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Warhammer Fantasy: Divided Loyalties - an Advisor's Quest

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There's a few assumptions buried in this discussion that I think render it largely irrelevant.

1) there's a "natural" level of anything without the gods' influence. This seems to come from assuming a physics based model with the gods added as an optional layer on top, which doesn't really square with what we know about the world and it's relationship to 'reality'. 'Reality' is suppressed by the winds, but we don't know what actually causes it to exist.

2) worship is necessary to a god's power, rather than being a supplemental sources.

3) mortal actions drive changes in the pantheon, rather than changes in the pantheon causing the mortal world to change to more properly reflect what the gods have done.

4) the goal of the gods is to be the most worshipped, rather than something mortals don't actually know.


So unless we can nail those down, I don't think there's any value to speculating about changing the gods by changing things in the world.
 
BoneyM said:
This seems to have a set of underlying assumptions that reduce the Gods to unthinking automatons with a set and unchanging 'budget' of worldly influence that must always be fully spent and is distributed according to zero-sum prayer algorithms. While that could be an interesting model, it's absolutely not the sort of thing I'm talking about here. Under the mainstream model, if a God is more pleased, They intervene more because of it. If They are not, They withhold their intervention. That is why it is important to please the Gods.

For example: under this model, if everyone everywhere pleases Rhya, then the harvest will be bountiful everywhere. If nobody anywhere pleases Rhya, then there will be famine everywhere.
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How does this square with gods like Shallya, who doctrinally seem to desire doing their thing, pleased or not? I doubt, for example, that an unpleased Shallya would ever let a plague happen if she could help it.

IronFist said:
Given what we've seen from Taal, that doesn't look Crackpot at all :V
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That means Ranald threw fists with Manaan and won.

And Stirland's ancient swamp god too.
 
storryeater said:
How ds this square with gods like Shallya, who seem to desire doing their thing, pleased or not? I doubt, for example, that an unpleased Shallya would ever let a plague happen if she could help it.
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I mean, there might be a reason that a great many Old Worlders hold the opinion that among all the gods, Shallya is the one who well and truly cares about each and every one of them. Could very well simply be the exception to the rule.
 
Glau said:
2) worship is necessary to a god's power, rather than being a supplemental sources.
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We can probably reject that in at least some cases.

Dieties like the Lady and the Ancient Widow contacted the people who would become their adherents. The Lady was able to give Gilles and his Companions considerable power with a small gesture of devotion on their part, and she had no prior base of worship (outside of certain Times that Ended).
 
We can't rationalize a thing we are still missing pieces of. Heck, we don't even know how many gods there are, much less how power is determined, much less what the goals of the gods are.

Oh! Also, we don't know why some gods seem to be associated with physical geography directly, some are just impacted by it (Ranald exiled from a space?) and some seem to be nowhere/everywhere.

How does territory interact with prayer, worshipers, power, and confrontations with other gods?

There's a lot of moving pieces.
 
storryeater said:
How does this square with gods like Shallya, who doctrinally seem to desire doing their thing, pleased or not? I doubt, for example, that an unpleased Shallya would ever let a plague happen if she could help it.
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The mainstream belief is that other gods can intervene more but don't want to, while Shallya wants to intervene more but can't. There's several myths regarding this, of which I know two. One is that Nurgle captured and imprisoned Shallya (story's identical to the 40k one, just with Shallya instead of Isha), and another is that Morr stops her from helping more or else no one would die.
 
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Mopman43 said:
We can probably reject that in at least some cases.

Dieties like the Lady and the Ancient Widow contacted the people who would become their adherents. The Lady was able to give Gilles and his Companions considerable power with a small gesture of devotion on their part, and she had no prior base of worship (outside of certain Times that Ended).
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This could be a case of lost history though. Or they could be ascended humans (or other mortal species) that got an initial boost by the very act of ascending,(or one who was worshipped while alive, creating the god in their image) we do not know how that works. Or it could be that they didn't, in fact, contact first and that this was revisionist history. Or it could be that gods can access power sources other than worship.

That is the problem with too many unknowns: it is hard to even discard theories based on exceptions, because the reasons behind the exceptions could be explainable by some piece of information you also lack.
 
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storryeater said:
This could be a case of lost history though. Or they could be ascended humans that got an initial boost by the very act of ascending,(or one who was worshipped while alive, creating the god in their image) we do not know how that works. Or it could be that they didn't, in fact, contact first and that this was revisionist history. Or it could be that gods can access power sources other than worship.
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The only known example of a human ascending is Sigmar.

People bring up Ranald of course, but there's way too many ancient sources that talk about him to take that at face value.

With Sigmar, we know who the historical man was, we know when worship of him started. We don't know either of those for Ranald.

Andres110 said:
No, it's pre-End Times. What End Times did was reveal that the captured goddess in that story was a benevolent Nurgle daemon called the Poxfulcrum, it didn't invent the story.
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What source has that story, then?
 
Mopman43 said:
The only known as example of a human ascending is Sigmar.

People bring up Ranald of course, but there's way to many ancient sources that talk about him to take that at face value.

With Sigmar, we know who the historical man was, we know when worship of him started. We don't know either of those for Ranald.
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That was kind of my main point: there are so many exceptions and unknowns that discarding possibilities for sure based on small and arguable samples is very hard because you do not know three-fourths of the story.
 
BoneyM said:
[ ] A Matter of Faith: Your personal shrine to Ranald is back in Altdorf. Construct a new one, so that he can better watch over you here.
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BoneyM said:
[ ] A Matter of Faith: Your personal shrine to Ranald is back in Altdorf. Construct a new one, so that he can better watch over you here.
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he -> He
BoneyM said:
of which the boatmen are a fundamentally and irreplaceable part
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fundamentally -> fundamental
BoneyM said:
leaving their skeletons to be stripped by scavengers and the Wind
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Wind -> wind
BoneyM said:
the Bright Order had good relations with most of the Empire's armies.
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had -> has
BoneyM said:
Wizard least affected by her journey through the wastes,
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wastes -> Wastes
BoneyM said:
imgination
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imgination -> imagination
BoneyM said:
Demons
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Demons -> Daemons
BoneyM said:
well-traind
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well-traind -> well-trained
 
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Glau said:
1) there's a "natural" level of anything without the gods' influence. This seems to come from assuming a physics based model with the gods added as an optional layer on top, which doesn't really square with what we know about the world and it's relationship to 'reality'. 'Reality' is suppressed by the winds, but we don't know what actually causes it to exist.
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According to Deathfang there was a reality before there were non-Chaos gods on Mallus. And neither the Chaos Gods nor any other divine entity could directly influence things on the material planet before the Gates were created (or maybe even only after they collapsed).
 
There's also ... the thing everyone always assumes about the whole "the gods get power from worship" thing is that all of their power derives for worship.

It ignores the very real possibility that they might be able to exist perfectly fine in the long term as powerful deities without worshipers, and worship just gives them extra power and serves as a way to get their attention.

Edit:


Glau said:
2) worship is necessary to a god's power, rather than being a supplemental sources.
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Beat me to it.
 
Rafin said:
According to Deathfang there was a reality before there were non-Chaos gods on Mallus. And neither the Chaos Gods nor any other divine entity could directly influence things on the material planet before the Gates were created (or maybe even only after they collapsed).
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Yes to the first part, but we don't know if divine entities could influence the world before the gates- it's just implied they didn't and/or weren't around.

We also don't know what was used for magic before the winds- the existence of dragons who can fly to other planets implies there was something, as does the geomantic web.
 
Mopman43 said:
Realms of Sorcery at least suggests that there were Winds, just small, controlled amounts that were allowed to slip through the gate.
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Ok, but that's after the gates were built. Is there any indication of magic during the period dragons were taking over? Or was it building the gates that allowed magic onto the planet at all?
 
Just started a re-read marathon. Man, I forgot just how good the Stirland Arc is, what with how absolutely brilliant and overshadowing the K8P Arc was. Could comment on a lot of things, but right now all I can say is that.

BoneyM said:
SHOPPING FOR ENCHANTING EQUIPMENT: Roll, Stewardship, 8+10=18. Ayn Ranald's free market destroys your dreams.]
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I actually GET this pun now, lmao.
 
Glau said:
Ok, but that's after the gates were built. Is there any indication of magic during the period dragons were taking over? Or was it building the gates that allowed magic onto the planet at all?
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I mean, the existence of interplanetary dragons is, as you point out, strong evidence of the existence of magic on a much larger scale than the mere single planet.

Also the fact that the Ruinous Powers predate the Old Ones arriving on the Warhammer World - including Tzeentch with all his love of magic/psykers.
 
Rafin said:
The famine example fits what I meant with smiting not being positively correlated to worship under this "always powerful gods crave validation/obedience" model. Using famine as a threat would be her agenda here and worshipping her less wouldn't prevent her from causing it of she wants to. So worshipping her more is not really morally questionable.

Under the "worship grants power" model though it could make sense to "punish" Rhya if she abuses her stick. Less worship would mean that she has less ability to negatively affect the harvest. So the harvest would either fall along natural lines (which may well be less than what Rhya's baseline blessing provides) or people could even empower a new or minor harvest deity enough to take over Rhya's job. The latter is not something that would work under the mainstream model because the minor deity would still have to content with an angry Rhya that is just as powerful as before.

Anyway, I don't think that Rhya is the best example, because her "normal" preferences when happy are very pro-social as far as I know and her smiting can look very similar to her absence or impotence.

But if one takes someone like Stormfels for example, more worshippers would lead to more water/monster based troubles in general if he's empowered by it while leading to less if he is just pleased by it and thus lenient on his worshippers.

Ultimately what I'm getting at is just an exploration of how much the moral weight of worship akin to voting would be something that IC mainstream theologians would recognize. OOC the official quest lore might say that gods are empowered and thus worshipping questionable gods might decrease utilons, but under mainstream IC beliefs as you presented them people wouldn't know or believe that and thus be more tolerant of other religions than they "should" be I guess.
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Rafin said:
The trick wouldn't be just withholding power. It would be diverting power. Like worshipping Manann instead of Stormfels, so that as Stormfels' power wanes, Manannn can shield you from his tantrums due to his own surge in power. And since Stormfels is the less friendly sea god and his "products" are less worth the payment in prayer, his "corporation" should end up bankrupted over time. But if, as the mainstream believes, prayer doesn't equal power then worshipping Stormfels might become more appealing because even if he is (and maybe always will be) weaker than Manann overall, his wrath is more quickly painful and always will be.
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"Ah, but if Stromfels works the same way as Rhya..." is about the point where the door gets kicked in by Witch Hunters. You can apply relentless logic and modern philosophical and economic terminology to the mainstream model until inconsistencies bubble to the surface if you really must, but most people in the setting don't have the ability, vocabulary, or desire to do so, and the Cults heavily and sometimes fatally discourage it. The Cults say worshipping good Gods results in good things and worshipping bad Gods results in bad things and prefer to leave it at that, and considering very bad things do start happening when a secret Cult to a naughty God starts getting influence most people accept that. If you go further into it you either get rebuffed or are given the 'gods like worship' or the 'gods are empowered by worship' model. If you go even further into it you start getting shunned at church and a man with a tall hat knocks on your door.

storryeater said:
How does this square with gods like Shallya, who doctrinally seem to desire doing their thing, pleased or not? I doubt, for example, that an unpleased Shallya would ever let a plague happen if she could help it.
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Shallyans are oddballs in that instead of portraying their God as being aloof and mighty, they portray Her as being desperate to help but limited in doing so by nature/evil/laws/Her parents, and portray worship of Her as the right thing to do to repay the kindness of such a nice Goddess. Even then most Shallyan temples are more dedicated to following Shallya's example than singing Her praises, so even a strictly utilitarian 'well if she's going to help anyway...' sort of argument for bogarting Her prayers and temples doesn't work well because there's a more direct positive effect.

NeonLights said:
he -> He

fundamentally -> fundamental

Wind -> wind

had -> has

wastes -> Wastes

imgination -> imagination

Demons -> Daemons

well-traind -> well-trained
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Much appreciated.
 
Also, it's been a long time now, but I know I forgot about it... so just to remind everyone in the thread because I saw some chatter about Vows of Poverty while we were discussing making Wilhelmina's daughter a grey wizard.
BoneyM said:
"Gustav?"

He looks bewildered at what is happening, but rallies. "Well, the law does say that a Knight must have an estate from which they draw the income necessary to maintain their arms, armour, and retinue. If that would take precedence over the customs of her Order..."

Kasmir chimes in again. "Article I: The first obedience of every Magister must be to the ideals and laws of Sigmar's Holy Empire of which these Articles form a part; the laws and ideals of their Order is fourth in order of priority. Article III: Every Magister of said Colleges must adhere to the laws of Sigmar's Holy Empire."

"Well, there you go. Law of the Empire comes first, rules of her Order second. Doesn't get clearer than that."

Van Hal smiles. "Then, Mathilde, you will have your knighthood. Pick a date, we'll hold the ceremony then."
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Laws of the Empire supercede internal Order Laws, so we haven't been beholden to the Vow of Poverty since being knighted, and pursuing an equivalent noble title or any rank would render Wilhelma's daughter immune to the Vow of Poverty too, which would be very useful for being CEO of the EIC, even if we were going for more of a *nudge nudge wink wink* spy network thing.

Edit: Also, we are technically a one-person dynasty now, with lands and stuff in Stirland that we might want to check in on one day.
Since our romantic interests seem to be heading away from natural offspring we could investigate methods of magical parthanogenesis or cloning to have lots of little Mathildes who will grow up to continue the Weber dynasty. Imagine how awesome it would be for our whole noble house to just be us and clones of ourself.
 
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