Remove ads

Warhammer Fantasy: Divided Loyalties - an Advisor's Quest

Voted best in category in the Users' Choice awards.
Reader mode
BoneyM said:
You frown, then drop onto your stomach to examine the edge of the crater from an inch away. Can you see individual grains of the stone crumbling into sand. "Find me whoever knows the most about stone in this Expedition," you say.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Should that be "You can see"?

BoneyM said:
"And the sand? Is it fragmented scoria?"

"No," he says instantly. "Wrong colour completely." He bends down and picks some up, letting it run through his fingers before putting a pinch in his mouth. "Sedimentary silicate, not igneous. Nearest place you'd find this is the southern Dark Lands."

With a tiny fizzle of Divine energy, a tiny piece of rock disappears, replaced by a few grains of sand that tumble down to join the rest of the desert.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
... Odd. So...

This desert is made by Morghur's aura?

That's weird. Morghur doesn't usually make desert, does he? What the heck?

... Is this like some "Reverse the polarity on the deflector dish <insert Treknobabble>!" thing?

Where, if Morghur is in the physical world, he starts turning it into the Aethyr; but if he's in the Chaos Wastes he starts turning it into real-world-stuff?


... I wonder if Morghur actually originates from somewhere in the Dark Lands? (Either the original Morghur, or this Morghur.) Something to do with the Dwarfs that eventually became the Chaos Dwarfs? Or maybe just something to do with locations in the Dark Lands? So maybe Morghur is transforming the area to look more like a particular Dark Lands locale? Or maybe he is bringing a part of the Dark Lands into this area?

Or maybe that was just the Dwarf's way of saying that the sand is weird and something you'd usually find in places like the Dark Lands, rather than a literal sign that some kind of location-switcheroo is going on.


EDIT: How far down does the desert go?
 
BoneyM said:
He obeys, producing a pickaxe from his belt to chip off a piece to examine, and then carefully chew. "Scoria," he says with confidence.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
BoneyM said:
With a tiny fizzle of Divine energy, a tiny piece of rock disappears, replaced by a few grains of sand that tumble down to join the rest of the desert.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
...Funky. It crumbled after he removed it from the radius, and from well beyond said radius? Does that happen if we displace a larger chunk? Does that happen if we take a chunk from outside the radius and bring it closer?

And it totally changed rock types. Interesting.
 
Is there any chance of Mathilde being able to identify or at least compare and contrast the particular flavor of Divine Energy she saw transmuting stone to sand? The Winter Wolves or Knights of Taal are probably going to have some talisman or another of Taal/Ulric and we have the Coin and can probably catch a glimpse of the energies the Ice Witch has. Mathilde is also likely to remember a bit of Stromfels and possibly whatever semi-divine energies Vicereine Cadeath was sporting.

Maybe that's not enough to be positive, but it's probably enough to figure out a rough ballpark.
 
Last edited:
BoneyM said:
- If you have an idea for experiments that don't take long that involve no spellcasting, not leaving the fortified position, and not potentially starting a fight with the Beastmen, suggest them and I might edit in the results of Mathilde doing them.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Is there any way we can get an animal and nudge it to go into the area? And see if the Beastmen do anything to it?

(Would something like that start a fight with Beastmen, or...?)
 
Vebyast said:
...Funky. It crumbled after he removed it from the radius, and from well beyond said radius? Does that happen if we displace a larger chunk? Does that happen if we take a chunk from outside the radius and bring it closer?

And it totally changed rock types. Interesting.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

The chunk was from the lip, I'll tweak that to make it clearer.

Garlak said:
Is there any way we can get an animal and nudge it to go into the area? And see if the Beastmen do anything to it?

(Would something like that start a fight with Beastmen, or...?)
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

The only animals are the wolves and Demigryphs, and that would be a harder sell than asking Snorri to do the same with one of his Rangers.

me.me.here said:
Is there any chance of Mathilde being able to identify or at least compare and contrast the particular flavor of Divine Energy she saw transmuting stone to sand? The Winter Wolves or Knights of Taal are probably going to have some talisman or another of Taal/Ulric and we have the Coin and can probably catch a glimpse of the energies the Ice Witch has. Mathilde is also likely to remember a bit of Stromfels and possibly whatever semi-divine energies Vicereine Cadeath was sporting.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

If there was anything familiar to it, the text would have specified.
 
Last edited:
BoneyM said:
With a tiny fizzle of Divine energy, a tiny piece of rock disappears, replaced by a few grains of sand that tumble down to join the rest of the desert.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Is there any way to tell what kind of divine energy this is using Avatar, or was that the only reason we noticed it at all? If so, can we tell if it's chaos divine or order divine?
 
Looks like the "spatial displacement" theories are getting a boost, by the by - that's an incongruous type of sand and and incongruous type of forest - not what you'd "naturally" get from say, a lot of heat being emitted by a Rune.

It's very much worth noting that Mathilde noticed Divine energy fuelling the expansion of the desert - something she doesn't sense when, say, her belt triggers, right @BoneyM ?

So this is probably not an arcane wind based effect, nor fuelled by runecraft... which means given the circumstances it's probably the Chaos Gods.

Chaos imposing a desert to try to destroy the forest?
 
BoneyM said:
The chunk was from the lip, I'll tweak that to make it clearer.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Ah, okay.

It's interesting that it's happening in discrete chunks - a fizzle and a tiny bit of rock transmuted into sand.

Can we measure that? See how much rock gets transmuted by each of those fizzles? Is it precisely the same every time? Can we estimate how fast they're occurring by seeing how many we can observe in a given region and projecting that over the entire border?
 
@BoneyM, did the time Borek took to cross the desert to the forest match up with how long it should take to cross 4⅔ miles? (I'm assuming that the forest makes up a third of the distance from desert edge to Dum edge since it takes up the bottom third of the crater.)
 
Abhorsen said:
Is there any way to tell what kind of divine energy this is using Avatar, or was that the only reason we noticed it at all? If so, can we tell if it's chaos divine or order divine?
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

Avatar was the only reason she was able to detect any energy, but it's definitely not Chaos magic.

Redshirt Army said:
It's very much worth noting that Mathilde noticed Divine energy fuelling the expansion of the desert - something she doesn't sense when, say, her belt triggers, right @BoneyM ?
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

Correct.
 
I'm not going to lie I do not want to approach Morghur no matter what. But at the same time I feel we need more answers perhaps then approach one or two of the camps and see what we gain here. Maybe even if we're daring try and infiltrate the Karak for answers, though this would be very dangerous.

This next part can be considered off-subject but I felt like bringing it up so ignore if you want too.

And after this(as in expedition) I would like to go visit Ulthuan partly because I'm getting bored of the Dwarves and want to move onto something new for us and possible get more involved with the empire itself. And I should say now this is my opinion but we've been in 8 peaks for a while now and I would love to move on to something new again.
 
Last edited:
Redshirt Army said:
Looks like the "spatial displacement" theories are getting a boost, by the by - that's an incongruous type of sand and and incongruous type of forest - not what you'd "naturally" get from say, a lot of heat being emitted by a Rune.

It's very much worth noting that Mathilde noticed Divine energy fuelling the expansion of the desert - something she doesn't sense when, say, her belt triggers, right @BoneyM ?

So this is probably not an arcane wind based effect, nor fuelled by runecraft... which means given the circumstances it's probably the Chaos Gods.

Chaos imposing a desert to try to destroy the forest?
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
This is the sort of discussion we need, thank you.
 
Follow-up question for Cyrston: are these trees from species that could naturally grow/apparently flourish in these kinds of temperatures?
 
BoneyM said:
Changes of clothes, maps, and a spare axe. Nothing that sheds light.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

Yeah I suppose it'd be anticlimactic to discover some sort of written confession.

Alright, next I would advocate attempting to establish diplomacy, but if that involves approaching/attacking the nearby raiding parties I guess I'm for it.
 
Last edited:
NexusEye said:
@BoneyM, did the time Borek took to cross the desert to the forest match up with how long it should take to cross 4⅔ miles? (I'm assuming that the forest makes up a third of the distance from desert edge to Dum edge since it takes up the bottom third of the crater.)
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

Yes, or as near as she could tell while lacking a stopwatch.

Fayhem said:
Follow-up question for Cyrston: are these trees from species that could naturally grow/apparently flourish in these kinds of temperatures?
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

They don't know the temperature over there. It's warm at the lip, cold further from it, hot a you get into the desert itself.
 
BoneyM said:
Avatar was the only reason she was able to detect any energy, but it's definitely not Chaos magic.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Fascinating.

Survey everyone on the Expedition with serious religious beliefs, ask them to pray a bit to see if they can get any divine attention from their deities, and compare those to the fizzles we're feeling to see if we can narrow it down?
BoneyM said:
"Sedimentary silicate, not igneous. Nearest place you'd find this is the southern Dark Lands."
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
BoneyM said:
I had to guess, I'd say northern. Drakwald, Laurelorn, or Forest of Shadows."
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Cross-reference the lists of everywhere these could be found to see if there are any reasonable locations for them to co-occur.
 
Reader mode
You must login or register to reply here.
Remove ads
Back
Top