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Warhammer Fantasy: Divided Loyalties - an Advisor's Quest

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SuperSonicSound said:
There's plenty of other reasons the colleges are bad but his argument is a holistic one and so trying to break it down to constituent parts loses the greater picture, for what it's worth theres a fair amount to suggest that ultimately the elves did half ass teaching the humans in the end mostly because they were rushed but also because they were pretty arrogant and thought humans weren't really capable of much. The fact that examples like Fozzrik exist suggest that humans ultimately are more capable than given credit for and one of the bigger issues with the colleges is that it promotes stagnancy. The monofocus winds of magic is undoubtedly safer but it does mean that exceptional human wizards are going to be trapped in one wind and you'll never get human mage equivalents to Sigmar ever again.
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Well, to be fair Fozzrik might have been a renegade sea/high/wood elf mage running around the Old World Asarnil-style. I don't think there's anything that says that he was a human. Other sources we have say that it's literally impossible for the human mind to cast high magic because it can't hold eight distinct and in some cases contradictory trains of thought and emotional states simultaneously in the way an elven mind can. Him being human does have a lot of unanswered questions, such as who taught him and where.

Wind monofocus has enabled humans to do things that elves can't do/haven't been interested in. Chamon based magical alchemy is something that the elves never came up with. I think the various ascension processes are similar. I think that no high elf is as good with Shyish as Elsbeth Von Draken, and she's less than two centuries old. The Colleges are also continuously researching and extending their knowledge. They're dynamic institutions, as shown by Mathilde's patriarch being a magical research specialist. In some ways they're lucky that the elves taught them the basic principles and then left them to develop it themselves. It's forced them to be innovative rather than stagnant.
 
Alratan said:
Well, to be fair Fozzrik might have been a renegade sea/high/wood elf mage running around the Old World Asarnil-style. I don't think there's anything that says that he was a human. Other sources we have say that it's literally impossible for the human mind to cast high magic because it can't hold eight distinct and in some cases contradictory trains of thought and emotional states simultaneously in the way an elven mind can. Him being human does have a lot of unanswered questions, such as who taught him and where.

Wind monofocus has enabled humans to do things that elves can't do/haven't been interested in. Chamon based magical alchemy is something that the elves never came up with. I think the various ascension processes are similar. I think that no high elf is as good with Shyish as Elsbeth Von Draken, and she's less than two centuries old. The Colleges are also continuously researching and extending their knowledge. They're dynamic institutions, as shown by Mathilde's patriarch being a magical research specialist. In some ways they're lucky that the elves taught them the basic principles and then left them to develop it themselves. It's forced them to be innovative rather than stagnant.
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Eh, I bet some of it was reinventing the wheel too.
It's just that elves probably don't have time to do more; they basically never have enough time to do stuff, what with trying to keep the world going while fighting Druchii and maintaining Vortex.
 
SuperSonicSound said:
You can thank the earlier editions of TT for this but they weren't completely untrained, wizards pre-Teclis in the empire followed a different tradition of elementalism, assuming you weren't part of the druidic cabal and their magic was actually relatively stable it just wasn't nearly as suited for battle magic. Granted thats 1e RP doing some synthesis on the original Warhammer TT which didn't even have colour magic.
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Well, the pre-Teclis druids were priests not wizards. I don't even think they were sorcerers.

Elementalists were allegedly a school of hedge wizardry, so were either unknowingly using Dark Magic and contaminating everything around them, or they were using Earthbound magic in a form of proto-alchemy.
SuperSonicSound said:
You can easily frame it as a hostage situation though, because mages being hated is intentional it's fostered by the religious orders which have enormous influence and actual political power which the colleges of magic explicitly don't. The Grand patriarch of the Colleges doesn't have a seat at the Elector counts table but the Ar-Ulric and Three of the priests of Sigmar do.
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Remember that the Cults were the only legitimate source of magic pre-Teclis. The Colleges broke their monopoly. Even without the history of suddenly daemons and armies of the walking dead being the standard associations of arcane magic for the entirity of human
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TalonofAnathrax said:
The Church is an Imperial institution. It trains priests and sends them out everywhere, and these priests shape society deeply. Indeed, the hatred for witches is often based on religion as much as anything, and the main faiths of the Empire preach against witches.

I'm not expecting the Emperor to make progress by using bureaucrats. I'm expecting him to make progress with priests.
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The Cult of Sigmar isn't an Imperial institution though. It's fully independent. It's actually more the other way around, with the Cult leadership being one of the people that decides what the Emperor is allowed to do.

DragonParadox said:
And when would that be? When she was a child before she was almost burned at the stake, that childhood 'crime' done in ignorance deserves being bound to serve the empire for the rest of her life under pain of death?
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This isn't a question of moral guilt, but practicality. Wizards are incredibly dangerous, walking doors to literal Hell. Wizards that can't learn to control their powers are too dangerous to be allowed out. That's why the Colleges have perpetual apprentices who can't leave the Colleges, because they never learn the discipline not to accidentally use magic or to be able to restrict themselves to one Wind. They can only live inside the artificially created mono-Wind environment of the Colleges. Otherwise they're doomed to Dhar corruption and insanity and will become a terrible danger to everyone around them. You have others who learn the discipline not to cast, but can't learn how to only use one Wind, who also stay perpetual apprentices, but are allowed out of the Colleges to make their own lives under College supervision (and employment to make sure they don't get desperate and try to use magic).

The Grey College does have particularly stringent restrictions on its Journeymen and Magisters, but that's because it's hilariously exploitable.
 
Alratan said:
This isn't a question of moral guilt, but practicality. Wizards are incredibly dangerous, walking doors to literal Hell. Wizards that can't learn to control their powers are too dangerous to be allowed out. That's why the Colleges have perpetual apprentices who can't leave the Colleges, because they never learn the discipline not to accidentally use magic or to be able to restrict themselves to one Wind. They can only live inside the artificially created mono-Wind environment of the Colleges. Otherwise they're doomed to Dhar corruption and insanity and will become a terrible danger to everyone around them. You have others who learn the discipline not to cast, but can't learn how to only use one Wind, who also stay perpetual apprentices, but are allowed out of the Colleges to make their own lives under College supervision (and employment to make sure they don't get desperate and try to use magic).

The Grey College does have particularly stringent restrictions on its Journeymen and Magisters, but that's because it's hilariously exploitable.
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I'm not making a practical argument. Who Mathilde trusts in her moment of need should be based on who actually trated her fairly from a moral point of view, not what was institutionally practical. The second option would be de-humanizing herself.
 
Alratan said:
Well, to be fair Fozzrik might have been a renegade sea/high/wood elf mage running around the Old World Asarnil-style. I don't think there's anything that says that he was a human. Other sources we have say that it's literally impossible for the human mind to cast high magic because it can't hold eight distinct and in some cases contradictory trains of thought and emotional states simultaneously in the way an elven mind can. Him being human does have a lot of unanswered questions, such as who taught him and where.

Wind monofocus has enabled humans to do things that elves can't do/haven't been interested in. Chamon based magical alchemy is something that the elves never came up with. I think the various ascension processes are similar. I think that no high elf is as good with Shyish as Elsbeth Von Draken, and she's less than two centuries old. The Colleges are also continuously researching and extending their knowledge. They're dynamic institutions, as shown by Mathilde's patriarch being a magical research specialist. In some ways they're lucky that the elves taught them the basic principles and then left them to develop it themselves. It's forced them to be innovative rather than stagnant.
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Elsbeth isnt playing warhammer, shes playing Munchkin.
 
[X] You are a faithful of Ranald, being in the right place at the right time to unbalance the scales. Try to steal the energies.
I want it. I want the shiny magic.
 
TalonofAnathrax said:
The Church is an Imperial institution. It trains priests and sends them out everywhere, and these priests shape society deeply. Indeed, the hatred for witches is often based on religion as much as anything, and the main faiths of the Empire preach against witches.

I'm not expecting the Emperor to make progress by using bureaucrats. I'm expecting him to make progress with priests.
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The Churches are nowhere near as monolithic or centralized as you seem to believe. The priests are not all being trained in academies under strict control of the Grand Theogonist and other church leaders, most of them are simply being apprenticed by the priests that are already serving in their settlements, and even then there's not enough priests for every village. So any theological change, especially one such controversial as changing opinions on magic, is slow to spread. It ends up much as the secular knowledge, the cities and generally more developed provinces get figurative updated versions of the holy books, and so preach a more accepting view on wizards, while backwater villages and provinces don't, or simply refuse to change, and are not important enough to be made to.
 
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DragonParadox said:
I'm not making a practical argument. Who Mathilde trusts in her moment of need should be based on who actually trated her fairly from a moral point of view, not what was institutionally practical. The second option would be de-humanizing herself.
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The Colleges have, within the bounds of practicality, done their absolute best for Mathilde. She was born a peasant, but now has a senior noble rank within the Empire and is astonishingly wealthy. She was also doomed to insanity and mutation if the College hadn't stepped in. It did, and taught her how to turn a congenital curse into a blessing, teaching her the secrets of magic. She also had the chance to quit. Once she learned how to not cast magic, she didn't have to become a Journeyman. She could have stayed a perpetual apprentice and let the College find her a civilian job. She'd still be expected to be in the Colleges' employ, but she's not forced to use magic or endanger herself. That's quite reasonable. Potential wizards need close supervision, in case they relapse or go bad, as if you detect them going corrupt to late, things can go very bad.

What else should the Grey College have done for her?

Awetduck said:
Elsbeth isnt playing warhammer, shes playing Munchkin.
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Where Mathilde has snake juice, Elsbeth has the ashes of a dead god and has learned how to use them, at least making an enchanted item using them, and quite probably using it to fuel her ascension. It's looks a lot like she's developed her own not-necromancy, using Shyish to manipulate the undifferentiated divine energy of the ashes. That's because she's somehow used the Wind of Endings to make herself immortal, which is something that it shouldn't really be able to do.
 
Alratan said:
The Colleges have, within the bounds of practicality, done their absolute best for Mathilde. She was born a peasant, but now has a senior noble rank within the Empire and is astonishingly wealthy. She was also doomed to insanity and mutation if the College hadn't stepped in. It did, and taught her how to turn a congenital curse into a blessing, teaching her the secrets of magic. She also had the chance to quit. Once she learned how to not cast magic, she didn't have to become a Journeyman. She could have stayed a perpetual apprentice and let the College find her a civilian job. She'd still be expected to be in the Colleges' employ, but she's not forced to use magic or endanger herself. That's quite reasonable. Potential wizards need close supervision, in case they relapse or go bad, as if you detect them going corrupt to late, things can go very bad.

What else should the Grey College have done for her?
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Two things off the top of my head:
  1. Not bind her on pain of death to serve the empire for a vow made as a child (which she had no choice it making).
  2. Not take away Krag's rune should we show it to them (which we have GM confirmation is the best case scenario even though that would make her less safe to be around).
 
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[X] You are a faithful of Ranald, being in the right place at the right time to unbalance the scales. Try to steal the energies.
[X] You are the justice of Mork, delivering swift death upon the heresy of Only Gork. Try to accept the energies.
Both of these sound cool.
EDIT: Changed vote.
 
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EVA-Saiyajin said:
Please, please, PLEASE tell me you have good logic behind Ranald people. I'm as much for an awesome accomplishment as anyone else but I don't want to needlessly die for it.
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I mean, given how nebulous all the options are and the vague consequences the only thing we can be really certain of is the mindset of each choice.

And frankly, that fits Ranald more than anything else. Mathilde genuinely likes to play the odds, to embrace the sort of bravery that insists you never tell her the odds. And all the other choices don't really have the same gravitas to them yet.

Mathilde's spent what- nearly 8 years outside the culture and organization of the Grey Order? Wherein she was always a bit different and has no real connections besides her master and the Patriarch? Is she a magister before she's an adventurous soul willing to play the odds and try and spin a situation to her advantage? Or are the two mindsets inextricably linked for her? I can't imagine she was a devou follower of Ranald prior to being inducted. And personally? It seems emblematic of how Mathilde takes what other deems a curse, cost her her family, and could very well kill her and builds it into her own identity, something she considers a fundamental part of herself.

As for the other options, the only other one I really consider of merit is the Dwarf-Friend one, and I'm not really sure Mathilde is really consciously aware of how many ties she's forged amongst them and how well regarded she is compared to any other human. Has the fact she has people she can potentially rely on that much here really set in? That she is so honored she wears what the Dwarfs would consider a vital part of their collective heritage because that's how much they valued her help?
 
So that Johann guy right? He's pretty cool.

I like that Mathilde is all paranoid over him, probably just because he's the first wizard she's met outside the Grey College that has a diplomacy higher than eight. She finally meets a wizard who isn't a massive dork, or a weirdo, or an asshole and she immediately becomes suspicious.

In my books a charming wizard who wants to introduce lightning cannons and Gatling guns into the Empire is definitely a cool guy.
He's almost certainly going to grab whatever dwarf secrets he can get his grubby mitts on of course but that's just standard Gold Wizard operation procedure. If he wasn't greedy for dwarf engineering and metallurgy he wouldn't have become a Gold Wizard in the first place. As long as he's not dumb enough to actually write the stuff down anywhere though it should be fine.
 
DragonParadox said:
  1. Not bind her on pain of death to serve the empire for a vow made as a child (which she had no choice it making).
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Imperial service is only mandatory for Magisters, afaik.


DragonParadox said:
  1. Not take away Krag's rune should we show it to them (which we have GM confirmation is the best case scenario even though that would make her less safe to be around).
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Huh, I don't remember this. Can you find a quote for context?
 
Karugus said:
As for the other options, the only other one I really consider of merit is the Dwarf-Friend one, and I'm not really sure Mathilde is really consciously aware of how many ties she's forged amongst them and how well regarded she is compared to any other human. Has the fact she has people she can potentially rely on that much here really set in? That she is so honored she wears what the Dwarfs would consider a vital part of their collective heritage because that's how much they valued her help?
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I mean, I guess this vote determines that, in part: whether it has set in yet. Mind, Belegar explicitly told her that she always has a home here, so I imagine that at least to some degree she begins to realize that.

Then again, it may well transform the environment into Seven-and-a-Half-Peaks, or at least gonna do something spectacular to the peak, and there are Rangers there whom we do not want to burn to crisp with the feedback...
 
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