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Warhammer Fantasy: Divided Loyalties - an Advisor's Quest

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Akasha said:
Let's not forget that Mathilde, from an outside point of view, is as Ulrican as a Grey Wizard can be, without wielding actual Ulrican relics or symbols and preaching the word of Ulric. She's a Grey Wizard who appears to subscribe to the Malfean School of Stealth, wields a giant fucking Runic Greatsword roughly her size, prefers to charge into pitched melee over casting from distance and challenges everything she stumbles on, including empowered Khornate Champions, Great Daemons, Vampires and actual armies. Usually in melee.

If I had access to even half of this knowledge and sensed divinity from Mathilde, I'd assume she is Ulrican or Sigmarite myself, and anything I sense that contradicts this assumption is interference from the spooky shadow magics in her soul. You know, like that Sigmarite Wizard who scouted us out a while back and immediately assumed we're a faithful devotee of Sigmar. The last thing I'd expect is someone like Mathilde being a freaking Ranaldian.
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To be honest, from an outside point of view, Mathilde looks like she is a very pious follower of several gods: Sigmar, Ulric, Verena and Ranald all look possible, considering our actions. Even Morr, Shayla and Myrmydia get some strong offerings, although at least it is obvious they ain't our primary.

Mathilde Empire god Everchosen is getting less unfeasible by the update.
 
Mathy would look Sigmarite at a glance, but it's not hard to find out she is a worshiper of the gambler.

(that she is also a worshiper of the other 3 aspects is a bit more hidden.)
 
DragonParadox said:
It should be noted that even our Volans grade mage sight is not enough to recognize any approved god, only the ones we are familiar with like Ranald, Morr and maybe Mork. Even assuming the Al Ulric had mage-sight as good as ours where would he have gotten significant familiarity with Ranald?
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Does the Ar-Ulrik knows she's Ranaldian? Maybe he simply saw divine energy on her without identifying it?
 
Jyn Ryvia said:
Mathy would look Sigmarite at a glance, but it's not hard to find out she is a worshiper of the gambler.

(that she is also a worshiper of the other 3 aspects is a bit more hidden.)
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I think most people would assume that Mathilde favours the Protector over the Gambler, whilst leaning into Deceiver and Night Prowler due to her role as a Grey Wizard, even if both the thread and Mathlide actually favour the aspect of the Gambler the most.

Which is just another layer of Mathilde's cloak and dagger mystery—even those who know we worship Ranald are likely to be mistaken about which face we worship; after all, we're supposed to be a sneaky assassin who manipulates everyone into the perfect position, but nope, we just blunder from one crit to the next.

That said, Ranald (probably) isn't four gods in a trenchcoat, you can't have the one aspect without the other three, although the Gambler is how Ranald often presents himself to us.
 
Akasha said:
Let's not forget that Mathilde, from an outside point of view, is as Ulrican as a Grey Wizard can be, without wielding actual Ulrican relics or symbols and preaching the word of Ulric. She's a Grey Wizard who appears to subscribe to the Malfean School of Stealth, wields a giant fucking Runic Greatsword roughly her size, prefers to charge into pitched melee over casting from distance and challenges everything she stumbles on, including empowered Khornate Champions, Great Daemons, Vampires and actual armies. Usually in melee.
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You forgot the GIANT FUCK OFF WOLF SHE HAS. So yea, that's a thing.
 
Jyn Ryvia said:
Considering how up in the air the actual theological mechanics of this quest is, Ranald actually being three gods working together would explain why he is the only aspected god in the setting.
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Many gods have aspects, they just don't shine forth as prominently as Ranald's (especially within this quest) - for instance Morr is both the God of Dreams and the God of the Afterlife, while Manann is both Father of Storms and Lord of Journeys.
 
Valmond said:
Ranald may be lot more than just 4 gods in a trenchcoat if they really are the Dancer and that other dude we saw in that coin.
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Do you mean Qu'aph, the Hooded Snake from the Nehekharan coins? Because I'd almost forgotten that.

Jyn Ryvia said:
Considering how up in the air the actual theological mechanics of this quest is, Ranald actually being three gods working together would explain why he is the only aspected god in the setting.
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That's... huh. Most gods tend to have a few overlapping domains (death and prophecy, or winter and battle, for example), but Ranald is explicitly described as having four different faces. You wouldn't draw a line between "Ulric, God of Wolves" and "Ulric, god of Battles" but you would draw a line between "Ranald the Protector" and "Ranald the Gambler". Even Ranald's own priests say as much. "The Deceiver and the Night Prowler, hand in hand".
 
Valmond said:
Yes, and dancer, Loec added to the pile and Ranald might be 6 gods in a trenchcoat.
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Honestly, more gods are like this thought, so i do not feel it is fitting to really add this to comparison. We think that Kurnous might be an aspect of Taal (and vice versa, to not insult the elves :V), Khaine of elves and Khaine of humans is actually a rather different god, Manaan is somewhat different across the species also.
 
kingreaper said:
Many gods have aspects, they just don't shine forth as prominently as Ranald's (especially within this quest) - for instance Morr is both the God of Dreams and the God of the Afterlife, while Manann is both Father of Storms and Lord of Journeys.
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But Ranald is the only one in the RPG that is explicitly slit into four, rather then having dominion over four areas.

It's even point out as something that makes him different.
 
So, we know a few things about gods.

We know they can look roughly like very large humans, in terms of them having/being souls.

We know they are cohesive, self-contained personalities- we felt Mork's rage and disappointment with Gork, and saw Ranald grin at us.

We know their "power" is fungible between them, without physical anchor, and flavored by but not created of the self-contained personality, from the way we saw Ranald counting and assimilating Mork's energy. And since we know that divine is different from winds is different from waaagh at our layer of reality, the gods are playing with something else.

We know that they fight directly with each other, and when they do, our layer of reality is bent so that fight has personifications of that struggle. Not champions- the Wolf and Heidrich vs Stromfell's idol had an object on one side, but Wolf still got bisected by the echo of the godly fight.

We know that humans can become gods, from Sigmar and Ranald.

We know that there are cases where gods were assumed to be the same God under a different name, and weren't, from Deathfang about Isha and Rhya.

We know that sometimes domains change, with Ulric 'acquiring' wolves.

We know that sometimes gods DO use a different name while being the same god, from the hunter cult we just investigated and similar.

We know gods can die (if they get too involved in the world?) from Nekahara.

We don't know what gods are actually trying to accomplish, because it looks like it is oriented at their level of reality rather than ours.

We don't know where godly power comes from- hints exist that it is related to a combination of worshipers, domains, and direct challenges against other gods.

We don't know if the gods that grew up on this world while it was sheltered from chaos are of a different type than the (presumably?) Warp-originated chaos gods.

This might imply a 'home planet' for the chaos gods if not.

We don't know if familial relationships as evidenced by the god's personalities has anything to do with origin or the actual creation of new gods.



So yeah, seems like a weird mirror of people first abstracted to archetypes and then instantiated as individuals, except the causality in all directions is TBD and we don't know if they have their own win conditions seperate from us.
 
I would like to put forward my pet theory that there are actually several Sigmars running around pretending to be the same God and only one of them is so incompetent he deserves to be fired

out of a cannon.
 
And High Queen Khalida is just about an avatar of Asaph. Which makes at least two that are present enough to actively interact with the world.
 
Or perhaps the CGs are truly alien, the urges of species long forgotten barely contaminated enough by what was already present to seem native.
 
Asheram said:
Frankly wouldn't be surprised if the 4 were leftover scraps that accumulated while the other Gods formed. Raw desire without intent.
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It would make some sense, but we know that the Ruinous Powers existed prior to the colonisation of this world - they just existed elsewhere.

Might be that they're the leftovers of a million different worlds, all swirled together into a meaningless mash.
 
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