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Warhammer Fantasy: Divided Loyalties - an Advisor's Quest

Voted best in category in the Users' Choice awards.
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[x] LESSON: Dhar Insight
[X] DIPLO: Polyglot

Voting for Dhar insight since i remembered looking back looking into dhar infested waystones is an actual possibility.
BoneyM said:
Getting permission to do push-the-limits sorts of research (ex., Johann is literally going to poke the skaven and their warpstone, Mathilde is in a great position to research multi-wind interaction and ways to avoid creating dhar when it happens, or to study probably-corrupted Waystones with an eye toward unfucking them, and the Articles are intentionally vague enough that what is okay and what isn't is basically a judgement call by the Colleges; can we pay in Favor to represent burning political capital on being given dispensation for this sort of thing instead of being uncertain whether we're crossing lines?)
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Touching dhar, even with belt is risky since one screw up and it can really fuck up Malthitide considering Dhar induced madness and megalomaniac so if their's possibility of looking into dhar infested waystone then i'm taking every advantage i can get.

Also knowing more about dhar is preety good for Malthitide considering our counter development against Skaven dhar guns was i believe because of the liber mortis and her experience with dhar from it so more the better for more experience and knowledge to try and come up with ways to fuck dhar users up.

Also voting polygot because after some heavy thinking and realizing were talking to Elves of all people with their strange dialect of Elythrian which I've heard peeps in quest and questers bemoan on each word having multiple meaning like the word 'fuck' does in English and Boney expanding on how much Malthitides language skills have carried her and failed her like assuming Cor-Dum the tribes in the wastes referred to Karag Dum when it was the demi god beast men, I think it's good to shur up Malthitides skill in languages.

Wouldn't be surprised if the elves had a religious greeting word with multiple meaning like,

"I of Laurelorn greet you"
"I of the Tree's greet you" Actually meaning speaking on behalf of tree people, treant's
"I of the highest tree of Laurelorn Greet you" Greetings from royalty messenger
":mob:I OF KHAINE GREET YOU:mob:"

Might very well be overtly exaggerating the elven language but that's how it came across to to me by my reading from questers and peeps in setting like Cython or Malthitides complaints in character so going for this.

Also, I know this is counting my eggs before even seeing or knowing they exist but i'd be interested in working with the elves navigate emperial politics and open up from their isolationism that's killing them.

Their doom spells more chaos in the world and beast men and dhar and pushes forth the narrative that the world comes closer to the brink of literal demons roaming around like the old day's so like, nope.

Really counting my chickens yes I know, but if we voted Kislev we'd have to deal with trying to fuck Chaos over, Brettonia we'd have to deal with the chaos orks, and here in Laurelorn it is likely we'd be involved in politics and i'd like to see if we could become friends with the Laurelorn and have them interact with the empire more over a slow isolated death.
 
[X] DIPLO: Collegiate
[X] LESSON: Theologian

I'm fairly OK with the leading options, but Dhar Insight without a willingness to use it offers only marginal benefits. (Possibly easier tongs by knowing what not to do, possible ill-defined applications to waystones, possible anti-chaos spell creation.) Actually understanding gods, on the other hand, gives us a route to boosts we can actually use in public (and introduce to other greys) without being burned at the stake, and gives us more options for our eventual transhuman reinterment. Hell, if Cython is right about winds being a sort of god we can directly apply it to Ulgu.
 
Sparsebeard said:
So I was thinking about underground defenses for K8P and I keep coming back with good old water. Keep a lake above ground and just flood the tunnels when you are invaded, then pump it out.

But more generally, water is a pretty powerful weapon, blasting a dam at the right time can wipe out armies but has huge collateral damage.

Using it underground against Skaven however... I mean, diverting a river is not a small endeavour and they have to have SOME defenses against flooding or they'd probably just be an aquifer rather than a city, but going full Tywin and turning Skavenblight or HellPit into the deepest lake on Mallus does have some appeal as a permanent solution. Despite the probable difficulty of doing so.
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I think you underestimate the value of water, to be honest. If you have a lake of freshwater and you are in a situation where you are defending fortifications, I'd say it's best not to waste supplies on the enemy.

In K8P, we know it doesn't rain much and the only sources of fresh water are the silver tarn and the aquifer/king's arch river underground system. Both of those are going to be needed for agriculture and supporting the drinking/cooking/cleaning needs of a large population.
 
When it comes to picking traits, I think a key thing to consider at least for myself is not just "what will help Mathilde most?" but also "what direction do you want this quest to go?"

For diplomacy Polyglot feels like it ties into going all world-traveler while Mentor and Collegiate offer focuses on more personal relationships and more focus on the Empire's college dynamics, respectively.

picklepikkl said:
Yeah, I'm voting for both Mystic and Theologian, I have no beef with Mystic or with people who prefer one to the other. I just really want to shoot down that misconception when I see it, because we do still have a divine magic research path and I do still want to take it.
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I get where you're coming from here, and honestly, part of the reason I'm not voting for either Mystic or Theologian is because I can't go for both. :V

The other part is that I really, really like Logistics. And the way it's worded sounds like it could be an evolution on Mathilde's Warrior of Fog trait. (A big part of why she got the option was using that prior trait to enhance battlefield logistics, after all.) Though I consider it more than worth even without that just because, well, logistics~
 
In celebration of our new job, I've changed my profile picture.

Gooooood Morning Laurelorn!

⏸ 🎶Now playing: Paranoid - Black Sabbath🎶
 
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Chopak said:
This probably has been asked before, but the thread moves so fast, I can't keep up.

@BoneyM you sometime ago said that If Mathilde were to use the insight she already got from The Liber Mortis, she would be instantly sus, because such knowledge implies studying the Dhar and it's prohibited by the Arcticles. Would picking LESSON: Dhar Insight also make us unable to use that Insight in public without marking a big "SUSPICIOUS" sign on our backs?
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She'd probably get side-eyed if she did start openly using that information, but she'd have a solid explanation for where she got that knowledge that can be confirmed by other Wizards, and being a Lord Magister means she'd have a lot more benefit of the doubt when it comes to that sort of thing.

picklepikkl said:
Well, let's go to the source. @BoneyM, given our Eonir library, do we know if they use Anoqeyan as a magical language the same way the magical tradition of the Asur does?
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Information on Eonir magical theory from Imperial sources is extremely limited, and doesn't cover the language they use.

Rafin said:
Let me give you my definition.

"Theurgy: Using Divine and Arcane Magic simultaneously, either by hybridizing the two or by using one to manipulate the other. Alternatively, using Arcane means to achieve Divine effects or using Divine means to achieve Arcane effects."
When Tzeentch blesses you with enhanced Arcane capabilities, that is technically Theurgy, but not the one we are currently looking for.
We would prefer something more like what the ancient Nehekarans did. Or maybe what the Ice Witches and/or tue Damsels might or might not be doing.
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That your definition covers five different possible avenues and points to four existing models as possible frameworks highlights my exact point about 'theurgy' meaning many different things to many different people.

Rafin said:
But how many of those people had a hivemind of questers controlling their choices and averting any slips down the slopes? Being controlled by hundreds of disembodied voices in your head is a surefire way to stave off insanity induced behavior :V.

Seriously though, I do not believe that BoneyM would change his philosophy of high player agency should we decide to make this into a Necromancy Quest. Not that I am advocating for that, no sire.
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Do not trust in meta shenanigans to protect Mathilde from the extremely real consequences of using an extremely toxic substances, especially when I have explicitly cautioned the thread about those consequences on multiple occasions.

Catpetter1981 said:
I object to the characterisation of Necromancy as innately "evil".

Necromancy is just a tool. You don't call a hammer "evil" if it's used by a murderer to bash in someone's head. It's the murderer who is evil, not the hammer.
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If there was a hammer that was extremely better at bashing in heads than anything else, and had a tendency to bash in heads of its own accord, and made people holding it want to bash in more and more heads, and created a lasting aura of bashed-in heads everywhere it was used, I don't think it would be unreasonable to characterize that hammer as 'evil'.
 
@BoneyM

Would it be possible to get an info/media threadmark with your previous avatars for the quest?
I'm curious what came before the (probaly) Ironhammer banner from the K8P expedition.
 
BoneyM said:
That your definition covers five different possible avenues and points to four existing models as possible frameworks highlights my exact point about 'theurgy' meaning many different things to many different people.
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Theurgy: The art of attempting to conjure up burritos through the mixing of two things that are extremely difficult to mix if it's even possible for them to mix at all. :V
 
Sir_Travelsalot said:
I don't know that it could honestly be claimed to be logically grounded, considering it is an attempt to find empirical proof/justification for an entirely personal bitterness that stems from said god not doing as we think he ought to have. When the reason could be as simple as Kasmir just failed at the invocation and had an exceptionally poor choice of words for expressing said failure. Which is exactly what the casting rolls represent in the RPG.
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Let me share a secret about academia with you: "logically" in absolutely no way needs to mean "accurately." :V

Okay, I do have one more argument in favor of Theologian over Dhar Insight, because I love finding me a hill to die on long after most people have probably already made up their minds. If we take Dhar Insight, our peers in insight will probably be pretty much any skilled wizard (hell, maybe even just any competent wizard) that uses basically any flavor of dark magic. And in practical experience they will inevitably and necessarily be our superior, barring the thread going full Omegahugger. Moreover, we will almost certainly have at least some peers of equal or greater insight among the Colleges (among other institutions, really), as there are in fact many talented wizards who spend their whole careers primarily focused on dealing with Chaos et al. They may not have read the Liber Mortis, but an intelligent-up-through-brilliant mind paired with could certainly be half a century or more of practical experience is a long distance from nothing. Which, incidentally, means that any deficits in Dhar Insight that the Waystone Project might hypothetically suffer from might at least potentially be compensated for via the dark power of recruitment. The regular kind, not the aforementioned Omegahugger kind. Meaning, IMO if you're considering Dhar Insight you should be thinking more about if there are personal actions you want Dhar Insight for than about whether it will enable the Waystone Project to attempt new things; the whole point of the Waystone Project is that it is not about Mathilde trying to do it all herself.

Meanwhile, who are our peers in insight and investigation if we take Theologian? Uh... Cython, I guess? Who is approaching it (per WoQM) as the draconic equivalent of solving crossword puzzles for fun, not as a serious topic of research. And outside of the tens-of-millennia-old Emperor Dragon, who else is in contention? Probably none of the Cults, since while they've certainly got the personal experience the very idea of this approach sits orthogonal to their idiom. Among the Colleges? There's certainly those who have an interest from the way that Pan-pan and Horstbro talked about their own Colleges, but by the same token they also made it sound like their primary interest is in proving their pre-existent worldview to be correct. Which is not quite what Theologian seems to be for, I don't think. It's also unlikely that they've got the kind of rare-bordering-on-unique encounters and relationships with the divine that Mathilde has had and presently benefits from. Among the Ulthuani? This would be the rare topic I'd say they might actually be handicapped in researching relative to us. Due to attitude, not to lack of ability - the Ulthuani elves appear to feel that divine magic per se is an aberration of human culture (in the best case - the other non-human contenders for users of divine magic are, uh, not great), and hence beneath their notice except to say "ah yes, that's definitely actually something we already understand."

We could literally break new ground in plumbing the very secrets of the universe itself and unveiling the mysteries of the godhead. How is that not the most overwhelmingly sexy choice?? Yes, this is probably the hyped-up take on this option. But IMO you could subtract a lot of hype and still be holding something not just extremely cool but also much closer to unique than any other option on the list.
 
I have a heavy dislike towards a big part of WHFB lore when it's about gods/warp/souls (because I have my own opinion on that, written by D.Andreev), but this quest so far had none of it so far and had stuff I liked a lot about the topic, so voting for more of that stuff. Which might be useful for the waystones anyway.

[X] DIPLO: Interfaith Dialogue
[X] LESSON: Theologian
[x] LESSON: Mystic
 
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[X] DIPLO: Polyglot
[X] LESSON: Dhar Insight
[X] LESSON: Mystic

Surprised at how popular Dhar Insight is, but it makes sense upon further thought. I do wish we could've gotten closer to Divine Mysteries with Mystic tho, I was disappointed we missed the chance to grab it last time.
 
BoneyM said:
She'd probably get side-eyed if she did start openly using that information, but she'd have a solid explanation for where she got that knowledge that can be confirmed by other Wizards, and being a Lord Magister means she'd have a lot more benefit of the doubt when it comes to that sort of thing.
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I sort of wonder if this sort of thing is publishable in eyes-only texts...on one hand a world of good against dark forces. On the other, its a very short step for a competent student to become powerful dark forcesm..
 
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