Remove ads

Warhammer Fantasy: Divided Loyalties - an Advisor's Quest

Voted best in category in the Users' Choice awards.
Voting will open in 9 hours, 36 minutes
Reader mode
picklepikkl said:
For someone not familiar with WHF outside of what this quest has caused me to learn: could you explain? From context I'm guessing a night of supernatural badness that happens once a year.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
picklepikkl said:
are you telling me that on warhammer halloween, this tweet


is literally true?
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

The Empire sure is a place.
reignonyrparade said:
"Go full mutant because you happen to have a crack in your roof" bad.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Its light doesn't actually mutate people unless their form is already unstable, such as if they've acquired a mutation on their own in the last month. But, if you've got horse hooves and then roll up a pair of bat wings, it's certainly going to look like it did that to you all on its own.
 
picklepikkl said:
For someone not familiar with WHF outside of what this quest has caused me to learn: could you explain? From context I'm guessing a night of supernatural badness that happens once a year.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Geheimnisnacht is the night when Morrslieb (the warpstone moon) waxes full in the sky, this happens twice a year
During this time the veil between worlds gets... thin
During this time rifts grow larger, allowing Daemons to sometimes pierce into reality, the dead grow restless and all manner of dark things (probably Beastmen) stir
The Order aligned races of every stripe buckle down to endure the night while darker forces either run rampant or take the opportunity to further their ends
People of bar their doors or abandon their homes entirely to huddle in more fortified structures
Dwarven Slayers eagerly guard the doors to holds in anticipation of their doom, alongside Ironbreakers
Elves in Ulthuan and Athel Loren alike whisper prayers in the light of sacred flames
Sylvanians light candles for each family member they've lost and place them at the window of the room they were killed in, or at the door if they died away from home

The chaotic and unpredictable nature of Morrslieb's orbit around the world means that Geheimnisnacht occurs at different times each year in unpredictable fashion
And after each one passes the people come out to see which towns got razed to the ground and who disappeared without a trace
They take axes to trees that have been twisted by corruption, burn plagued and rotten crops, and clean out inexplicable gore
Then they give thanks for surviving another Geheimnisnacht and begin counting the days till the next one


Sometimes Morrslieb waxes full at the same time that Mannslieb (the normal moon) does, this is known as The Day of Mystery
The Empire uncharacteristically does not simply bar their doors on the day leading up to this however, instead many throw strange and unique festivals dedicated to Morr
Various fortune tellings, augaries and other such rituals are commonly performed, sometimes with unsettling results
And people commonly take this day to pay homage to their ancestors, it's said that sometimes said spirits even return to commune with the living
The veil between worlds still thin, but it seems fortunately much milder compared to a normal Geheimnisnacht, though it can still be dangerous
 
Last edited:
CrimsonOddball said:
Sometimes Morrslieb waxes full at the same time that Mannslieb (the normal moon) does, this is known as The Day of Mystery
The Empire uncharacteristically does not simply bar their doors on the day leading up to this however, instead many throw strange and unique festivals dedicated to Morr
Various fortune tellings, augaries and other such rituals are commonly performed, sometimes with unsettling results
And people commonly take this day to pay homage to their ancestors, it's said that sometimes said spirits even return to commune with the living
The veil between worlds still thin, but it seems fortunately much milder compared to a normal Geheimnisnacht, though it can still be dangerous
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
So Mannslieb mitigates Morrslieb's influence? That's pretty cool. I wonder what its deal is.
 
Last edited:
King Arthur said:
Omake of Mattie staring at the moon and saying that phrase over and over again until she realizes it's Vlag all over again.

Three months later and Mannslieb is replaced with a massive Space Karak. As it turns out that's the real reason Karak Zorn and the Ancestors disappeared, Dwarven NASA.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
I am trying to imagine the rep gains for bringing back the dwarfen Ancestor God(s) and failing. It would make what Sigmar did seem like a joke by comparison. Then again if we had actually rescued them they would be quite capable of paying us back themselves.

Even just one would be such a huge deal.
 
Aranfan said:
I mean, according to some people the wastes begins at altdorf
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Altdorf is a place where, as Mathilde demonstrated, apprentices can summon persistent apparitions by accident. Arabyan magicians presumably look at Altdorf's Colleges of Magic and wonder "why are you not neck-deep in apparitions and daemons?" and the answer is apparently that the Gold College at least has made a virtue of necessity: instead of needing to summon and bind apparitions for techniques like Gehenna's Golden Hounds, they can skip the "summon" step and just pick some of the apparitions hanging around the Colleges like fruit on a tree. Fruit that occasionally eats the apprentices. Sounds pretty chaos wastes to me. ;)

Araby, in comparison, is a sensible place where summoning an apparition to bind takes hours of deliberate effort, and the failure mode is more likely to be no apparition showing up, rather than an overly persistent apparition chasing the summoner for years. :D
 
Having reread some stuff - we don't know which Kurgan group's influence has that cup of "make yourself a daemon" in it, which is a solid reason to scout out each as we pass, in case the Ice Crone informs us that that's where we have to go.

[x] Journeyman Cyrston von Danling
[x] Use Rite of Way to ease the ascent
[x] Scout the lands of the Iron Wolves
[x] Investigate the 'Windfall' with the Light Wizards

EDIT:
BoneyM said:
"A message, then. Tell Him that the Widow may be willing to forgive, and that He should send a representative to discuss."
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

could take on a new meaning with the knowledge that Ranald may have stolen a dwarfs soul and the dawi may be willing to forgive it.

It could just be coincidence that both are coming up at the same time, but it could also hint at a connection. Being considered for forgiveness by separate gods for separate transgressions at the same time seems unlikely, but it's not like Ranald is the god of playing fair and being honest so he's probably got a lot of things to be forgiven for.

Is stealing souls and making use of them a common thing for Ranald, and having made good on it earns him kudos? Did the Widow have a dawi soul kept on ice?
 
Last edited:
ninjafish said:
He pitches bitchfits if you try and be immortal.

fuck him.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
No he doesn't. If he's mad at you he just lets you be a ghost like you wanted (which sucks, and eventually your soul evaporates).

His priests go after sapient undead because wandering around instead of going to his realm is a good way to run into a 40k style "daemons eat you when you die" bad end, which he exists as a setting element to prevent.

Morr is the god of the Dead, not Death. If you're actually immortal and not just pretending you didn't die, he doesn't care what you're up to.
 
Morr is also genuinely the most communicative god out there, because dominion over dreams gives a really easy way to communicate, to the point where a priest of Morr can generally know they at least aren't currently fucking up in his mind if they aren't getting a bunch of dreams with clear signs to stop doing whatever they're currently doing. Pretty much the only order god where the priesthood at large has a line of communication with their god.
 
Random thought: Is Azhag the Slaughterer a thing yet, or did that already happen? Also, is Sigmar's brush with the Crown of Sorcery part of the Church canon, even obliquely?
 
silentorphan said:
The current Empress and the Emperor-to-be are the result of a Ranald trick. That doesn't mean they're fakes (i.e., she's really is the Empress, and that kid really is the next Emperor).
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
That's not how words work, The trick Ranald pulled for the Empress was convincing people she was eligable for the seat, not actually tricking people into thinking she was empress, or tricking people that she had a baby. And Mathilde doesn't have a dwarf soul because Ranald didn't care about Mathilde until sometime into her Stirland appointment.
 
[x] Journeyman Cyrston von Danling
[x] Sir Ruprecht Wulfhart the Younger
[x] Use Rite of Way to ease the ascent
[x] Investigate the 'Windfall' with the Light Wizards
 
Execute/Dumbo said:
That's not how words work, The trick Ranald pulled for the Empress was convincing people she was eligable for the seat, not actually tricking people into thinking she was empress, or tricking people that she had a baby. And Mathilde doesn't have a dwarf soul because Ranald didn't care about Mathilde until sometime into her Stirland appointment.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

Is that established?

Don't get me wrong, I absolutely do not believe that Dwarf soul thing is real. I think it's definitley happening in quest, but you know, people have been wrong before, even Dwarves. I'm just curious if the Ranald only started caring in Stirland thing is canon.

Cause I like to imagine she and Ranald absolutely got up to wacky adventures when she was an apprentice.

Gasp

Kid/teen Mattie + Ranald + Morr the Cat's wacky adventures in Altdorf would be an excellent Saturday Morning Cartoon spinoff series.
 
Last edited:
Also, you know, any attempt to estimate the ability of literally gods to have ideas for how things could play out decades in advance is going to return a result of [???] in any reasonable analysis IMO. There's just too many factors that are both unknown and unknowable. Maybe Ranald saw all of this coming and it's all Just As Planned. Maybe he had a cool idea for something he could do with a dwarf soul he stuck in a human, all of this bears no resemblance to that idea whatsoever, and he's just playing it cool and pretending this was the idea all along to the other gods (maybe Mattie doesn't just get that from the Grey College). Maybe he never interfered with Mattie or her soul at all. We literally can't know, absent somebody in-universe producing some kind of Yep This Shows Where a Soul's From Ritual and doing it on Mattie.
 
veekie said:
Ah, like a Skaven Marquis?
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

Pretty much.

theajl said:
@BoneyM so before I get into the meat of this fucking huge replypost, because holy shit this thread moves fast, a spell idea: if/when we learn Pit of Shadows, could we then build a Battle Magic that fires a bolt of it? Like, anything in the path of the bolt just gets dragged out of reality unless they've learned to DODGE. Or at least something spiraling off from the Matrix where the bolt carries the Pit and then bursts when it hits something, improving targeting?
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

Mathilde has been told that Pit of Shades works by slitting open a hole between reality and the very thin plane between reality and the warp, which crushes anything that's sucked into it. Slitting that open across the width of a battlefield seems like it would do bad things. And something aimed with the hand seems worse at targeting than something aimed with the mind.

Derpmind said:
Huh. Are we really only skirting the edges of their territory as closely as the map shows? My impression was going off the description of the update, which would indicate Mathilde expects to meet the Iron Wolves. If we are only going around them then I'll retract my vote, but right now I'm not sure. (Is this something to ping Boney over?)

Edit: @picklepikkl On a closer second reading, and looking over the map again, I think while we're going around their territory the portion of the road we're traveling on is their prime ambush spot. So even though the road isn't highlighted on the map, their territory actually does extend to cover a big portion of the road that we won't be clear of until the end of the week. Is this correct, @BoneyM?
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

The road is the border between Iron Wolves and Dolgan, and the Iron Wolves' merchant hunting grounds.

picklepikkl said:
The way I read it is that we're going up the Skull Road, and the Iron Wolves regularly raid the switchbacks on the trail because it's where caravans are vulnerable to being preyed upon, since they can't really get away fast. "Get away fast" isn't really in our wheelhouse to begin with, since we have giant armored personnel carriers bristling with guns and a dragon, so I imagine that they will decide that we aren't worth their time unless we start making hostile moves. Obviously the edges of their territory aren't demarcated by a surveyor or a property line, but my understanding of the map is that we're skirting the edges between the two tribes as best we can before driving north for Karag Dum through the Dolgans, with whom we've negotiated safe passage. @BoneyM, is my understanding of the geography here accurate?
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

The road is almost always a tribal border, because a tribe being pushed away from being able to raid the merchant caravans will fight so much harder to keep it than they will any other bit of land. So by following the road the steam-wagons will be skirting the edges.

uju32 said:
Unless they attacked someone else.
Can we get GM confirmation that it was the Demons who hit the Skaven?
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

All you get is what was in the update. Anything else would be OOC info.

Cheap Orange Knofe said:
I know this is a really late response, but have you noticed the article on the Kurgan looks almost respectful in comparison to the one about the Hung?

A case of unreliable narrator or are they really that different?
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

From an Imperial perspective, it's extremely likely that the only real source for information on the Kurgan are Kislev, who almost certainly were Kurgan, and the only real source for information on the Hung is second-hand from Cathay, who have been opposed to and on the defence against the Hung since time immemorial. That does suggest a reason (beside the obvious and unfortunate) why the two groups get such different handling in texts.
 
kingreaper said:
could take on a new meaning with the knowledge that Ranald may have stolen a dwarfs soul and the dawi may be willing to forgive it.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
The Widow isn't an Ancestor God, though. If she's any named god, she'd be Arianka, especially with crystal keys being on the Chaos Dwarf Panic List. I personally took that exchange a different way. Kislev is pretty far north, after all, and Ranald isn't the only god called the Trickster.
 
Reader mode
You must login or register to reply here.
Voting will open in 9 hours, 36 minutes
Remove ads
Back
Top