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Warhammer Fantasy: Divided Loyalties - an Advisor's Quest

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BoneyM said:
The idea was to make Wizards essentially vassals to their Orders, thus preventing them from founding businesses or accumulating huge amounts of property as individuals, in order to assuage the concerns of burghers. This kind of backfired in that there's nothing stopping Wizards from doing so while still being a part of their Orders, as demonstrated by the Gold Order competing with and eventual acquiring the Alchemists Guild of Middenheim. All it really did was made sure that Wizards are legally prevented from fracturing into competing business interests.

This is also the legal framework the Orders use to extract the tithe from its members.
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It's almost like knee-jerk attempts at maintaining the status quo are not the most foresighted of policies. :V

Like seriously I think that Teclis at least with his experience of both the vast trading empire of the High Elves and the mature magical tradition might have been laughing behind his hand at the whole thing.
 
The inherent fightiness of the setting combined with the requirement for military service and the general dangerousness of playing with warpstuff probably limits the amount of dynasty-building that can happen for any one line of wizards. Especially as magical ability and specific-wind affinity isn't perfectly inheritable.

Sooner or later the line dies off and their assets return to the college, or the survivors are mundanes with no inherent advantage over the other burghers.
 
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Gavin Prince said:
The inherent fightiness of the setting combined with the requirement for military service and the general dangerousness of playing with warpstuff probably limits the amount of dynasty-building that can happen for any one line of wizards. Especially as magical ability and specific-wind affinity isn't perfectly inheritable.

Sooner or later the line dies off and their assets return to the college, or the survivors are mundanes with no inherent advantage over the other burghers.
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Adoption obviates both to an extent, not all mages have children, but many more of them have apprentices.
 
I'd not be surprised if the effects Altdorf is seeing from Ghur are a bit more pronounced than they would see from other winds, due to precisely which wind it is.

Its the wind of the wild- the least likely wind to find in the middle of one of the largest cities in the world, under normal circumstances. There's a reason the Ambers do most of their training well outside the city.

You'd definitely still see effects from the other winds, they just might not be quite so obvious.
 
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GrimTheMad said:
I'd not be surprised if the effects Altdorf is seeing from Ghur are a bit more pronounced than they would see from other winds, due to precisely which wind it is.

Its the wind of the wild- the least likely wind to find in the middle of one of the largest cities in the world, under normal circumstances. There's a reason the Ambers do most of their training well outside the city.

You'd definitely still see effects from the other winds, they just might not be quite so obvious.
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It's also the only wind to run in Altdorf for 24 consecutive years, as even Alric spread his terms out over time periods instead of having his terms one after the other. Dragomas has covered the city in Ghur for a very long time.
 
While I agree that Ghur in a city likely does odd things I do not think we should get too stuck on the idea that it is impossible for a Wind to be more bad than good for the city. I mean it was designed by Teclis an elf, who did not really have a solid idea for how long term Wind exposure would impact mundane humans. That is not throwing shade at Teclis mind, he just would not have had any place to find that out since no such experiment was ever performed. Under those conditions it is entirely possible that Ulgu over a period of years helps criminals and cults more than it does those trying to find them.
 
DragonParadox said:
Adoption obviates both to an extent, not all mages have children, but many more of them have apprentices.
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Allowing adoption completely transforms the concept of what a dynasty is for everyone, not just wizards, particularly allowing adoption without it just meaning that a man marrying in takes their superior status wife's family name.

Allowing aristocrats to adopt to continue the family both changes the meaning of family, the legitimacy of hereditary, and several other things on a way that mean that society would work very differently to late European feudalism that the Empire is superficially modelled on. Basically, dynasties don't die out except for during local apocalypses, and rather than one dynasty replacing another you keep the same dynasty name and have people adopted as a continuation of the previous one to maintain legitimacy. Even if that adoption happens with a sword to the throat of the previous head of the family, and is immediately followed by that head being chopped off.

As one small example, guilds and trade families are likely to be much more persistent, as promising apprentices can be adopted into the family.

It might be a partial explanation for why the Empire is as socially/culturally stable as it is despite being on a death world.
 
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DragonParadox said:
While I agree that Ghur in a city likely does odd things I do not think we should get too stuck on the idea that it is impossible for a Wind to be more bad than good for the city. I mean it was designed by Teclis an elf, who did not really have a solid idea for how long term Wind exposure would impact mundane humans. That is not throwing shade at Teclis mind, he just would not have had any place to find that out since no such experiment was ever performed. Under those conditions it is entirely possible that Ulgu over a period of years helps criminals and cults more than it does those trying to find them.
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I think....

If we manage to copy, even a bit, the waystone ability to manipulate wind and dispose Dhar, someone down the line will try to do just that with city design.

Its like western feng sui, with wind of magic and city planning to disperse dhar and channel wind to its respective Order.
 
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B_omega said:
I think....

If we manage to copy, even a bit, the waystone ability to manipulate wind and dispose Dhar, someone down the line will try to do just that with city design.

Its like western feng sui, with wind of magic and city planning to disperse dhar and channel wind to its respective Order.
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It would have to be very down the line. Even with a freshly-victorious Magnus the Pious saying it had to happen, it took a rather heavy hand to get Altdorf to stop rioting over the presence of magic.
 
How easy would it be to build a waystone in the middle of a major city with nobody noticing? :V
I mean, people won't riot over what they don't know about. :whistle:
 
Valmond said:
How easy would it be to build a waystone in the middle of a major city with nobody noticing? :V
I mean, people won't riot over what they don't know about. :whistle:
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I like movies about secret society and how they manage to covertly manipulate city design so someone with a mytic knowledge might find hidden messages.

Da vinci code, or a better movie is Sherlock Holmes, where the villain use 'magic' to make ritual killing representing lion, eagle, bull etc.

Sooo, a hidden in plainsight statue of sigmar made from golden paint and design to channel the wind to the gold collage or a cupid made of ivory to channel spesific wind, or some plain houses containing pillars design in such a way that when look from an angle, will neutralize dhar.

Hey, i mean, people go gaga when they discover freemason symbol in their basement or wall.


Again.. who said the 'mundanes' have a say in this long term project of wizzards and lets do them anyway.
 
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