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Warhammer Fantasy: Divided Loyalties - an Advisor's Quest

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How good is Mathilde at obfuscating her own writing style? Could she, say, write a comprehensive book on Dhar and Necromancy, wait until the next time she kills a Chaos Sorcerer or Vampire, and finally bring "this non-cursed and apparently freshly written tome she just found" to Algard?

Wait, no. Any Gold Wizard could find out the actual source. Maybe if she writes it while wearing fully concealing clothing and a mask?
 
Rafin said:
How good is Mathilde at obfuscating her own writing style? Could she, say, write a comprehensive book on Dhar and Necromancy, wait until the next time she kills a Chaos Sorcerer or Vampire, and finally bring "this non-cursed and apparently freshly written tome she just found" to Algard?

Wait, no. Any Gold Wizard could find out the actual source. Maybe if she writes it while wearing fully concealing clothing and a mask?
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The moment anybody realizes what they're holding, it would probably fall into the same category as the Liber Mortis, in which case we're marked as needing to die immediately for having had access to it at all. At least, if it's at the level of comprehensiveness where we feel the need to obfuscate who even wrote it.
 
Rafin said:
How good is Mathilde at obfuscating her own writing style? Could she, say, write a comprehensive book on Dhar and Necromancy, wait until the next time she kills a Chaos Sorcerer or Vampire, and finally bring "this non-cursed and apparently freshly written tome she just found" to Algard?

Wait, no. Any Gold Wizard could find out the actual source. Maybe if she writes it while wearing fully concealing clothing and a mask?
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I suspect the writing of a Grey Wizard who knows Dhar second hand, however well, would differ greatly from that of a vampire who uses the stuff. The insights do not translate IMO.
 
Rafin said:
Otherwise it would mean that any serious amount of Dhar contamination would automatically lead to a bad end in which this stops being a Quest and starts being a prose epilogue of varying length.
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That does, in fact, seem like a reasonable outcome of reaching that level of Dhar taint. It's why we don't do that. Similar to not feeding one's head into a woodchipper.
 
Godwinson said:
That does, in fact, seem like a reasonable outcome of reaching that level of Dhar taint. It's why we don't do that. Similar to not feeding one's head into a woodchipper.
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"Don't feed your head into a woodchipper!"

"But what if it grants you unlimited power?"

"Not even then!"

"But lots of other people did it!"

"Yeah, and they all died as a consequence!"

"You can't prove that was related! They could have died for non-woodchipper related reasons!"
 
Rafin said:
How good is Mathilde at obfuscating her own writing style? Could she, say, write a comprehensive book on Dhar and Necromancy, wait until the next time she kills a Chaos Sorcerer or Vampire, and finally bring "this non-cursed and apparently freshly written tome she just found" to Algard?

Wait, no. Any Gold Wizard could find out the actual source. Maybe if she writes it while wearing fully concealing clothing and a mask?
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Since BoneyM said " It's an understanding built within the confines of the Articles. Entirely legal, if slightly eyebrow-raising. " we should be able to write a book about Dhar if we leave out Necromancy and anything we learned from the Liber Mortis and any other dark books.

We'd have to limit it to stuff we could extrapolate from watching baddies cast it in action.
 
Nerdasaurus Rex said:
"Don't feed your head into a woodchipper!"

"But what if it grants you unlimited power?"

"Not even then!"

"But lots of other people did it!"

"Yeah, and they all died as a consequence!"

"You can't prove that was related! They could have died for non-woodchipper related reasons!"
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I hate that i can't tag this as funny because its exactly the kind of stupid shit questers get up to.

Flashbacks to stabbing your heart for power
 
Rafin said:
That's not what I was trying to say. It's just that even if you roll to see if Mathilde does fucked up shit over the course of the turn as she pursues her goals, I still think that you would let us vote for her actual goals and courses of action. Otherwise it would mean that any serious amount of Dhar contamination would automatically lead to a bad end in which this stops being a Quest and starts being a prose epilogue of varying length.
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I mean...outside of a really bad midcast (and IIRC she has a belt that should protect against that), we shouldn't under any circumstances be doing anything that contaminates us with Dhar. We're voting to gain insight so we can disrupt enemy spells and purify corrupted waystones, not so we can use Dhar spells.

We already know as much necromancy as top teir necromancers and have never used it, for good reason.
 
Alratan said:
Interesting about the second. I didn't think we knew whether Chaos Sorcerers used Dhar, rather than something involving divine magic. Also revealing that this isn't one of the secrets that a chaos sorcerer's daemonic patrons/teachers would or could tell them. I think one of the reasons given for why Witches sell their souls is because they need a teacher.
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The more a daemonic patron teaches to the prospective chaos sorcerer, the less reason the prospective chaos sorcerer has to do what the daemonic patron says, and chaos is not generally in the business of REDUCING the number of hooks it has into someone. I imagine the general pattern is "teach them enough to be useful, then trickle out just enough further lessons to keep them hooked."
 
Rafin said:
If you think that none of the Jade and Amber LMs have ever managed to see Laurelorn from the inside then you are suffering from serious protagonist goggles.
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The elves of Laurelorn might be less agressive about it than Athel Loren, but they are still very isolationist. There is a difference between some magisters managing to creep into the outskirts and being able to openly walk the deepest paths of the forest.
The without trying to kill you part was the important bit.
 
BoneyM said:
I might need to invent a new level of extreme classification for that sort of publication.
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I would imagine it's something similar to existing SCIF systems where only single digit amounts of copies are allowed to exist in single-digit extremely secure locations.

On one hand I would feel deep sympathy for the Porter for having to handle the hot potato. On the other, I would think it's funny for a couple of days that the Greys are scrambling up a contingency with our name on it. You know you've made when the weapons meant to keep the boogeymen away were built with you in mind.
 
NeonLights said:
On one hand I would feel deep sympathy for the Porter for having to handle the hot potato. On the other, I would think it's funny for a couple of days that the Greys are scrambling up a contingency with our name on it. You know you've made when the weapons meant to keep the boogeymen away were built with you in mind.
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There's also the possibility of a classification called Mathilde :V
Shorthand for "Give it to Karaz-a-Karak and tell them to only give it to a Mathilde."
 
Rafin said:
That's not what I was trying to say. It's just that even if you roll to see if Mathilde does fucked up shit over the course of the turn as she pursues her goals, I still think that you would let us vote for her actual goals and courses of action. Otherwise it would mean that any serious amount of Dhar contamination would automatically lead to a bad end in which this stops being a Quest and starts being a prose epilogue of varying length.
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You are entirely wrong. Mathilde is not immune to being driven insane. If the thread takes her down a path that drives her insane, I won't hesitate for a second to write an epilogue. Decisions have to have consequences for those decisions to have meaning, and I have the OP of my next quest already written and ready to go.

Rafin said:
Speaking of classified material, how does it work when Mathilde discovers some sort of magical knowledge that the Grey College would really like to keep as a Guild secret, not because it is too teach widely, but because they'd too like to have stuff like what every other College has. When would Mathilde be asked to make her paper a classified one and who would have the final say in the matter?
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Mathilde does not know.
 
NeonLights said:
I would imagine it's something similar to existing SCIF systems where only single digit amounts of copies are allowed to exist in single-digit extremely secure locations.

On one hand I would feel deep sympathy for the Porter for having to handle the hot potato. On the other, I would think it's funny for a couple of days that the Greys are scrambling up a contingency with our name on it. You know you've made when the weapons meant to keep the boogeymen away were built with you in mind.
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And we just got permission to play around with Waystones, too.

Actually, question @BoneyM these new insights that we would be able to get away with sharing. Do those include the Secrets? I wouldn't think so, because that's about actually manipulating Dhar directly, but it might be excusable if we said we saw a Sorceror or something using them. So I wanted to check, just in case. I mean, it's useful knowledge to have, but very definitely only in case of apocalyptic scenarios where you don't have much choice.
 
Ericwinter said:
Actually, question @BoneyM these new insights that we would be able to get away with sharing. Do those include the Secrets? I wouldn't think so, because that's about actually manipulating Dhar directly, but it might be excusable if we said we saw a Sorceror or something using them. So I wanted to check, just in case. I mean, it's useful knowledge to have, but very definitely only in case of apocalyptic scenarios where you don't have much choice.
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I cannot even begin to express how astoundingly bad an idea it would be to try to publish the Secrets of Dhar. It is so much more likely to cause apocalypses than it is to solve them.
 
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[X] DIPLO: Polyglot
[X] LESSON: Dhar Insight

It occurs to me that if the vote continues as it is we will probably know more about Dhar then most of the professional Dhar user we have fought and can probably speak better dark tongue too. I would tell them to get on our level but we would be obligated to kill them if they tried.
 
... A stray thought came to me. About burritos.

Mastering singular ingredients and making burrito-derivatives from them is mono-wind College Magic.
Mastering all ingredients and truly understanding the recipes to be capable of making acceptable burritos is High Magic.

Working your way up the fast-food chain to finally be entrusted with manning the kitchen and using premade ingredients is Divine Magic.
 
Nerdasaurus Rex said:
"Don't feed your head into a woodchipper!"

"But what if it grants you unlimited power?"

"Not even then!"

"But lots of other people did it!"

"Yeah, and they all died as a consequence!"

"You can't prove that was related! They could have died for non-woodchipper related reasons!"
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In other words, Phoenix Wright Prosecutors are necromancers?

I can see it.
 
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