Remove ads

Warhammer Fantasy: Divided Loyalties - an Advisor's Quest

Voted best in category in the Users' Choice awards.
Voting will open in 6 hours, 47 minutes
Reader mode
A few more proofreading notes from my reread.
BoneyM said:
The road winding up from the Zorn Uzkul plateau to the Great Steppes is no more treacherous than anywhere else along the path
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Not a proofreading note, but a hearbreaking opening line in hindsight.
BoneyM said:
The paranoid part of you wonders if 'seasonal attunement' is perhaps a very convenient excuse for their spells growing in power as they approach the Chaos Wastes, though you do know from Panoramia that it is an existing phenomenon.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
The bolded parts confuse me. What is the referent for "they"? We weren't suspicious of all Jade Wizards with seasonal attunement in general, just this one specifically. Should this be "his spells" and "he approaches"?
BoneyM said:
"No lingering effects from the battle? The effects of a Higher Daemon of the Plotter can be rather subtle..."
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
I should have caught this earlier: I think Mathilde means the Excessive or the Tempter here, titles for Slaanesh. The Plotter is Tzeentch, and we didn't run into that.
BoneyM said:
You're glad that the Grey College didn't inherit any major institutional baggage from the pre-Teclisean era, that must be a huge weight on the mind of Jade Wizards.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
I think this is meant to be two grammatically complete thoughts linked in a single sentence. If so, the comma should be a semicolon.
BoneyM said:
Sir Ruprecht the Younger is a hard man to get a hold of, as he seems to spend every waking moment on patrol, giving orders to those about to go on patrol, or receiving information that have just come back from patrol.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
The bolded bit should be either "receiving information that has just come back from patrol" or "receiving information from those that have just come back from patrol."
 
Aranfan said:
It got overwhelmed by the end, but I really liked this bit. I think this is the first time we've really showed our chops to Egrimm as a mage rather than as a warrior or leader or what have you.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Another bit that got overshadowed, was the "But why mountains tho'?" bit with the Windfall. Why is it mountains? Is it something special about mountains, or is it due to these mountains specifically? Or perhaps what is under these mountains -- maybe the last remnants of the Dwarf Ancestor Gods works, now so abandoned that the Dwarfs don't even know they lived here once? Or maybe the Ancestor Gods somehow enchanted (or anti-enchanted, as the case may be) the concept of mountains as a whole in some way. Or perhaps something prehistoric and a trait of the world itself, part of what made it considered for habitation by the Old Ones?

Does anybody know if this 'Windfall' occurrence is something that's mentioned in any Warhammer Fantasy sources or lore or books?

And also, apparently "Natural Dhar, yes or no?" was a thing that was in question.

Oh, and the seasonal attunement thing. Both us and Mathilde were going "But it's cold and snowy up here. Would it really matter that it was 'spring' somewhere else?" And the answer, at least according to Cyrston himself, appears to be yes.
 
Garlak said:
Another bit that got overshadowed, was the "But why mountains tho'?" bit with the Windfall. Why is it mountains? Is it something special about mountains, or is it due to these mountains specifically? Or perhaps what is under these mountains -- maybe the last remnants of the Dwarf Ancestor Gods works, now so abandoned that the Dwarfs don't even know they lived here once? Or maybe the Ancestor Gods somehow enchanted (or anti-enchanted, as the case may be) the concept of mountains as a whole in some way. Or perhaps something prehistoric and a trait of the world itself, part of what made it considered for habitation by the Old Ones?

Does anybody know if this 'Windfall' occurrence is something that's mentioned in any Warhammer Fantasy sources or lore or books?

And also, apparently "Natural Dhar, yes or no?" was a thing that was in question.

Oh, and the seasonal attunement thing. Both us and Mathilde were going "But it's cold and snowy up here. Would it really matter that it was 'spring' somewhere else?" And the answer, at least according to Cyrston himself, appears to be yes.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
If this is a uniform thing across the world, I wonder if it has to do with that "weight of reality" thing Mathilde speculated about in the first AV study action.
 
Aranfan said:
This is the condition we would have been crossing the steppes in when we started out, because the one that we lost was the one that our extra year with the snow thing got us. If we had voted to leave as soon as possible, we'd never have had the big supply landship.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Well actually…
We recruited the cavalry. The monstrous carnivore cavalry, quite possibly the most supply-intensive troop type possible. This changed the default supply situation from 'enough to get there and back plus safety margin' with all normal steamwagons to 'we can just barely get there' with a dedicated supply steamwagon. This situation is very much of our own making.


Something to consider: Starvation is not equal. If we 'run out' of food the monstrous mounts will die within a few days. We can't cut their rations as they need the energy to travel. However the Dwarfs and any Humans we can fit on the 'wagons can potentially survive quite a long while on little more than crumbs.
In practical quest terms this means that running out of food isn't an instant Bad End. It will just mean having to make some very unpleasant choices.
 
Mopman43 said:
If this is a uniform thing across the world, I wonder if it has to do with that "weight of reality" thing Mathilde speculated about in the first AV study action.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Maybe it's got something to do with the way Gazul severed a part of the Aethyr from, well, the rest of the Aethyr.

And then brought it fully into the physical world. That, the Underearth is somehow actually, truly, in the earth below.

Maybe that has something to do with the Winds dipping down, and doing so near mountains?

Maybe the entrance(s) to the Underearth/Glittering Realm is under a mountain somewhere. And so in remembrance of that act of severing from the Aethyr, and binding it to the earth below, the Winds themselves start touching down.

Or maybe it has something to do with the Sky Titans. Maybe it's not dipping down towards mountains; maybe it's dipping down to duck under the cloud-castles of the Sky Titans; and the magic still remembers that there used to be castles in the cloud, perched on top of mountains. Heck knows.
 
Before we got to...well the end of the update, I really wanted to bring this up
BoneyM said:
"So," Egrimm says curiously as the five of you walk around the mountain in your way. "That spell, the Rite of Way. Is it a ritual?"

"No, despite the name, it's a sustained spell. Low-level Battle Magic."

"Are you consciously controlling the whole thing?"

"No, Ulgu is able to detect breaks in uniformity, so I have individual instances of a stripped-down Skywalk that get placed wherever there's a break in that. I just have to control where the fog is to act as a constraint on the spell and supply a steady stream of new instances."

"I've seen how far you have to extend it to cover the convoy, that must be a difficult visualization."

"Not as much as you might think, when it's a straight road at a relatively low speed. Then the tough part is output and consistency. It would be a different story for something faster moving that could need to change direction suddenly."

"But it would still be possible?"

"In theory. It's yet to be tested on a battlefield."

"It's new?"

"Put the finishing touches on it earlier this year."

There's silence in response to that, and you glance up from the path ahead to see Egrimm looking at you in surprise. "Well," he eventually says, "I suppose that's why I haven't encountered it before. That's an impressive spell to have made from scratch."

You shrug. "It's yet to have a proper field-testing. This stretch is just a warm-up, it's the steppes that will really put it through its paces."
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

This is a really neat interaction, and indeed the rest of the interactions with Egrimm are fascinating, but this conversation is just entertaining to think about in a negaverse way. Mathilde is this mysterious grey wizard who maybe can be trusted, because Egrimm is not the kind of guy to go all in on trusting somebody on the drop of a hat, and he, or at least our competing playerbase, is dancing around poking and prodding to see if she can be trusted, and they just decide to ask about the strange magic Mathilde used, only to find that it's essentially (low tier) battle-magic and that Mathilde made it herself, and very recently with the implication that is was specifically for making this expedition easier at one of it's most difficult junctures. I imagine it would be kind of scary to see, but it also shows Mathilde's hand in her desire to see the expedition reach Karak Dum. It's the kind of thing that's...human. We could help solve a problem and make life easier, just a little bit, so we did. That's not really the kind of thing I'd expect from a chaos plant, puppet, or servant. Combine that with just ruining whatever plan was going on with Karak Vlag, and I feel that Mathilde's loyalty to the Empire and the Dwarves is shining through the muck that is the paranoia of Chaos.
 
BoneyM said:
The Engineer driving it had a roll to try to regain control of the Urmskaladrak before it slid off, but he got an 8 on a d100. Nobody else had a way to prevent a thousand tons of metal from losing a fight with gravity.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

Just imagine the Slayer Despair Spiral that would occur after the driver's fuckup kills Gotrek and most of the other Engineers on his wagon, possibly dooming the entire Expedition. That's the reason that I lowkey hope that the driver died, it's a kinder fate.
 
[X] Press on

As is, we don't have the storage necessary to make it back without sourcing more food. We have resupply arranged ahead of us, and the only thing that will increase our storage space is attrition. As bad as it might sound, getting into a few more fights might dramatically ease the supply situation heading back.
 
Gotrek is dead? That's some very nasty shit. Unless someone else takes his place in stopping multiple world/empire ending shenanigans, or they get butterflied away elsewise that's basically Order totally boned.
 
Thomasfoolery said:
If we do end up making a branch college/research institute I wonder if he'd be interested in checking it out, considering he's complained several times now about how stifled he feels the Altdorf ecosystem to be. The suspicion could keep on rolling for years to come.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
I don't think he'll accept. While stifling, he's already said he's chosen a life of obedience to his Patriarch and that Patriarch will probably want him doing stuff besides hanging out in Eight Peaks managing a research institute.
 
jjffjhjf said:
Gotrek is dead? That's some very nasty shit. Unless someone else takes his place in stopping multiple world/empire ending shenanigans, or they get butterflied away elsewise that's basically Order totally boned.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
The world of Divided Loyalties has many trials ahead of it, but a shortage of butterflies is not one of them.
 
jjffjhjf said:
Gotrek is dead? That's some very nasty shit. Unless someone else takes his place in stopping multiple world/empire ending shenanigans, or they get butterflied away elsewise that's basically Order totally boned.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

It's hardly the biggest butterfly of the quest. Honestly I'm kinda ok with it, shit just happens sometimes, not everything has to be demons and climactic final battles sometimes major world leaders just die in a plane crash or something and history gets wrenched onto a new heading. Shit just happens now and then, our real history is full of shit just kinda happening and fucking everything up, no reason to expect otherwise here.
 
Warhammer 8th edition, page 120


@BoneyM do Rivers of Light exist in Divided Loyalties? If so, how likely are we to find them in the Chaos Wastes?
 
Last edited:
You know, as (understandably) badly as the thread is taking this latest post .... take a moment to imagine the absolute nightmare that is the Gotrek negaverse at the moment.

Surprise quest ending right at the start when they've done literally everythign right so far is a real hard pill to swallow.
 
Last edited:
Reader mode
You must login or register to reply here.
Voting will open in 6 hours, 47 minutes
Remove ads
Back
Top