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Warhammer Fantasy: Divided Loyalties - an Advisor's Quest

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BoneyM said:
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..
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I agree, and when the topic came up before it did have the air of science curiosity.

but this time people were talking about spider bondages and cuddle Sex, just after someone (inappropriately) expressed their dislike of the topic and got punished for it.

so I think a charitable interpretation was that it was verging on thetitillation.

if only because the uncharitable interpretations is that it was taunting.
 
BoneyM said:
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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Hmm... so it might just be an accident of history and not intrinsic to the metaphysics, though given that the latter reflects the former it is hard to say. Maybe if we knew how the Neherakrans worshiped it would be easier to parse things out.
 
BoneyM said:
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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I thought shallya and Maann where big enough cults to part of the unofficial if not official pantheon of Bretonnia?

Isn't the 'headquarters' Of Shallya for lank if a better word in Knightland?
 
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Jyn Ryvia said:
I thought shallya and Maann where big enough cults to part of the unofficial if not official pantheon of Bretonnia?
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Yes, and Couronne is the heart of the Shallyan Cult. But in Bretonnian society other Cults are subordinate to that of the Lady, and the overwhelming majority of the nobility would worship the Lady exclusively or primarily.
 
Jyn Ryvia said:
I thought shallya and Maann where big enough cults to part of the unofficial if not official pantheon of Bretonnia?

Isn't the 'headquarters' Of Shallya for lank if a better word in Knightland?
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It was my understanding too that the only gods of the (non-proscribed) human pantheon that aren't worshipped in Bretonnia alongside the Lady are Sigmar and Ranald, with only the latter also being proscribed.
 
Shane_357 said:
Okay, would've liked to have had 'go on a great sojourn into the Under-Empire to unite the We's into a force that can coordinate against the Skaven' on the 'post-K8P options' list.
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Hey, leave some grand quests for other characters, like the We :V!

Imagine, a lone Hunter comes crawling out of the depths to join with a We mountains away, carapace shattered and mandibles broken, carrying with it but a message for unity. A message for the Council Of We!
 
Shane_357 said:
Okay, would've liked to have had 'go on a great sojourn into the Under-Empire to unite the We's into a force that can coordinate against the Skaven' on the 'post-K8P options' list.
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That sounds really dangerous. Like new monster faction. A big one. Organized spiders selling silk though k8p was okay.

Spider silk merchants popping out of each and every town would be both weird and panic inducing for the poor merchants.😂
 
Sir_Travelsalot said:
It was my understanding too that the only gods of the (non-proscribed) human pantheon that aren't worshipped in Bretonnia alongside the Lady are Sigmar and Ranald, with only the latter also being proscribed.
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Sigmar in general is not really worshipped in an organised fashion outside of the empire, it's overseas holdings and the border princes.

the god of the empire is not a great aspect for converts outside of the empire, and their was already a god or two of civilisation and war deeply rooted in everywhere else
 
The We work as an ambush predator/pest to the Under-Empire. I frankly doubt their ability to contest the Skaven actually focusing on them, which is what is bound to happen if they evolve from being an unnoticed pest nabbing an odd hundred skaven here or there to actually semi-unified large scale entity.
 
This is probably only vaguely related to the quest because we don't know if Horstmann invented his Speculum yet, but can someone explain to me how Van Horstmann's Speculum is supposed to work? I'm trying to wrap my head around how the Wind of Purity, Harmony and Unity/Order is capable of enchanting an object that swaps around combat skills without consent. I would understand an object capable of sharing combat abilities across a group, but the Speculum is very weird to me.
 
Codex said:
This is probably only vaguely related to the quest because we don't know if Horstmann invented his Speculum yet, but can someone explain to me how Van Horstmann's Speculum is supposed to work? I'm trying to wrap my head around how the Wind of Purity, Harmony and Unity/Order is capable of enchanting an object that swaps around combat skills without consent. I would understand an object capable of sharing combat abilities across a group, but the Speculum is very weird to me.
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It's almost like he got inspiration from something outside of light magic that is all about that type of twisty mind/reality fuckery....
 
At a guess, since elemental Hysh is lightwaves and the Speculum is somekind of lense/mirror (can't recall of the top of my head) he is using that elemental assosiation and then twisting it into a mystical focus on reflections and mirroring. So the Speculum swaps the "images" on either side, theuser and the target, therefore swapping their game stats.
 
Codex said:
This is probably only vaguely related to the quest because we don't know if Horstmann invented his Speculum yet, but can someone explain to me how Van Horstmann's Speculum is supposed to work? I'm trying to wrap my head around how the Wind of Purity, Harmony and Unity/Order is capable of enchanting an object that swaps around combat skills without consent. I would understand an object capable of sharing combat abilities across a group, but the Speculum is very weird to me.
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Probably drawing on The Hysh-Light-Mirror conceptual space. It's a stretch, but no more so than Shadowsteed is for Ulgu.
 
Jyn Ryvia said:
It's almost like he got inspiration from something outside of light magic that is all about that type of twisty mind/reality fuckery....
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Oh I'm well aware that that was probably his inspiration, but the artifact itself couldn't have even a whiff of Daemonic, because it's used by the Colleges and they wouldn't dare use an artifact that could possibly have corruptive influence. So he had to have somehow found a way to twist his wind into a way that wasn't necessarily chaotic but still didn't fully jive with the themes involved with Hysh.

The concept of swapping combat ability is honestly very Ulgu-esque. Maybe he just found a thematic connection between Hysh and "reflection" and he utilised that however.

Also I'd like to think the Speculum is more complicated then just "he used Chaos" and have that be the end of it.
Lupercal said:
At a guess, since elemental Hysh is lightwaves and the Speculum is somekind of lense/mirror (can't recall of the top of my head) he is using that elemental assosiation and then twisting it into a mystical focus on reflections and mirroring. So the Speculum swaps the "images" on either side, theuser and the target, therefore swapping their game stats.
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Yes! This is what I was thinking about. Maybe he was just using Hysh as reflection instead of harmony.
 
Jyn Ryvia said:
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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The tribe typically associated with Ulric (to the point that ethnic origin and leadership roles because of it is one of the main tensions in the modern Cult) is the tribe that would form Middenland, the Teutogen.

The Unberogen were Sigmar's tribe, who would form Reikland.
 
Codex said:
This is probably only vaguely related to the quest because we don't know if Horstmann invented his Speculum yet, but can someone explain to me how Van Horstmann's Speculum is supposed to work? I'm trying to wrap my head around how the Wind of Purity, Harmony and Unity/Order is capable of enchanting an object that swaps around combat skills without consent. I would understand an object capable of sharing combat abilities across a group, but the Speculum is very weird to me.
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It is the Aethyric manifestation of light, and the abstract concepts light sometimes represents to mortals, like enlightenment and purity.

When was the last time you gave your consent for a mirror to reflect you? That's how the Speculum works, it even uses a mirror as a component, if I recall.
 
Klaus said:
It is the Aethyric manifestation of light, and the abstract concepts light sometimes represents to mortals, like enlightenment and purity.

When was the last time you gave your consent for a mirror to reflect you? That's how the Speculum works, it even uses a mirror as a component, if I recall.
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This is probably a more fundamental misunderstanding of what I believed Hysh to be, or rather, a simplification.

My thought process was that Hysh is fundamentally centered around concepts of Unity/Harmony/Order, which is why it's so Anti-Chaos. They even utilise this in their Choirs by synchronising with each other to improve their overall power. The idea of following the Light path into the concept of mirroring/reflection was not my first thought about Hysh, which is perhaps an issue with me focusing too much on the Choirs.

But if we follow this to the logical extreme, then shouldn't there be more Hysh spells/effects focusing on reflection? Like the ability to reflect magic missiles or projectiles or redirecting enemy attacks. Certainly such things should theoretically be easier to achieve than the very metaphysical concept of swapping combat abilities.
 
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