Warhammer Fantasy: Divided Loyalties - an Advisor's Quest
- Thread starter Boney
- Start date
- Fantasy Users' Choice!
Voted best in category in the Users' Choice awards.
It's the most likely explanation for how he fell to Chaos in canon. Mentally stable people with a healthy support structure and a reasonably comfortable life aren't the ones who fall to Chaos normally. Sure, Chaos lies, but most of what it promises really isn't very attractive to normal individuals. It's the obsessives, the power hungry, the desperate, the bloodthirsty - those are the people who're typically drawn into Chaos worship. People who want something that is very difficult to achieve or obtain for any number of reasons, people with nothing to lose, people who are already in the throes of mundane madness. Trying to study and understand Chaos gives them a lever though, because memetic threats are real and while they aren't limitless, leaning in to take a close look can be a dangerous game if something else is looking back from the other side.
Sometimes Chaos gets crafty, but that requires personal attention in the same way that any other sort of divine plot does.
K8P is relatively Chaos free as far as anywhere in the world can be considered to be, I say we invite the guy and get to know him, and if you turn out to be right then we can make a judgement call.
SuperSonicSound
Shadowmancer of the Shadow Cabal
ofcourse trying to toe the line when it comes to chaos tomes and knowledge isn't impossible but holy shit is it far more dangerous that what Mathilde is doing with the Liber Mortis. It's far from impossible, there are examples of it working in setting but it's super dangerous.
That said one of the examples of that working was a guy that ends up being able to cast spells safely from multiple winds of magic... :/
Last edited:
K von Carstein
Likes to go for a walk
- Location
- Belgium
- Pronouns
- He
Who was it?
- Location
- Philippines
You run a thoughtful eye over their mammoth as you pass, noting its clear eyes, symmetrical features, and hair as blond as the humans around it. They say that the second set of tusks and the fangs on its trunk are a mutation induced by chaos, but they say the same of Demigryphs. The mammoth seems to be inspecting you right back, possibly surprised to encounter something even larger than it trundling through town.
[X] Attempt to steal the mammoth from the Baersonlings.
This is a sign from either Ranald or the Mammoth asking Mathilde, to save him/her, or he/she just wants to travel with the dragon.
[X] Attempt to steal the mammoth from the Baersonlings.
This is a sign from either Ranald or the Mammoth asking Mathilde, to save him/her, or he/she just wants to travel with the dragon.
Yes, absolutely. Necromancy is dangerous because it involves Dhar which is like radiation - it's an inert hazard. It corrupts, but it doesn't actively corrupt unless you're using or exposed to it.
Chaos actively and intelligently attempts to subvert those who poke and prod it.
If he's going to poke something that dangerous, well, It would be moderately safer to do so from behind the protection of a bunch of Karak wards. Seriously though, reading books with eyes and tentacles is almost certainly not safe, and Mathilde is going to need to be very careful in how she approaches a subject like that with someone who might be doing just that.
I'd argue that even reading a Chaos tome with precautions taken would likely be more dangerous than Mathilde actively experimenting with necromancy and Dhar, given some of the protections she has.
Alternatively, Mammoths aren't stupid, and like any intelligent animal it feels curiosity when it sees some seriously weird shit, so it takes a look.
SuperSonicSound
Shadowmancer of the Shadow Cabal
Maximillian Schreiber from the Gotrek and Felix novels. He's cast out of the colleges of magic and designated a black magister but eventually is readmitted. He casts from three winds of magic.
Basically, the quest equivalent of Max Schreiber, who in some of the books is a Light Wizard (and a Gold in others - in all he's know to produce effects from three Lores of Magic, although that could be him bluffing and using items produced by Thaumaturgical Alchemy).
- Location
- Portugal
[X] Magister Egrimm van Horstmann
[X] Attempt to steal the mammoth from the Baersonlings
[X] Asarnil the Dragonlord
[X] Ice Crone Ljiljana
[X] Attempt to steal the mammoth from the Baersonlings
[X] Asarnil the Dragonlord
[X] Ice Crone Ljiljana
That's even worse!
All wizards have dark secrets! (Except most Brights)
If a wizard looks like they don't Have secrets to hid, then they are just hiding them even more desperately!
- Pronouns
- He/His/etc
Are mammoths even able to thrive in any location in the Empire proper?
Also, IIRC historically war elephants and the like were more prestige weapons than anything really practical. They just cost so much to raise and maintain and were difficult to control properly in battle.
Egrimm at the moment is wondering whether Mathilde is feeling him out for possible cult recruitment, or whether she's pretending to be sympathetic in order to draw him out so she can execute him, or whether she is a cultist pretending to pretend to be a cultist in order to guise herself as secret police....
Dealing with Grey Magisters is always a headache.
Also, IIRC historically war elephants and the like were more prestige weapons than anything really practical. They just cost so much to raise and maintain and were difficult to control properly in battle.
Egrimm at the moment is wondering whether Mathilde is feeling him out for possible cult recruitment, or whether she's pretending to be sympathetic in order to draw him out so she can execute him, or whether she is a cultist pretending to pretend to be a cultist in order to guise herself as secret police....
Dealing with Grey Magisters is always a headache.
Last edited:
- Location
- Czech Republic
Max Schreiber arguably will be the most talented human magic user In modern history of the old world, and the human that got closest to casting all 8 winds in the history of the empire before... you know...
Fuck, he even magic dual'd the bloody first demon prince and won.
Max Schreiber is not a good competition to anyone
Canon Horstaman was certainly no slouch in the talent department and that is the one thing we can be reasonably sure translated over to the quest. After all Alric would not keep an untalented magister as his general fixer.
Dwarf mammoths lived in the Mediterranean in the real world. They'd do just fine in the Empire, and they'll live in K8P. Probably not thrive, but they aren't going to keel over dead from the heat.
Remember that Egrimm is just as much a member of the secret police as Mathilde is. It's just that his agency focuses on daemons possessing people or things and hers focuses on Cultists. She should probably be wondering if he's investigating whether her gallivanting off during the Expedition is either evidence she was already possessed, an opportunity for her to be possessed, or whether she may have picked up any corrupted objects that the Light Order is mandated to seize and lock away.
As it happens, we did actually pick up a prime example of said corrupted objects, and it is very arguably actually his job to take it and return it to the Light College for safekeeping. His obligations to take such obligations probably have an exception for dwarf held items, but I very much doubt that the Light College trusts the Kislevites to keep such items safely locked down, particularly as they'd want to study how to defeat them themselves and being a lot further south are pretty much inherently in a better position to keep them safe. Depending on how good his Windsight is, he may well be able to see the echoes of what Mathilde just did by looking at her.
Even if he's completely loyal, indeed, particularly if he's completely loyal, he could well be operating at cross-purposes to Mathilde. He could well also consider her temporary possession of a high end Chaos relic plus the fact that she concealed it from him rather than handing it over to him as the lead member of the College mandated with responsibility for such objects she gave it to someone else to be very problematic indeed.
Last edited:
consequences
Not A Nice Person At All
- Location
- Jerkville
I want you all to imagine something. We decline to engage in Mammoth Heist.
...And E&S go and steal the beast anyway, and come rolling up to the convoy on it with their kitty birds playing shoulder cat for it.
But it gets worse. Our social turn activates, and we go to find Horstmann...And he's on the Mammoth cheerfully chatting with them and planning to play hooky by joining them and the kitty bird knights fighting chaos for an extended vacation. We play dejected fourth(or seventh) wheel for a while and we go to find Jeorg. He's following behind the Mammoth on his kitty bird, with the Ice Witch in his arms. By the way, they're now eloping as soon as they reach a qualified priest.
We look up, as Deathfang swoops in, Asarnil backflipping off of him to join the Mammoth party and swearing bonds of eternal friendship with everyone who went on the heist. Deathfang brofists the Mammoth.
And then, just to make things the absolute worst, we see Johann trailing in their wake buried under an enormous pile of reclaimed Norse Dwarf rune loot.
Do any of us really want that to happen?
kinda actually
...And E&S go and steal the beast anyway, and come rolling up to the convoy on it with their kitty birds playing shoulder cat for it.
But it gets worse. Our social turn activates, and we go to find Horstmann...And he's on the Mammoth cheerfully chatting with them and planning to play hooky by joining them and the kitty bird knights fighting chaos for an extended vacation. We play dejected fourth(or seventh) wheel for a while and we go to find Jeorg. He's following behind the Mammoth on his kitty bird, with the Ice Witch in his arms. By the way, they're now eloping as soon as they reach a qualified priest.
We look up, as Deathfang swoops in, Asarnil backflipping off of him to join the Mammoth party and swearing bonds of eternal friendship with everyone who went on the heist. Deathfang brofists the Mammoth.
And then, just to make things the absolute worst, we see Johann trailing in their wake buried under an enormous pile of reclaimed Norse Dwarf rune loot.
Do any of us really want that to happen?
kinda actually
All we know about Max Schriber is what Felix's brother would have published in the edited versions of his diaries which is what the books are meant to be. Just as some books have him be a member of the Light College and others a member of the Gold, they're very much not reliable sources of information given they're written by people who don't know very much about magic and are basically engaging about artistic license to describe things they don't know. They very much have an unreliable narrator.
For example, as I say, he could well just have been very good at Thaumaturgical Alchemy and was just using Chamon to manipulate the other Winds that had been absorbed within material reagents, like any Gold Wizard Alchemist does when making a flaming sword, and been mysterious about it in the finest wizardly tradition.
Last edited:
Ericwinter
Definitely not a Skaven Infiltrator
- Location
- America
You know, I've Witches are technically qualified priestesses...
- Location
- Omniverse #1345
Went back a ways to reread the conquest of k8p and I thought of something.
And at this point none of the high kings for thousands of years have even known that they've not had admin access, or that the little symbol in (insert corner) is the log in button.
(To this day Grungi grumbles that his password is obvious.)
What do you wanna bet they did, in fact, leave an instruction manual in the throne of power. ...and never considered that a twenty thousand long character sequence they never bothered to tell anyone is not, in fact, a good password to lock it behind
And at this point none of the high kings for thousands of years have even known that they've not had admin access, or that the little symbol in (insert corner) is the log in button.
(To this day Grungi grumbles that his password is obvious.)
Last edited:
- Location
- North Wales
- Pronouns
- He/Him/His
Warhammer has never really been known to run on the practical, though, or Doomwheels and Kathleen the Halfling Soup Tank wouldn't exist.
- Location
- Sweden
... Mathilde wakes up yelling in apanic; "Nonono no no... It was just a bad dream!"
Then staring into the darkness of her cabin, she tells her oldest friend: "Tomorrow we are stealing a mammoth!"