- Location
- Somewhere on Earth
Pretty sure the We idea of cuddles looks closer to heavy bondage. Also they're probably asexual.
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.
Not sure how to make that "am joking" smile on the phone, sorry
Raiseth
I Find Your Lack of Memes Disturbing
- Location
- Russia
Some people proselytize and make other people pray together with them for the same god. We call them solicitors.
Edit: shit, no, priests. That's the word I was looking for.
Sir_Travelsalot
Never wakes up tired.
- Location
- At Home
I'm ~90% sure that the We have mentioned eggs before, so aromantic, not asexual.
But then you get into the argument of 'what is morality?'
Is it immoral to worship Ulric when said worship is creating more winter storms when the worshiper and most of the population of the area believe 'if you die in the winter, you just were not strong enough?'
(It's weird to realise that Ulric is the god of the empire that doesn't mesh well with modern morals the most, most of the structures of the others are pretty ok when I looked for other examples of things that we would think bad but they dont... I wonder if its because the Unberogen were basically as Viking expy as the norscans, but without the Chaos worship. actually, I think its lore correct that some of the Norscans even worship Ulric instead/alongside the chaos gods)
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- Location
- Greece
I mean, it doesn't matter how small the prayer is compared to the whole, just how big it is compared to other men. If one can pray for 2 then they have 2 votes even if the gods get billion of votes to the point of not even registering the two.
It also changes stuff at scale: a man that prays for 100 may even be unnoticeable, but a small cult of such men will at least make a blip, so encouraging that may just be good business sense to increase profits.
It's not like huge companies rely on your purchases in particular, after all, but still, some go for scale, some go for a smaller crowd that will spent more and most want both because that would give more money to them. Gods seem more similar to that than politicians.
- Location
- Manchester, UK
- Pronouns
- He/They
Asexual reproduction doesn't mean no eggs, it just means no gene-swapping with others of your species is involved in the production of said eggs.
We've only ever seen a single We, so we don't know much of anything about their mating habits when there's other We involved.
- Location
- Somewhere on Earth
Asexual as in 'not attracted sexually to others'. To my knowledge the We doesn't, well, copulate to reproduce, so they're asexual by our standards.
Wasn't there the concept of Hunters wandering off and ending in another We?
Shard
One and Many
- Location
- Malaysia
Who knows the mechanism of worship -> godly power? Certainly the gods aren't spilling the exact details. Our level of knowledge here is something akin to Winds -> ??? -> Spell
- Pronouns
- They/Them
Also there's implications that different species produce different worship!
Discussion of the We:
The sexuality of the We is difficult to map onto terms developed to describe human sexuality. The way they ensure genetic diversity is they either deliberately exchange Web-Weavers with other We, or Hunters go rogue and wander around until they find another We and are absorbed into it. In either case sexual reproduction does occur but at that point the individual components involved are all part of the one We. At that point it wouldn't even be accurate to call it masturbation, it's just normal internal mechanisms that rarely require any actual conscious thought or emotional engagement, the way a human usually doesn't have to think about the day-to-day operation of their internal organs. Parthenogenesis or self-pollination might be the best description for it, but biology isn't my strong suit.
So a form of romance the We might recognize as such would be an extended mutual evaluation and then a mutual expression of interest, then an exchange of gifts, at which point the relationship is fulfilled and the two go their separate ways. You can adapt most of that quite easily into cultural terms we'd recognize - flirting, dating, and marriage. The only real sticking point is that We relationships end immediately after that final culmination, but the Karak's We has already recognized the possibility for peaceful and mutually beneficial prolonged relationships, so even that would not necessarily have been a sticking point. And the We could be considered asexual in the non-biological sense - their understanding of sex is as a means to an end performed by an individual, not as an act of intimacy between individuals.
The way most worship is they've got one god that they devote themselves to, just as most have one trade they devote themself to, and give deference to the other Gods only situationally. Everyone will pray to Rhya at a birth and Morr at a funeral, but the majority of their faith and prayer will be going to their chosen single deity. And I suppose you could go further and say that some people just vote and some people actively campaign and canvass for their God but really the metaphor starts to break down if you try to make it fit the fine details.
The sexuality of the We is difficult to map onto terms developed to describe human sexuality. The way they ensure genetic diversity is they either deliberately exchange Web-Weavers with other We, or Hunters go rogue and wander around until they find another We and are absorbed into it. In either case sexual reproduction does occur but at that point the individual components involved are all part of the one We. At that point it wouldn't even be accurate to call it masturbation, it's just normal internal mechanisms that rarely require any actual conscious thought or emotional engagement, the way a human usually doesn't have to think about the day-to-day operation of their internal organs. Parthenogenesis or self-pollination might be the best description for it, but biology isn't my strong suit.
So a form of romance the We might recognize as such would be an extended mutual evaluation and then a mutual expression of interest, then an exchange of gifts, at which point the relationship is fulfilled and the two go their separate ways. You can adapt most of that quite easily into cultural terms we'd recognize - flirting, dating, and marriage. The only real sticking point is that We relationships end immediately after that final culmination, but the Karak's We has already recognized the possibility for peaceful and mutually beneficial prolonged relationships, so even that would not necessarily have been a sticking point. And the We could be considered asexual in the non-biological sense - their understanding of sex is as a means to an end performed by an individual, not as an act of intimacy between individuals.
The way most worship is they've got one god that they devote themselves to, just as most have one trade they devote themself to, and give deference to the other Gods only situationally. Everyone will pray to Rhya at a birth and Morr at a funeral, but the majority of their faith and prayer will be going to their chosen single deity. And I suppose you could go further and say that some people just vote and some people actively campaign and canvass for their God but really the metaphor starts to break down if you try to make it fit the fine details.
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Given that happened the last time some gods were too free with both knowledge and power to their mortal worshipers. Mind that information might still exist in the minds of Necrarchs and Liche Priests and maybe even in their tomes of lore if we dare to look for it.
I'm going to agree, its going past the point of fair public space usage. (this is a shared thread, with people of a lot of different views, tolerances etc etc. its wrong to shame, but its also wrong to go into detail about things that could make someone/lots of someones uncomfortable in a space that has no connection to the topic. e.g the fair usage of public space.)
Wouldn't there be some people with two or more preferred gods as well? Taal and Rhea spring to mind as something of a formalized pair, but I could see say someone who sees themselves as a warrior philosopher giving praise to Myrmidia and Verena in roughly equal measure.
RL history does have some precedent for certain cults being dedicated to more than one god for instance.
- Location
- North Wales
- Pronouns
- He/Him/His
Are those tomes even proscribed in the Empire? They're not necromantic by virtue of pre-dating necromancy, so I imagine it's more the "do not touch the mummy gold" kind of proscription rather than the "burning-at-the-stake for even trying" kind
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Codex
Fantasy Addict
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Shouldn't we technically have some degree of that knowledge? Nagash crafted necromancy through the combination of Dark Elf lore about Dhar and Liche Priest lore about Shyish, which likely had some divine element to it. He then recorded his findings in the Nine Books of Nagash, which were then transcribed into the Liber Mortis by Vashanesh and Frederick Van Hal. That's a lot of degrees of separation, but shouldn't the Liber Mortis technically contain tidbits about the lore of Liche Priestdom? Or is that too far removed to have any actual knowledge.
- Location
- Utrecht
Mathide to some liche priest librarian: i'm just here to read your books. No stealing involved. Honest.
- Location
- Somewhere on Earth
That's fair, I'll spoil any comments about the matter from now on.
That... might make for some strange spread of information between Wes. Is the Karak We aware of any other Wes close enough that it would consider sharing its 'cells' with?
Kind of but there are still two filters between us and the Great Necromancer. Maybe Van Hall did not think it was worth recording (or he felt guilty about it), maybe Vlad just thought it was boring nerd shit.
I'm sympathetic to people who aren't comfortable with the topic, but I would argue that as long as the discussion keeps information, rather than titillation, as the goal, the psychology and biology of what is essentially an alien species is reasonable to discuss. The topic of this thread is Divided Loyalties and the We is a species and character in that. That said, I will put a spoiler in my previous post on the subject.
Taal and Rhya as a package deal are the exception rather than the rule, and even then there's plenty of individuals and groups that go with one or the other instead of both. The Empire is polytheistic as a result of a mostly-peaceful fusion of largely monotheistic tribes, so individual practice is largely monotheistic.
No, it hasn't had contact with other We since it emerged from the Under-Empire into the Karak.
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Makes sense, though that would still allow for multi-God cults outside the Empire, or is there something about Warhammer gods that generally rejects the notion?
The Elves of Ulthuan worship the Gods in a more truly polytheistic fashion, and those among them that dedicate themselves to a single God are the exception rather than the rule - and presumably that continues to be true in Laurelorn. Bretonnia is mostly monotheistic under the Lady, Marienburg is culturally similar to the Empire, and Tilea and Estalia both claim Myrmidia as a primary deity. The Gospodars of Kislev are possibly the closest to polytheism with most paying roughly equal deference to their four historical Gods, but even then they're culturally influenced by the Empire - Ursun is being eclipsed by Ulric there of late, and the canonical future revival is much more monotheistic than historical worship of Ursun.
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Sir_Travelsalot
Never wakes up tired.
- Location
- At Home
I think it was said in Tome of Salvation, a priest isn't able to be devoted to more than one god (apart from the Taal & Rhya package deal) because the deeper mysteries and rites require so much mono-focus and study that trying to observe all of them at the same time, beyond the surface-level, situational worship that is done by all the world's non-priest populace, would be impossible.