Mopman43
Mountain-Hermit of Nitpeak
- Location
- Vermont
I mean, bearing in mind it could be more than a decade before that happens.
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.
- Location
- Greece
What I meant was not that they'd kill you intentionally over ambition.
What I meant was that they'd kill you accidentally over putting too much firepower either due to not thinking things though, not knowing how to tune it down or due to some shonenesque sense of "If I do not give it my all, I will be insulting you" . Plus, they re unlikely to not want to test themselves on the challenge. Hotheads with fire magic are not really made for nonlethal sparring, unless the laws of the universe change to accomodate them.
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Staff Notice: Rule 4
*checks back in*
Huh.
Dhar Insight having momentum seems to be encouraging dumbass ideas.
Huh.
Dhar Insight having momentum seems to be encouraging dumbass ideas.
- Location
- USA
They're only dumb if they fail.
Said every bout of thread madness, ever.
What are you talking about?
Ganurath
Literal Enthusiast
- Location
- A Valid Location
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Ideas that you believe to be unwise.
deathofrats0808
Don’t think of it as dying; just as leaving early
- Location
- Earth
To encourage further thread madness:
What would happen if Teclis turned up to challenge for the SP position? Like, say.ing no would be really really awkward, and possibly dangerous, and he apparently has some sort of official standing in the Colleges, so that he can't be set on fire for having created them (speaking of, does Finreir have similar standing? Or is it just because Teclis is directly mentioned in the Articles?). Would anybody try to fight him? Would they just give up? Would he win, or would Dragomas' "I become a Dragon" ability beat him out?
What would happen if Teclis turned up to challenge for the SP position? Like, say.ing no would be really really awkward, and possibly dangerous, and he apparently has some sort of official standing in the Colleges, so that he can't be set on fire for having created them (speaking of, does Finreir have similar standing? Or is it just because Teclis is directly mentioned in the Articles?). Would anybody try to fight him? Would they just give up? Would he win, or would Dragomas' "I become a Dragon" ability beat him out?
Mopman43
Mountain-Hermit of Nitpeak
- Location
- Vermont
Well, he's apparently considered the first SP, so I'd say he's certainly eligible.
I'd say in this scenario, either Teclis wins or the rest of the entrants stand aside to let him win. The colleges kinda hero-worship him some.
deathofrats0808
Don’t think of it as dying; just as leaving early
- Location
- Earth
Well that answers the Finreir questions at least.
Sure, on the other hand I can totally see "I want to see how I measure up against the guy" being a motivation for throwing down in a relatively friendly duel with him.
- Location
- Europa, Jupiter Orbit
Just Teclis.
On the rights of challenge its a fairly neat set of checks and balances:
-Any Lord Magister willing to literally fight their Patriarch over a decision has a legitimate outlet rather than going rogue. If you think you can do a better job, go for it. This incentivizes the Patriarch to keep the priorities of his best wizards in mind when making decisions.
-The Patriarch has to have a strong vested interest to raise ONLY Lord Magisters he trusts not to Skaven promote up the ranks. This is counterbalanced by the endless need for qualified problem solvers at the Lord Magister tier - if nothing else keeping up with the prestige of other Colleges will be hard if you have less Lord Magisters than you can promote.
--Useful tools to ensure this is to keep Magisters with proven talent but unproven loyalties doing grunt work that won't let them get the connections and reputation needed to be promoted.
Essentially, when they promote you to Lord Magister you are at least considered a suitable potential emergency Patriarch if, say Chaos decapitated the College literally.
-Any Lord Magister willing to literally fight their Patriarch over a decision has a legitimate outlet rather than going rogue. If you think you can do a better job, go for it. This incentivizes the Patriarch to keep the priorities of his best wizards in mind when making decisions.
-The Patriarch has to have a strong vested interest to raise ONLY Lord Magisters he trusts not to Skaven promote up the ranks. This is counterbalanced by the endless need for qualified problem solvers at the Lord Magister tier - if nothing else keeping up with the prestige of other Colleges will be hard if you have less Lord Magisters than you can promote.
--Useful tools to ensure this is to keep Magisters with proven talent but unproven loyalties doing grunt work that won't let them get the connections and reputation needed to be promoted.
Essentially, when they promote you to Lord Magister you are at least considered a suitable potential emergency Patriarch if, say Chaos decapitated the College literally.
deathofrats0808
Don’t think of it as dying; just as leaving early
- Location
- Earth
Hmm. I think Mathilde knows someone like that...
- Location
- Europa, Jupiter Orbit
I don't think that this applies to the Grey College at least. Everybody expects them to have more LMs than are visibly active anyway. And/or LM level Magisters who aren't being promoted on purpose. Hell, it isn't even common knowledge among other color Magisters who the Grey Patriarch is.
- Location
- Mexico
I think it's time to start naming the second generation chicken from the unhatched eggs.
Polyglot is winning over Collegiate, and rightly so I think, we are about to embark on a project that that might encompass most of the Old World, working side by side with a culture we know little about and gathering pieces of the puzzle from far and wide, so of course a trait that opens to door to communicating with and thus understanding multiple cultures is ahead.
What then would be an equivalent contender for magic? Collegiate is, despite the different magic traditions merged into the colleges, quite narrow. It seems at its core a political trait, managing people more than their magic, and as much as we are part of the colleges, the Waystones will require drawing from far more than they are able to offer.
Thus, depending on how the project goes, i can imagine a better, broader version of collegiate coming back, traits are after available as long as we keep doing related stuff, even if their effects and description change.
A Mathilde that has worked alongside Runemasters, Grey Lords, Arhain and Ice Witches.
Someone who has seen the work of Skaven Sorcerers and Dragons.
Someone who, aware of how insignificant her own dominion over the world's magic is, has seen more than most of what it can be.
A Nexus.
Polyglot is winning over Collegiate, and rightly so I think, we are about to embark on a project that that might encompass most of the Old World, working side by side with a culture we know little about and gathering pieces of the puzzle from far and wide, so of course a trait that opens to door to communicating with and thus understanding multiple cultures is ahead.
What then would be an equivalent contender for magic? Collegiate is, despite the different magic traditions merged into the colleges, quite narrow. It seems at its core a political trait, managing people more than their magic, and as much as we are part of the colleges, the Waystones will require drawing from far more than they are able to offer.
Thus, depending on how the project goes, i can imagine a better, broader version of collegiate coming back, traits are after available as long as we keep doing related stuff, even if their effects and description change.
A Mathilde that has worked alongside Runemasters, Grey Lords, Arhain and Ice Witches.
Someone who has seen the work of Skaven Sorcerers and Dragons.
Someone who, aware of how insignificant her own dominion over the world's magic is, has seen more than most of what it can be.
A Nexus.
Tales of U-K8P: A Storm from the South, Part 5
- Location
- Chicago
- Pronouns
- She/They
Tales of U-K8P: A Storm from the South
Part 5:
(Several days prior)
Darna moved quietly across the rock face, being careful to touch only the crude spikes that held the guide line; better a stretch than to use the cable itself and risk squeak of metal on metal as it shifted.
There were rats about.
Three times in perhaps the last hour she had seen groups in the low dozens scramble along the almost-paths, though she could see no reason for them not to just march as one proper column. It scratched at the back of her mind. Perhaps they were hiding their numbers? Perhaps they expected another enemy in the darkness?
The injured We clung to her back, half tucked into her pack. Her mostly empty pack- with her patrol guarding the depths of a friendly Karak, it meant that only a week or so worth of stonebread and water had been packed on top of a stripped down kit: no engineering gear, no mining gear, not even a coil of rope.
She was worried about the we- she had bound the injuries with silk cord and dwarven cloth as best she could. But while the ichor had stopped leaking, she had only been able to feed a small amount of water to it in the day since she had hauled herself out of its lifesaving web. It still twitched its polyps occasionally, so she took some comfort from that. Water wasn't enough to keep it alive, she knew, but as long as it was still moving she held out hope of getting it back close enough to echo into the Karak.
Unfortunately, her luck was not cooperating. She had very little idea which way the Karak as a whole was, and had lost sight of the lit gate back into Karak Lhune in her rush to avoid the main skaven column she had almost fallen into. At the moment, she was following the latest band of rats in the hope that they were at least headed somewhere with a recognizable landmark. This competed with the fear that they were merely headed back to their main army, and her indecision slowed her feet almost as much as her efforts at stealth.
Efforts, she suddenly realized as she approached a hairpin turn, that were very much NOT academic any more.
"...yes, yes, Skreetch is quite clever-smart! Snarll is blind-fool, to leave our paths unguarded, and so we must stay-watch!"
"Yes-yes, a watchpost here! No more following that weak-soft fool. And of course the strongest rat here shall lead-command, yes? Now! First we shall-"
As Darna eased closer, straining her ears and her memories of old lessons in low queekish, there was a sudden gurgle, quickly fading.
"Foolish Skreetch, trying to use-exploit me? Thought you could bluff-win a watch Sargeant's rank from being lazy-slow? You were right though, Skreetch, and Snarll-"
Darna had heard enough, and it sounded as though there were only two. More importantly, Darna was close enough and one was busy noisily dying. She rushed around the corner, took in the clanrat toying with a dagger above the writhing body of it's companion with a quick glance, and buried her ax between it's shoulder blades.
It squeaked, softly, and keeled over. The other appeared to be in the terminal stages of a poisoning, she dismissed it from her mind. At least, she thought as she pulled off her pack and slumped against the Rock face to let the adrenaline crash fade from her system, the rats weren't worried about their band coming back soon.
She let herself close her eyes and take seven long, measured breaths, as close as a dwarf in hostile territory would ever allow themselves to get to a cat nap. Bolstered, she stood to collect her gear, and discovered that the We had dragged itself out of her pack, leaving a damp streak of ichor as it struggled to mount the corpses, before mostly giving up and sinking its fangs into a meaty thigh.
"I guess we can stay for a few more minutes," she said, chuckling. A few minutes later, after pulling out some stonebread and gnawing on it a while, she began chuckling again. The We, fangs still sunk deep in the dead rat, was spinning out threads of web.
"I guess you do remember. Food for silk, huh? Suppose it is about as basic a things as any… Thanks. I can use this."
___________________
Three days later she was no closer to finding a way out. The strategy of following the small bands of skaven that tricked through the cave maze paid off, in part, along with her newly made rope, but only in so far as she was now perched precariously above one of the few large flat areas she had seen, out of sight of both the army gathered below and the outer cordon of quiet rats with good eyes and jezerails protecting it.
She hadn't meant to be here. She really, really hadn't. But when two patrols had been coming from opposite directions and her only choice of remaining unseen was to use her hand-axe and silk rope as an improvised grappling hook- well, she was still alive and unseen, wasn't she?
And somehow in a position a ranger would have shaved his beard for. Below her the army spread out like mold- rings and clusters of stormvermin around the lesser scientists and their own personal twists on rat ogres, blotchy churning crowds of clanrats, and the occasional raised vein of a ratipede loaded with soldiers. All of it rising from a slime of skavenslaves, and all of it focused (at least a little bit, while treachery in the lower ranks would be regarded as stepping on the leader's big moment) upon a skaven mounted on a mutated travesty of a spider.
"Listen-hear! I, Zrek, Master of the Doctors and of ALL Moulder here, will now speak-tell of my victory!"
The skaven was tall, swathed in red robes over brass chainmail, his snout host to a half-dozen lenses on frames and his belts heavy with vials of sickly glowing concoctions. He gestured with a staff of solid gold (the weight and momentum unmistakable to a dwarf, even at a distance) as he spoke.
"Now, then. $_ _& +& $ Spider-things, _& ##+
_# @ &( -....."
He drifted into what she thought was high queekish, for it kept the well-fed riveted as the starved began to murmur amongst themselves. Her eyes drifted to the gold staff- obviously nekeharian work, probably from the fifth dynasty- and widened as her tired mind put all the pieces together. The Tomb King. The mention of the We. The insertion of a force under Karagil. Now, she just had to hope her instincts were right…
"And finally, the honor-glory of the vanguard! While those already assigned-detailed shall dig tunnels to escape with spider-things, My apprentice-pupil Snarll shall take command of the 14th, 15th, the Seventh Chaff Corp, and a Stormvermin bodyguard detail to pressure-bottle the dwarves at their gate. Move swift-slow, to reach them then keep them on the defensive. I will follow with heavier elements soon after. Go-run!"
And with a dramatic flourish, he pointed the staff. A minor skaven in a small cluster began bellowing in desperation and self-importance, kicking at the clanrats around him as a pair of storm vermin made their way to him and began enforcing his orders.
Darna's eyes narrowed. She wouldn't dream of trying to read a being as treacherous as a Master Moulder, but… There. The phalanx of stormvermin that the bodyguards had come from was smirking in their direction. And as the mass began to move out, their new commander at their head, the Master Moulder turned his back and began making his way in the opposite direction.
She was right. Probably. The Master Moulder had just betrayed his newest commander, which meant that he was never intended as the vanguard, only a distraction. The presence of the tomb-king artifact could only mean that the siege of the Karak itself was a distraction, an opening gambit. The spider-things must be the We; she shuddered to think of the things clan Moulder might be able to twist a hive-mind into, especially one with decades of knowledge from the University to draw from. Perhaps the skaven even thought the We were unique simply because there were no other colonies that spoke? The lack of watchposts behind the host meant that retreat through the tunnels hinted at was never the plan, and that likely meant he was lying, and the tunnels would be where the true *attack* would strike.
She hesitated just a moment, watching the leader disappear on his rat-spider monstrosity, then turned to sneak after the distractionary force. The wounded We in her pack spun rope and blobs of sticky strands for her to throw, letting her move through the strange hanging masses of stone without using the skaven-roads, and she wondered if it understood enough to be worried for the fate of its nestmates.
She hoped she would find dwarves before she had to fight skaven.
Part 5:
(Several days prior)
Darna moved quietly across the rock face, being careful to touch only the crude spikes that held the guide line; better a stretch than to use the cable itself and risk squeak of metal on metal as it shifted.
There were rats about.
Three times in perhaps the last hour she had seen groups in the low dozens scramble along the almost-paths, though she could see no reason for them not to just march as one proper column. It scratched at the back of her mind. Perhaps they were hiding their numbers? Perhaps they expected another enemy in the darkness?
The injured We clung to her back, half tucked into her pack. Her mostly empty pack- with her patrol guarding the depths of a friendly Karak, it meant that only a week or so worth of stonebread and water had been packed on top of a stripped down kit: no engineering gear, no mining gear, not even a coil of rope.
She was worried about the we- she had bound the injuries with silk cord and dwarven cloth as best she could. But while the ichor had stopped leaking, she had only been able to feed a small amount of water to it in the day since she had hauled herself out of its lifesaving web. It still twitched its polyps occasionally, so she took some comfort from that. Water wasn't enough to keep it alive, she knew, but as long as it was still moving she held out hope of getting it back close enough to echo into the Karak.
Unfortunately, her luck was not cooperating. She had very little idea which way the Karak as a whole was, and had lost sight of the lit gate back into Karak Lhune in her rush to avoid the main skaven column she had almost fallen into. At the moment, she was following the latest band of rats in the hope that they were at least headed somewhere with a recognizable landmark. This competed with the fear that they were merely headed back to their main army, and her indecision slowed her feet almost as much as her efforts at stealth.
Efforts, she suddenly realized as she approached a hairpin turn, that were very much NOT academic any more.
"...yes, yes, Skreetch is quite clever-smart! Snarll is blind-fool, to leave our paths unguarded, and so we must stay-watch!"
"Yes-yes, a watchpost here! No more following that weak-soft fool. And of course the strongest rat here shall lead-command, yes? Now! First we shall-"
As Darna eased closer, straining her ears and her memories of old lessons in low queekish, there was a sudden gurgle, quickly fading.
"Foolish Skreetch, trying to use-exploit me? Thought you could bluff-win a watch Sargeant's rank from being lazy-slow? You were right though, Skreetch, and Snarll-"
Darna had heard enough, and it sounded as though there were only two. More importantly, Darna was close enough and one was busy noisily dying. She rushed around the corner, took in the clanrat toying with a dagger above the writhing body of it's companion with a quick glance, and buried her ax between it's shoulder blades.
It squeaked, softly, and keeled over. The other appeared to be in the terminal stages of a poisoning, she dismissed it from her mind. At least, she thought as she pulled off her pack and slumped against the Rock face to let the adrenaline crash fade from her system, the rats weren't worried about their band coming back soon.
She let herself close her eyes and take seven long, measured breaths, as close as a dwarf in hostile territory would ever allow themselves to get to a cat nap. Bolstered, she stood to collect her gear, and discovered that the We had dragged itself out of her pack, leaving a damp streak of ichor as it struggled to mount the corpses, before mostly giving up and sinking its fangs into a meaty thigh.
"I guess we can stay for a few more minutes," she said, chuckling. A few minutes later, after pulling out some stonebread and gnawing on it a while, she began chuckling again. The We, fangs still sunk deep in the dead rat, was spinning out threads of web.
"I guess you do remember. Food for silk, huh? Suppose it is about as basic a things as any… Thanks. I can use this."
___________________
Three days later she was no closer to finding a way out. The strategy of following the small bands of skaven that tricked through the cave maze paid off, in part, along with her newly made rope, but only in so far as she was now perched precariously above one of the few large flat areas she had seen, out of sight of both the army gathered below and the outer cordon of quiet rats with good eyes and jezerails protecting it.
She hadn't meant to be here. She really, really hadn't. But when two patrols had been coming from opposite directions and her only choice of remaining unseen was to use her hand-axe and silk rope as an improvised grappling hook- well, she was still alive and unseen, wasn't she?
And somehow in a position a ranger would have shaved his beard for. Below her the army spread out like mold- rings and clusters of stormvermin around the lesser scientists and their own personal twists on rat ogres, blotchy churning crowds of clanrats, and the occasional raised vein of a ratipede loaded with soldiers. All of it rising from a slime of skavenslaves, and all of it focused (at least a little bit, while treachery in the lower ranks would be regarded as stepping on the leader's big moment) upon a skaven mounted on a mutated travesty of a spider.
"Listen-hear! I, Zrek, Master of the Doctors and of ALL Moulder here, will now speak-tell of my victory!"
The skaven was tall, swathed in red robes over brass chainmail, his snout host to a half-dozen lenses on frames and his belts heavy with vials of sickly glowing concoctions. He gestured with a staff of solid gold (the weight and momentum unmistakable to a dwarf, even at a distance) as he spoke.
"Now, then. $_ _& +& $ Spider-things, _& ##+
_# @ &( -....."He drifted into what she thought was high queekish, for it kept the well-fed riveted as the starved began to murmur amongst themselves. Her eyes drifted to the gold staff- obviously nekeharian work, probably from the fifth dynasty- and widened as her tired mind put all the pieces together. The Tomb King. The mention of the We. The insertion of a force under Karagil. Now, she just had to hope her instincts were right…
"And finally, the honor-glory of the vanguard! While those already assigned-detailed shall dig tunnels to escape with spider-things, My apprentice-pupil Snarll shall take command of the 14th, 15th, the Seventh Chaff Corp, and a Stormvermin bodyguard detail to pressure-bottle the dwarves at their gate. Move swift-slow, to reach them then keep them on the defensive. I will follow with heavier elements soon after. Go-run!"
And with a dramatic flourish, he pointed the staff. A minor skaven in a small cluster began bellowing in desperation and self-importance, kicking at the clanrats around him as a pair of storm vermin made their way to him and began enforcing his orders.
Darna's eyes narrowed. She wouldn't dream of trying to read a being as treacherous as a Master Moulder, but… There. The phalanx of stormvermin that the bodyguards had come from was smirking in their direction. And as the mass began to move out, their new commander at their head, the Master Moulder turned his back and began making his way in the opposite direction.
She was right. Probably. The Master Moulder had just betrayed his newest commander, which meant that he was never intended as the vanguard, only a distraction. The presence of the tomb-king artifact could only mean that the siege of the Karak itself was a distraction, an opening gambit. The spider-things must be the We; she shuddered to think of the things clan Moulder might be able to twist a hive-mind into, especially one with decades of knowledge from the University to draw from. Perhaps the skaven even thought the We were unique simply because there were no other colonies that spoke? The lack of watchposts behind the host meant that retreat through the tunnels hinted at was never the plan, and that likely meant he was lying, and the tunnels would be where the true *attack* would strike.
She hesitated just a moment, watching the leader disappear on his rat-spider monstrosity, then turned to sneak after the distractionary force. The wounded We in her pack spun rope and blobs of sticky strands for her to throw, letting her move through the strange hanging masses of stone without using the skaven-roads, and she wondered if it understood enough to be worried for the fate of its nestmates.
She hoped she would find dwarves before she had to fight skaven.
Last edited:
- Location
- being near locations is my passion.
His sacrifice is everyone's loss :'(
- Location
- being near locations is my passion.
As someone who actually does not want Mathilde to rise any higher in the College's hierarchy, I am keeping this in my back pocket in case there ever comes a time where being promoted further is a genuine risk.
I mean, think about it. What is more meaningful?
Alegard who understands spycraft and magic better than Mathilde does saying "you handled this problem really well" and reaches his hand out to gently boop her on the head a few times, or some rando Emperor who only has their job 'cuz of some accident of birth and a bit of politicking[1] and has no understanding of how a given task was, or much of what it involved, or how to do it; saying "ah, glad that's not a problem any more, keep it up."
Kinda like how I imagine working in the IT department of a big organisation might be like. Praise from those who understand what challenges you faced is more meaningful than praise from those who do not.
[1] Aleagrd also does politicking a bit of course, but like... he also has unarguable merit too.
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deathofrats0808
Don’t think of it as dying; just as leaving early
- Location
- Earth
You misspelt Algard's name a couple times. Just an FYI.
- Location
- Europa, Jupiter Orbit
You mean, like, essentially an upgrade to the Collegiate trait?
Greys still have the practical requirements of needing Lord Magisters they can trust to be read into and handle highly sensitive matters. And while you can give such concerns to Magisters in a pinch, repeatedly sending a Magister to do a Lord Magister's job is highly likely to result in resentment and disloyalty.
Tldr - Grey College must be generous with headpats to those who perform well, as one of their few restraints on incredibly independent agents is headpat addiction.
Top. Wizards.
- Location
- Canada
- Location
- Europa, Jupiter Orbit
If LM Grey and LM Kupfer aren't secretly The Librarian and The Dean then there's two very important top level jobs under Algard that are done by "mere" Magisters. And then there's four more quite important jobs on the org chart plus the Hands of Algard.
One of the first things Algard ever said to us is that Grey Magisters shouldn't ever expect much in the ways of headpats.
Artificial headpat scarcity maximizes the effect per dose!
- Location
- Earth
Seems fine either way. TIL distractionary is a word
it's --> its
It's is a contraction of it is, while its is the possessive form of it.
has --> had
Everything else in the paragraph is in past tense, so has should be past too.
though --> thought
it's --> its
murmer --> murmur
seige --> siege
it's --> its