhar and then taking the Dhar out and making that spell with Ulgu. Its indirectly manipulating another Wind, using a very similar line of thought to what Nagash did excepting the fact he was using a separate material in warpstone.

For me I just want to learn of Ulgu and figure out what can be done with deep mastery of the Wind of Shadows and Fog.

E: Like to clarify, I agree the reasoning of "Take this thing used for evil and make a good thing off the idea" is basically the same, but the end processes being proposed are not similar and are what I am objecting to.
Well I personally believe it's worth testing just to see if it can be done.
If we can do this it opens up so many possibilities, not just for us but possibly for all fields of magic. (Though the snake box would be pretty damn hard to replicate)

As for the journeymen finding out, I don't think anyone is really planning on doing this until we get back to Stirland, then we can make a hidden tower on our land away from people where we can experiment and perfect it.
Also Nagash was almost definitely evil to begin with, and even if he wasn't the Dhar certainly didn't help.
The Warhammer world is honestly fucked unless something massive happens, and if was I Mathilde I'd take every chance to make a difference I could get.

Honestly Mathilde has already contributed massively to fixing somethings, purging a decent chunk of sylvania and now possibly retaking a Dwarven hold, this is some of the biggest pushback against evil in this world I think anyone human has achieved in a fairly long time.

The issue is with threats like the Skaven, the Undead, and Chaos, I don't think she can afford not atleast investigating this.
 
I dare say this sort of debate tactic only serves to ridicule your own position because it polarizes the discussion into No Book Ever vs Yes Book.

Which kills the sort of discussion thats needed to actually do it properly because the Maximum Sith angle isn't hurt at all and its demoralizing the moderates who would normally rein them in.
Agreed. There are a bunch of people who want to read it purely for the magical insights that would be useful as a Grey Wizard, and not do anything else with it, but arguing "I don't trust the voters not to do something stupid*" does not help your position.

*That's how it's coming across, to me.

However, I would really like to table discussion of the book until we have a proper long-turn again, when we can dedicate Ranald's Blessing to actions.
 
Being Anti Sigmar is bad juju.
Its more nuanced than that.
Mathilde's specific beliefs on the matter are that:
-Sigmar has worthy priests. One of them is a personal friend she had seen go deep in the darkness to bring light. And the man she most respected might not be a priest but certainly is faithful.
-Sigmar has worthy foes. Greenskins, undead, dark magic users are enemies of all.

-Sigmar's CHURCH is absolutely not worthy, the organization is corrupt, and more interested in scoring points politically than fighting the darkness or protecting the faithful. The Church of Sigmar had been one of the greatest obstacles to fighting the undead, more so than the goddamned crime syndicates! They got wizard aid first. They got dwarf aid first. They got elf(and dragon) aid first. They got HALFLING aid first. The Church meanwhile sent nothing and impeded getting Imperial aid.

-Sigmar the god withheld his power from his devout priest to heal a devoted witch hunter faithful of his, mortally wounded by the living dead, in a situation where he had no other healers of note because the church was playing silly buggers. Not even a flicker of aid.
 
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Agreed. There are a bunch of people who want to read it purely for the magical insights that would be useful as a Grey Wizard, and not do anything else with it, but arguing "I don't trust the voters not to do something stupid*" does not help your position.

*That's how it's coming across, to me.

However, I would really like to table discussion of the book until we have a proper long-turn again, when we can dedicate Ranald's Blessing to actions.
I'd honestly rather do the Qhaysh juice on the first turn we have we've had that longer and now we can experiment with it with out worrying too much about Dhar.

If we could solidify it we could probably do some pretty incredible stuff using it for enchanting too.
 
As for the journeymen finding out, I don't think anyone is really planning on doing this until we get back to Stirland, then we can make a hidden tower on our land away from people where we can experiment and perfect it.
I was actually thinking that a sabbatical of a year or two on K8P would be nice, We did pack the box with us, IIRC.

We are fairly reachable in our fief, but a deep basement in a Karak is just great for not being bothered.
 
I dare say this sort of debate tactic only serves to ridicule your own position because it polarizes the discussion into No Book Ever vs Yes Book.

Which kills the sort of discussion thats needed to actually do it properly because the Maximum Sith angle isn't hurt at all and its demoralizing the moderates who would normally rein them in.
Too be honest, I feel that most quests in SV could benefit a lot more from actually thinking about the meta context of what the largest populations of readers are potentially thinking.

Its why I bring it up along with raising my point of "Hey, I've seen quests go south in specific ways a lot, lets not do things like that please?". Plus the third point of me preferring certain narrative structures, as in where I outline that I'd really like if BoneyM did a Take Back Your Important Item arc in a cooperative story is I think fully acceptable.

Agreed. There are a bunch of people who want to read it purely for the magical insights that would be useful as a Grey Wizard, and not do anything else with it, but arguing "I don't trust the voters not to do something stupid*" does not help your position.

*That's how it's coming across, to me.

However, I would really like to table discussion of the book until we have a proper long-turn again, when we can dedicate Ranald's Blessing to actions.
It is essentially, a critique of thread structure and quest participation on SV as a whole, pointing out that some options just sitting there generate topics which can readily torpedo a quest for many more if someone is a troll and that I think it should be debated in the thread whether or not those things should hold as much relevance to the path of the story that they do at whatever the state of the quest is. And then the thread holding to whatever conclusion they come to.

And its a statement that I'm coming down on the side of "lets cut most of its relevance out".

Like pruning.
 
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I was actually thinking that a sabbatical of a year or two on K8P would be nice, We did pack the box with us, IIRC.

We are fairly reachable in our fief, but a deep basement in a Karak is just great for not being bothered.
The box is back at home actually, we just brought one jar of the juice in case we had time to experiment with it.
We should have plenty of that juice at home if we go back though, we left instructions with the priest of Randall guy of how to collect it.
 
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Anyone got a quick recap?
If anyone is reading this before reading the whole quest first, it's their own damn fault for getting spoiled.
Mathilde Weber, a Journeymanling of Ulgu becomes an intrigue advisor in Van Hall Elector count quest while blackmailed by some shadowy conspiracy. Probably vampires. She ruins the day of a corrupted stewardship martial advisor, ruins the day of organized crime/nobility/vampires/etc in Stirland, does a lot of impressive shit while mentally floating in the clouds, get an impressive nickname thanks to her amazing magic horse, ends up awkwardly reporting to the Elector Count while half-naked during an attempt to kill said Elector Count and consequently giving way to a lot of suggestive rumors, does some impressive things during Van Hall's invasion of Sylvania, fails to save Van Hall, almost shoots Piety advisor in his loser-critfailed-twice-face, curses Sigmar, takes command of Van Hall's army to ruin the day of Sylvanian's vampires, gets unrightfully rejected by Van Hall's heir, rockets ahead in terms of magical power due to couple of good rolls and a great puppy gifted to her by Ranald (wooo Piety as the strongest stat), decides to aid the dorfs, becomees a magical magister by shooting the examiner with a gun, is both in and out of charactes charmed by absolutely adorable journeymanlings. Ends up making few skirmish conflicts on the way to the Dorf Fortress absolutely bloodless due to really good rolls and good decisions. Has complicated relationship with leader of Stirland's army as he plans of getting a full third of it killed off for... sort of okay reasons? Still sounds real bad tho.

That's about it. There was also a pretty cool joke about kebabs. Underappricated, really.

The logic chain is simple.
I strongly dislike speculating about Snekjuice because it is all very, very ambitious. Theoretically sound, but ambitious and runs against some pretty deeply ingrained assumptions. QM did said it could all be very incredible with due effort, but still.

Meanwhile the "Read the Damn Book" thing gets contextualized as something that is useful only for/connected to messing with Snekjuice or doing stupid shit with Dhar or doing stupid shit with Dhar by using tendrils of Ulgu and, urgh.

I just want Mathilde's Matrix mk2, maybe a little bit more immediately useful instead of potentially useful. That "If nothing else" is really just first and the last argument I really care about, in the context of "Oh, this actually could improve my mastery of Ulgu and is not some sort of mega-super-uber setting-shattering New Grand Magic."

I'd be happy with +2/+3 to Learning and maybe a theory for a new cool spell or two. Maybe some shadow minions. Like our favourite shadowmurdertentacles.

In fact, I am not overly enthused about current Liber Mortis (And Snekjuice, I guess) debate either, considering that there are possibly months of RL time before we'll return to a format where we get enough time allocated per turn to make extracting useful stuff out of it a reality.

...I think I should dread the day now, all things considered. Considering how strongly Liber Mortis is mentally coupled with Doing Stupid Shit in a number of people in this thread, it might be a lost cause.

I'll be trying to get maybe a little bit of sleep right now, so going to fall out of this debate for a few hours. Hopefully.
 
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It is essentially, a critique of thread structure and quest participation on SV as a whole, pointing out that some options just sitting there generate topics which can readily torpedo a quest for many more if someone is a troll and that I think it should be debated in the thread whether or not those things should hold as much relevance to the path of the story that they do. And then the thread holding to whatever conclusion they come to.

And its a statement that I'm coming down on the side of "lets cut most of its relevance out".
And I'm very firmly on the side of "let's not meta game and leave a possibly massively useful tool behind for no in character reason, because of fear."
Very few people have ever argued for using Dhar in this thread and they've all been shot down by the vast majority who are against it.

Dhar has never gotten anywhere near a majority over dozens of votes where it's been an option.
 
If anyone is reading this before reading the whole quest first, it's their own damn fault for getting spoiled.
Mathilde Weber, a Journeymanling of Ulgu becomes an intrigue advisor in Van Hall Elector count quest while blackmailed by some shadowy conspiracy. Probably vampires. She ruins the day of a corrupted stewardship advisor, ruins the day of organized crime/nobility/vampires/etc in Stirland, does a lot of impressive shit while mentally floating in the clouds, get an impressive nickname thanks to her amazing magic horse, ends up awkwardly reporting to the Elector Count while half-naked during an attempt to kill said Elector Count and consequently giving way to a lot of suggestive rumors, does some impressive things during Van Hall's invasion of Sylvania, fails to save Van Hall, almost shoots Piety advisor in his loser-critfailed-twice-face, curses Sigmar, takes command of Van Hall's army to ruin the day of Sylvanian's vampires, gets unrightfully rejected by Van Hall's heir, rockets ahead in terms of magical power due to couple of good rolls and a great puppy gifted to her by Ranald (wooo Piety as the strongest stat), decides to aid the dorfs, becomees a magical magister by shooting the examiner with a gun, is both in and out of charactes charmed by absolutely adorable journeymanlings. Ends up making few skirmish conflicts on the way to the Dorf Fortress absolutely bloodless due to really good rolls and good decisions. Has complicated relationship with leader of Stirland's army as he plans of getting a full third of it killed off for... sort of okay reasons? Still sounds real bad tho.
That's about it. There was also a pretty cool joke about kebabs. Underappricated, really.
What stewardship adviser? Are you talking about the Professor? He was martial.
 
So reading the arguments about the book.

Not really interested in it to be honest.

Would only really consider using it critical circumstances but not much else
 
I strongly dislike speculating about Snekjuice because it is all very, very ambitious. Theoretically sound, but ambitious and runs against some pretty deeply ingrained assumptions. QM did said it could all be very incredible with due effort, but still.

Meanwhile the "Read the Damn Book" thing gets contextualized as something that is useful only for/connected to messing with Snekjuice or doing stupid shit with Dhar or doing stupid shit with Dhar by using tendrils of Ulgu and, urgh.

I just want Mathilde's Matrix mk2, maybe a little bit more immediately useful instead of potentially useful. That "If nothing else" is really just first and the last argument I really care about, in the context of "Oh, this actually could improve my mastery of Ulgu and is not some sort of mega-super-uber setting-shattering New Grand Magic."

I'd be happy with +2/+3 to Learning and maybe a theory for a new cool spell or two. Maybe some shadow minions. Like our favourite shadowmurdertentacles.

In fact, I am not overly enthused about current Liber Mortis (And Snekjuice, I guess) debate either, considering that there are possibly months of RL time before we'll return to a format where we get enough time allocated per turn to make extracting useful stuff out of it a reality.

...I think I should dread the day now, all things considered. Considering how strongly Liber Mortis is mentally coupled with Doing Stupid Shit in a number of people in this thread, it might be a lost cause.
And I am sorry about that, for what its worth.

I just want Mathilde's Matrix mk2, maybe a little bit more immediately useful instead of potentially useful. That "If nothing else" is really just first and the last argument I really care about, in the context of "Oh, this actually could improve my mastery of Ulgu and is not some sort of mega-super-uber setting-shattering New Grand Magic."

I'd be happy with +2/+3 to Learning and maybe a theory for a new cool spell or two. Maybe some shadow minions. Like our favourite shadowmurdertentacles.
To be totally and completely fair, if nothing else but this happened I'd be willing to be the laughing stock of the thread. :V

And I'm very firmly on the side of "let's not meta game and leave a possibly massively useful tool behind for no in character reason, because of fear."
Very few people have ever argued for using Dhar in this thread and they've all been shot down by the vast majority who are against it.

Dhar has never gotten anywhere near a majority over dozens of votes where it's been an option.
Fair point!
 
So reading the arguments about the book.

Not really interested in it to be honest.

Would only really consider using it critical circumstances but not much else
So you're fine with pulling it out in an emergency with no prior study or preparation... but carefully studying it so we actually understand it is out?


Indeed, that seems to be the books' greatest power. No matter the verse, it tempts everyone who comes across it.
Except it literally doesn't, almost no one wants to use it for what it was made for, they just want to use it to understand the principles behind something.
 
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So you're fine with pulling it out in an emergency with no prior study or preparation... but carefully studying it so we actually understand it is out?
Yes.

I'm not interested in it and I see no reason we need to use it.

Honestly I would just like to get rid of it if only to stop this ad nauseam conversation that goes no where.

Also I said to consider using it not to use it in emergencies
 
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Too be honest, I feel that most quests in SV could benefit a lot more from actually thinking about the meta context of what the largest populations of readers are potentially thinking.

Its why I bring it up along with raising my point of "Hey, I've seen quests go south in specific ways a lot, lets not do things like that please?". Plus the third point of me preferring certain narrative structures, as in where I outline that I'd really like if BoneyM did a Take Back Your Important Item arc in a cooperative story is I think fully acceptable.


It is essentially, a critique of thread structure and quest participation on SV as a whole, pointing out that some options just sitting there generate topics which can readily torpedo a quest for many more if someone is a troll and that I think it should be debated in the thread whether or not those things should hold as much relevance to the path of the story that they do at whatever the state of the quest is. And then the thread holding to whatever conclusion they come to.

And its a statement that I'm coming down on the side of "lets cut most of its relevance out".

Like pruning.
From experience(anecdotal yes, but I'm in basically every quest so I figure I know a thing or two). It doesn't.

Quests go south not because of specific approaches.
Meta wise Quests are incredibly well known for fighting tooth and nail against a slippery slope, to the extent that you see really boneheaded things done because:
1) People are so invested in their meta-argument that they forgot what was actually happening in the quest. You see this most often in Civ quests, because the classic pitfall is someone heavily pushing an ahistoric agenda because "this leads to bad things down the road", but almost any quest in Worm has people obssessing over averting canon to the point where they screw their present over for lack of care.

2) People are not invested at all in the quest, and taking what appeals to them the most personally in the moment. This happens mostly to new quests.

3) Voting having become so complex(most commonly though very large number of choices) that it vastly amplifies the first plan advantage, and kills discussion because nobody can recognize whats goiing on anymore.

4) Voters collectively going with a robotic adherence to a given irrational belief or relationship...admittedly this very rarely kills quests because the zealotry also usually induces deliberate ignorance and so theres no meta-explosion. It just makes the unbelievers drift away over time, and the quest is sometimes better for it because of undeniable enthusiasm.

Theres NO Warhammer(40k or Fantasy) quest on SV or SB which has a gradual slide towards chaos corruption through the slippery slope, save for when it was the starting premise. Academia Nut tried his damndest, but even a 10:1 vote amplification for giving in was beaten for the Dandriss quest, to the point where lightning rounds(deliberately very short vote cycles to allow minority opinions to have disproportionate impact before the choice can be reasoned out) were used on top of vote boosting to make it happen.

Quests as a format don't need to worry about slippery slopes like studying fringe topics.
They need to worry about knee jerk reactions like "hey, I got a clean shot at the Warboss here, do I YOLO?"
 
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So is this gonna be like going back and forth on slanted invisible ramps, or leaping up from invisible step to step?
Going by the watchtower, probably ramps?

Relevant section:
Skywalk only comes in handy rarely, but on those few occasions it is a complete gamechanger. When you approach the base of the walls, you shape Ulgu and step onto thin air, picturing a rising slope that takes you onto the battlements, and in seconds you reach the top of a wall twice your height.
 
Yes.

I'm not interested in it and I see no reason we need to use it.

Honestly I would just like to get rid of it if only to stop this ad nauseam conversation that goes no where.

Also I said to consider using it not to use it in emergencies
...You said you would Consider using it in "critical circumstances " which as far as I'm concerned is an emergency.
 
From experience(anecdotal yes, but I'm in basically every quest so I figure I know a thing or two). It doesn't.

Quests go south not because of specific approaches.
Meta wise Quests are incredibly well known for fighting tooth and nail against a slippery slope, to the extent that you see really boneheaded things done because:
1) People are so invested in their meta-argument that they forgot what was actually happening in the quest. You see this most often in Civ quests, because the classic pitfall is someone heavily pushing an ahistoric agenda because "this leads to bad things down the road", but almost any quest in Worm has people obssessing over averting canon to the point where they screw their present over for lack of care.

2) People are not invested at all in the quest, and taking what appeals to them the most personally in the moment. This happens mostly to new quests.

3) Voting having become so complex(most commonly though very large number of choices) that it vastly amplifies the first plan advantage, and kills discussion because nobody can recognize whats goiing on anymore.

4) Voters collectively going with a robotic adherence to a given irrational belief or relationship...admittedly this very rarely kills quests because the zealotry also usually induces deliberate ignorance and so theres no meta-explosion. It just makes the unbelievers drift away over time, and the quest is sometimes better for it because of undeniable enthusiasm.

Theres NO Warhammer(40k or Fantasy) quest on SV or SB which has a gradual slide towards chaos corruption through the slippery slope, save for when it was the starting premise. Academia Nut tried his damndest, but even a 10:1 vote amplification for giving in was beaten for the Dandriss quest, to the point where lightning rounds(deliberately very short vote cycles to allow minority opinions to have disproportionate impact before the choice can be reasoned out) were used on top of vote boosting to make it happen.

Quests as a format don't need to worry about slippery slopes like studying fringe topics.
They need to worry about knee jerk reactions like "hey, I got a clean shot at the Warboss here, do I YOLO?"
Okay, I'll bow to someone who has been in the scene for a helluva longer time than me. With the addendum that sometimes number 4 can cause some interesting things to forment in the background, speaking as a mod, along with probably whatever you may be thinking(or you might be thinking of it specifically, I dunno! : D).

I've raised my concerns and I'm happy with that at this point.
 
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