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Barudak
May 7, 2007

The entire war with demons seems to exist to allow “Magic Kults” to exist in setting and for no real other reason. Actually summoning demons is a page in the appendix for optional rules, but boy that magic spell system sure takes up a lot of space with spell names like “Terror Whore”

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Night10194
Feb 13, 2012

We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay: Realms of Sorcery

Elemantalist means something new to SCIENCE WIZARD

Chamon is the Yellow Wind, called the Gold Wind by humans. It represents the desire for structure, surety, and predictability, towards the goal of being able to catalogue and understand all things. It also represents refining and shaping, specifically in the sense that the more a Gold wizard learns, the more they want to learn, because what they learned before will be a foundation for new puzzles and new things to understand and catalogue. The Wind itself is attracted to and conducted by many metals and chemicals, but actual gold draws it in better than anything else. Wizards theorize this may be one reason every race in the setting values gold, and that dwarves may have some inherent resonance with the Wind of Metal that aids in their runeworking and their mastery of metallurgy. This has never been proven, of course, and suggesting to a dwarf that they possess any sort of magical resonance is a good way to get a long-winded lecture in how the dawi (dorfs) need no such umgi (humans) or elgi (elfs) tomfoolery.

While Magisters of the Gold Order can pull off temporary transmutations in battle that change an enemy's steel and iron into lead, permanent transmutation is nearly impossible. A Gold Magister can change the shape of an object permanently and with great effect; you could give one several steel ingots and they could weave them together into one of the finest steel swords you've ever seen, but they couldn't create the steel from nothing and they couldn't turn a lead slug into a steel dagger permanently. They could do it temporarily, lasting for days or even weeks if they're a very powerful mage, but there is something to the form of materials that makes it very difficult to change one substance into another without the magic eventually running out and the substance reverting to form. This curious property leads into the main obsessions and studies of the Order: Discovering why this is, and if there is a way to circumvent it.

By studying what can and cannot be transmuted, the Gold Order has slowly begun putting together the modern concept of a periodic table of elements. They're beginning to learn more and more modern chemistry through their mandate to create and study the material sciences for the good of the Empire and their association with the Empire's non-magical scholars and alchemists. The constant need for funding, reagents, and rare materials has the College acquiring stakes in almost every chemical endeavor in the Empire, with most of the mundane guilds of apothecaries and alchemists now under the Order's banner. They use these as a recruiting ground, studying the apprentices and students of the various guilds to look for sparks of magical talent. This has the added bonus of giving them a large pool of Apprentices who already know something about laboratory procedure when they arrive; even if a student has magical potential the Gold Order will usually let them study under a normal alchemy guild for a little while before sending them to Altdorf, to ensure that when they arrive they won't be prone to blowing up the labs.

Indeed, driven by the fundamental pressure of their Wind, much of the work of a Gold wizard isn't even magical. They'll introduce magic, which they revere as the 'Prime Reagent' since it will react with and invoke change in any substance, but much of their work is just studying and cataloguing how things react and why. After all, if you don't need to use magic to refine a new and better formula for the mass production of gunpowder, why use it? The Order funds itself partly by experimenting with and manufacturing immediately useful consumer goods for sale. Improved soaps, new perfumes, new dyes and glues and pigments, all of these come out of the labs of the Gold order. Meanwhile, the strange wizards employ all manner of adventurers and servants to go out and find them unusual materials and substances to study. One of the other secret mandates of the Order is their drive to study how to work Gromril without needing to rely on the dwarves, and how on earth the elves create Ithmilar. These are both difficult to carry out, since they have to be done in the utmost of secrecy and acquiring samples of these powerful metals is beyond expensive.

It's interesting to read about how the elves reacted to the first human Gold wizards; they seem to have found them an amusing curiosity, laughing a little at their sudden desire for experimentation and categorization. I'm not sure how much value the generally-disdainful-of-engineering-and-science elves actually placed in the Gold Wind, but when humans are exposed to it learning only drives them to new possibilities of learning even more. Gold wizards are also known for seeking out the knowledge of other lands, with an especial fondness for the chemistry and mathematics practiced in Araby. An unusual number of Gold wizards are originally from Araby as it is, since the traveling wizards have a great interest in the local scholars and are apt to find yet another skilled mathematician, chemist, or herbalist who turns out to have been magically gifted all along to bring back to Altdorf.

The other duty of the Gold College is manufacturing magical items for use by the Empire's armies and most important agents. No-one in Warhammer can simply 'buy' a magic sword or necklace on the market, but one could commission one for more money than a minor noble sees in their lifetime from the Gold College. These items are rare and generally only given to important heroes, agents, and the richest of the Empire's nobles. They also aren't as powerful as the Runecraft of the dwarfs or the ancient sorcery of the elves, but a human-made magical relic is still well beyond any mundane item.

The current Supreme Patriarch of the Orders of Magic is Balthazar Gelt, a Gold Wizard from Araby who made his own way to Altdorf, guided by the power of Chamon and his willingness to pay his way by false, temporarily transmuted gold (usually a grave crime for a Gold mage). Staying one step ahead of angry owners of newly minted lead slugs, he entered the Colleges and submitted himself to be examined for taint. The Magisters discovered he was a rarity; a natural talent who possessed all three magical senses, yet who had only ever felt one Wind call to him. He was admitted as a student of the Gold Order immediately, where he obsessed over the possibility of 'true' transmutation of materials. Gelt is open minded and very inquisitive, much less inflexible than most Gold wizards; a new idea or method has to be tested and examined but shouldn't be dismissed before then. During his work, something happened in his lab. Ever since then he hasn't been seen in public without his concealing robes and golden mask. The rumors range from 'he's hiding tentacles' to 'idiot blew himself up' to 'that's actually his face, he turned himself to gold', and he ignores all of them. He is also a very ambitious man: He became Supreme Patriarch by entering the challenge for the position and beating the head of the Bright Order before he even bothered to be confirmed Magister Patriarch of Gold. Some whisper he mainly bothered to become Patriarch because the Supreme Patriarch's Wind will become stronger in Altdorf, and it was merely a matter of convenience for his own obsession with Chamon. Nevertheless, he has proven competent to the position and served as a steady, helpful advisor to the Emperor and a good organizer for the Colleges. Even if it is simply for his own research and ambitions, a competent steward of the Orders is never amiss.

Gottlif Puchta is long dead, but he lives on in his many treatises and works on the nature of magic and its interactions with the physical world. Many of the sidebars about how magic works are excerpts from his theories. His 'Modest Treatise on the Nature of Magic' is one of the most cherished works of human magical theory, to the point that the massive tome adorns the libraries of Emperors and high nobles who want to understand a little bit about what all their wizards are on about as well as the bookshelves of mages. He is responsible for the prevailing theory that even mortal thought is more 'real' than raw Aethyric energy, which thus allows thought and ritual to mould and 'cool' the energy into the shape of a spell on contact with reality.

There's a lot more detail about Middenheim's own little wizard college, the Guild of Wizards and Alchemists, established because of the distance between Middenheim and Altdorf and its strategic importance, but that was partly covered in the Ashes of Middenheim stuff. Suffice to say they exist as a way of saying the Gold wizards own almost every alchemy guild in the Empire, and that it's ruled over by a collaboration (by treaty) of a senior Gold Magister and a senior Blue Magister. They form a buddy-cop team of a frumpy, distracted science wizard and a much more personable and friendly lady Astromancer, who keep everything running in the Empire's northern city.

Next: Agriculture!

ChaseSP
Mar 25, 2013



Lovin how he basically got to where he is by fleecing people with counterfeiting gold and beating up the greatest wizard at the time in combat.

Ratoslov
Feb 15, 2012

Now prepare yourselves! You're the guests of honor at the Greatest Kung Fu Cannibal BBQ Ever!

There was a minor lab accident and Gelt decided it was the perfect excuse to become his OC.

Cythereal
Nov 8, 2009

I love the potoo,
and the potoo loves you.
And he's basically Doctor Doom.

Battle Mad Ronin
Aug 26, 2017
‘Gelt’ is rather close to ‘geld’, German for money. This being Warhammer, there’s no room for conincidence in the faux German names, and I can’t stop thinking about what meaning there might be behind that name.

Then again, this being Warhammer, there might not be anything other than “it sounds cool” behind it.

Barudak
May 7, 2007

Gelt is also just Yiddish for money, same source of course.

Night10194
Feb 13, 2012

We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

ChaseSP posted:

Lovin how he basically got to where he is by fleecing people with counterfeiting gold and beating up the greatest wizard at the time in combat.

Gelt is a really, really goal-oriented dude. He usually uses this for good.

Kaza42
Oct 3, 2013

Blood and Souls and all that

Night10194 posted:

Gelt is a really, really goal-oriented dude. He usually uses this for good.

And he has some of the best quest speeches in Total War: Warhammer, because he's pretty bad at actually inspiring people.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RDEpJylRAsk

Night10194
Feb 13, 2012

We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

Kaza42 posted:

And he has some of the best quest speeches in Total War: Warhammer, because he's pretty bad at actually inspiring people.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RDEpJylRAsk

Gelt does not really understand other people who have motivations other than 'learn more stuff' and 'acquire interesting shiney thing'.

Again, he's really good at his job of being an administrator, he's a brilliant wizard, he acts for the good of the Empire, but he's the very epitome of the Gold Wind.

Kurieg
Jul 19, 2012

RIP Lutri: 5/19/20-4/2/20
:blizz::gamefreak:

Night10194 posted:

Gelt does not really understand other people who have motivations other than 'learn more stuff' and 'acquire interesting shiney thing'.

Again, he's really good at his job of being an administrator, he's a brilliant wizard, he acts for the good of the Empire, but he's the very epitome of the Gold Wind.

"this is not just some scheme to become supreme patriarch.... i mean it's that AND we need to stop the demons."

Kaza42
Oct 3, 2013

Blood and Souls and all that
My favorite is when he's all "Yeah, a lot of you will die and turn into zombies and have to be killed again. But I promise you'll get a cool funeral and isn't that worth dying for?"

mcclay
Jul 8, 2013

Oh dear oh gosh oh darn
Soiled Meat

Kurieg posted:

"this is not just some scheme to become supreme patriarch.... i mean it's that AND we need to stop the demons."

I mean to be fair stopping Kholek Suneater from waking up is pretty important.

White Coke
May 29, 2015

Battle Mad Ronin posted:

‘Gelt’ is rather close to ‘geld’, German for money. This being Warhammer, there’s no room for conincidence in the faux German names, and I can’t stop thinking about what meaning there might be behind that name.

Then again, this being Warhammer, there might not be anything other than “it sounds cool” behind it.

He's from Araby, so he probably took the name because he loves gold and because he got tired of people mispronouncing his name.

Cythereal
Nov 8, 2009

I love the potoo,
and the potoo loves you.

White Coke posted:

He's from Araby, so he probably took the name because he loves gold and because he got tired of people mispronouncing his name.

Balthazar, however, is a very old Middle Eastern name, most often associated with Persia. In Judeo-Christian religious lore, Balthazar was the name of one of the three kings who attended Jesus' birth.

I suspect that GW wanted to hint at his national origins but not make it unmistakably front and center that there's a non-white dude in a major position in the Empire.

Kaza42
Oct 3, 2013

Blood and Souls and all that

Cythereal posted:

Balthazar, however, is a very old Middle Eastern name, most often associated with Persia. In Judeo-Christian religious lore, Balthazar was the name of one of the three kings who attended Jesus' birth.

He really should have been Melchior Gelt. Traditionally, Melchior is the wise man who brought gold as a gift for Jesus.

Night10194
Feb 13, 2012

We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

Really, I adore the little detail that the Colleges, being the first human institution for learning 'safe' arcane magic, draw people from all over the world to Altdorf to study.

ChaseSP
Mar 25, 2013



Also that it does the most non magical stuff and is best buds with the empires engineers in making poo poo like guns and cannons from all the material and chemical science they do without magic.

Night10194
Feb 13, 2012

We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

We'll get to it in the next update but the most critical job of the Order of Life isn't healing soldiers, it's ensuring the Empire doesn't starve when all the troops are mobilized (or more generally) and killing Nurglite and necromantic blights on Imperial agriculture. One of the reasons so many people used to die in the huge wars of the past was that many of the Empire's enemies can kill their fields and farms with disease or death magic; they finally have a counter.

"I go knife-fight a plague priest over wheat." is part of why Fantasy is fun.

ChaseSP
Mar 25, 2013



Yeah Jade, Gold and...White? wizards tend to be the most obviously beneficial to the empire. First makes sure everything grows well, second does advances in metallurgy and gunpowder for cannons that can blow the head of a Champion of Chaos off, and wizards that can predict bad harvests and terrible weather. It's more than just wizards casting mass combat spells.

Night10194
Feb 13, 2012

We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

It's all part of a setting milieu in which the Pope's bio reads as 'Defeated in battle by the Dark Lord, he was then raised by devils to experience endless torment, at which point he broke out of the chains on the damned alter and battled his way through the legions of hell with nothing but a broken chain and an ice pick until he could resume his office' and at the same time 'Also known as a reasonable religious reformer who works tirelessly to improve the standards of evidence used by Witch Hunters and check their authority because he believes in the rule of law.'

The mixture of crazy power metal and reasonable person is what powers the Warhammer Empire.

ZeusJupitar
Jul 7, 2009

Kaza42 posted:

He really should have been Melchior Gelt. Traditionally, Melchior is the wise man who brought gold as a gift for Jesus.

They already blew 'Melchior' on one of the interchangeable Necrarch lords if if I recall correctly.

Freaking Crumbum
Apr 17, 2003

Too fuck to drunk






Chapter 7: Places of Interest - The Americas part 4






New York, NY
The Hook(s):
1. The Cloisters is a museum of rare art and architecture and possibly arcane relics and it's guarded by an actual gargoyle that lives there as part of a reconstruction of a 17th century French castle. No stats are given for the gargoyle, but I guess if you want the party to visit this location they'll have to avoid it or bribe it maybe?
2. The Metropolitan Club is a front for Builderbergers and also a super posh night club for the creme-de-la-creme of NY's wealthiest citizens. Of course since mega-rich people go here all the time there's the usual rumors re: sex slaves and child trafficking and cannibalism and etc. There's no other information or hook provided, so I guess it's up the to GM to turn this into anything more than a fairly uninspired "rumor".
3. The subway and sewer systems of NY are built many levels deep and in the deepest bowels the Kinori have a few scattered warrens that the Hoffman Institute didn't obliterate back in the 1930's. They Kinori still live lives of quiet desperation, tapping into gas and water and power lines from the city above, always careful not to draw too much off a single line and invite the city to inquire further. Again, there's no real hook or plot here, so I guess they just exist in case your GM wants you to have a reason to run into them.
4. Spiritu Sancti is another nightclub where rich people go to have illegal kinds of fun, but this one has heavy Catholic imagery and might be a front for both the Builderbergers and the Order of St. Gregory (imagine the vampire nightclub from Blade 1 but without any actual vampires). That's all the book has to say, so good luck to your GM bothering to come up with a reason to ever visit this place.
My Take: It takes a real dedication to mediocrity to take a huge city like New York and only manage to come up with four of the lowest effort "hooks" that you can lazily crap onto a page. None of these are interesting or remarkable enough to remember; as far as I'm concerned they may as well not even exist.

Tiahuanaco
The Hook(s):
1. Apparently this is the oldest city on Earth; it's speculated date of construction pre-dates human existence, and not even the Greys know who built it or why. Some legends state that this city was built by the Heavenly Host and may have been the site of Eden, but of course the only beings that could confirm that story are actively hostile to humanity every time they've been encountered.
2. The city contains an elaborate structure of pools that archaeologists suspect were used for ritualized sacrifice via drowning. There's a lot of ocean themed mosaics around the city and statues of fish-men or mer-people, so of course the logical conclusion is that these were meant for drowning related sacrifices and not as public bathes or whatever. Lake Titicaca is 20km away from the city's current location but the working theory is that the city was once on the edge of the lake and it's only been geographic drift that's pushed so much distance between the two.
3. There's a 10 ton stone shaped into an arch that occupies a prominent position at the city center, so obviously this has to be a dormant Doorway that served as the egress point for whatever beings built the city. It's covered in hundreds of glyphs that haven't been translated but it's possible that somebody could crack the code and then use the instructions to activate the Doorway and find the beings that created Tiahuanaco.
My Take: There's just not enough detail here to really do anything with. A mystery city that pre-dates human existence and an inactive Doorway are cool enough, but there's no conflict here that would give players a reason to investigate. I mean some random NPC could hire them to decode the hieroglyphics I guess, but there's not much else for the players to do once they actually arrive, and no real threats to engage them.

Toronto
The Hook(s):
1. The Chinese quarter of the city has strong ties to the Tattoo wizards from mainland Hong Kong. Yes, this is the first time this type of arcane magic has been mentioned. No, there's no additional rules given for how it works or what it can do. It won't be followed up in the (anemic) number of splatbooks that Dark*Matter is given before the line gets canceled. It's mysterious magic woven by inscrutable Chinese people! What else do you want?[/b]
2. CN Tower is really tall and some HI agents believe that it's a location where high ranking HI officials meet with Grey contacts. The Greys and the HI officials deny this, which of course means it must be objectively true or else why would the deny it? This is the actual justification posed by the game btw.
3. A serial killer has been stalking people along Queen Street and the police haven't been able to crack the case. The only thing that the victims have in common is that they're all women, they've all given birth within the last 6 months, and they are all extremely distant relations to the British royal family. HI gets invited by the Toronto PD to try and help solve the case before the murderer strikes again, but obviously the murders are just a component of a much darker ritual that will also need to be thwarted.
My Take: FINALLY we get a hook that gives enough info that the GM could provide something for the players to meaningfully engage with. I've got personal reservations about the specifics of the murders (killing only women who are new mothers seems unnecessarily gratuitous / peak 90's LOOK HOW EDGY bullshit) but you could pretty easily change the default set-up and still have a decent enough beginning to an X-files style whodunit. The other two hooks are garbage for being too vague and having no real tension, but at this point I'll accept a 33% success rate.

Washington D.C.
The Hook: There's crime and grift and the US govt. calls it home. There's a ton of federal workers and also facilities to accommodate most of them should a disaster strike. There touristy national monuments that might have been built with occult significance but nobody alive remembers whether they were, nor what that significance could have been.
My Take: This has even less value than the entry for New York. It's astounding that such an important place couldn't have even one single compelling hook in a book about X-Files conspiracies. We're almost at the end of the alphabet here so if these sections got written in the order they're presented, Bower and Cook were obviously running on fumes by this point.

Yucatan
The Hook(s): Just google the Mitchell-Hedges skull but then pretend that the whole thing hasn't been disproved as a hoax and instead has some quasi-mystical power because it was created by Strangers that visited Earth 12,000 years ago.
My Take: They definitely wrote these in alphabetical order and ran out of gas by the time they got to the end. But hey, at least we're done with the Americas!


LOW/NO EFFORT HOOKS ABOUT G-G-G-GHOSTS: 5
LOOK-BUT-DON'T-TOUCH LOCATIONS: 5


NEXT TIME: Asia! with another embarrassing section subtitle

Barudak
May 7, 2007

Gonna go for Tiwanku as the ancient American City and leave out my homies Poverty Point and Watson’s Break? Good day, Dark Matter!

Bieeanshee
Aug 21, 2000

Not keen on keening.


Grimey Drawer
"The CN Tower is a mooring post for Grey saucers."

Come on. Make it an antenna for something. Make it an actual spaceport, like the old Tour of the Universe attraction.

Make it the capstone for something really unpleasant.

Freaking Crumbum
Apr 17, 2003

Too fuck to drunk


Barudak posted:

Gonna go for Tiwanku as the ancient American City and leave out my homies Poverty Point and Watson’s Break? Good day, Dark Matter!

my guess (if they were aware at all) is that those two sites would have been "assumed" to be covered by the previous entry on the Mound Builder culture, since that entry didn't do a great job of clarifying that the mound builders were not a homogenous empire like we think of with western european history (even Poverty Point and Watson's Brake are supposed to have been built nearly 2000 years apart).

Bieeanshee posted:

"The CN Tower is a mooring post for Grey saucers."

Come on. Make it an antenna for something. Make it an actual spaceport, like the old Tour of the Universe attraction.

Make it the capstone for something really unpleasant.

it's pretty obvious that all of these entries into Dark*Matter we made with only the most superficial knowledge of the actual locations. they don't even bother to tie any of them into the previously established illuminati groups except in the most tangential ways. it's frustrating that a lot of the content in each chapter seems like it was written in a vacuum independent from the rest of the book, because they really could have done a lot more interesting stuff by making an interwoven world, but :effort:

Freaking Crumbum
Apr 17, 2003

Too fuck to drunk


like, off the top of my head, the PLACES OF INTEREST section of the book should have had clear plot hooks for what each of the major illuminati groups are doing, or want to do, or are searching for, at each location. hell, trim the illuminati groups down to 6 or 7 core groups and really come up with a definite win condition for each of them, and then use each location to explain what the illuminati a doing at each location to reach their win condition.

they way the book is laid out, all of the information is sequestered in separate chapters and it makes it really hard to get a sense that Dark*Matter is a living setting with stuff that happens organically, as opposed to a collection of unrelated snapshots where the players may or may not be able to chuff about and accomplish something of minor significance.

White Coke
May 29, 2015
I like how the gold wizards are helping create non-magitek scientific advances and that they're probably their most significant contributions to the Empire.

ChaseSP
Mar 25, 2013



Warhammer fantasy is pretty cool in that humanity is advancing and improving itself instead of being stuck in a rut like the other friendly races. Dwarves have an absurdly long testing system for inventions time takes 400 years for minor changes. Elves are shooty bastards. But humans have guns and cannons now, while their ancestors only could fight with bow and steel. It's a great contrast to 40k's everything is just getting shittier. Like a crazy smart dude invented steam tanks. loving steam tanks. They're rare and irreplaceable but also a testament to Empire ingenuity.

Night10194
Feb 13, 2012

We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

That's actually something I really like in Spire. As soon as humans invented (well, excavated) the gun, you've got elves of both flavors deciding that diving through the air whilst firing two pistols kind of rules.

wiegieman
Apr 22, 2010

Royalty is a continuous cutting motion


ChaseSP posted:

Warhammer fantasy is pretty cool in that humanity is advancing and improving itself instead of being stuck in a rut like the other friendly races. Dwarves have an absurdly long testing system for inventions time takes 400 years for minor changes. Elves are shooty bastards. But humans have guns and cannons now, while their ancestors only could fight with bow and steel. It's a great contrast to 40k's everything is just getting shittier. Like a crazy smart dude invented steam tanks. loving steam tanks. They're rare and irreplaceable but also a testament to Empire ingenuity.

The Gyrocopter is a barely-tested deathtrap -- the design is 300 years old. There are dwarfs who don't trust dwarf made firearms, which as any right-thinking longbeard knows are just waiting to misfire on you at just the wrong time despite being literally older than the Empire. Not like a proper crossbow.

ChaseSP
Mar 25, 2013



The only proper projectile weapon is a big rear end stone carved with grudges against the enemy in question. Quite effective against chaos it turns out!

Dwarven testing is basically a bunch of grumpy old men who know their poo poo starts doing everything wrong to your invention to try and break it. If it passes good for you. It doesn't pass? Come back in a century youngin. This done not just because dwarves are very conservative but they believe it is the utmost importance to keep accidents down that may maim or kill hundred year old dwarves. Truly they believe in OSHA.

This makes dwarves tech very slow to advance but extrmely reliable compared to the empires experimentation.

ChaseSP fucked around with this message at 07:10 on Jun 16, 2018

Joe Slowboat
Nov 9, 2016

Higgledy-Piggledy Whale Statements



I find the dwarves in Warhams, in general, extremely likable while at the same time they are definitely almost half of their own problems.
The elves I find less likable, but those of them who are likable are remarkably so.

Also it's hilarious to me that the elves are at their best when they are actively defying their own gods, like when they pulled the rug out from under Malekith and made sure he didn't become king because he's a horrible, horrible leader.

MonsterEnvy
Feb 4, 2012

Shocked I tell you
I remember in the Gotrek and and Felix series we had the Dwarf Malakai Makaisson a Dwarf Engineer that was really into creating new stuff. Sadly while a genius probably far above any human he was not a very careful Dwarf who seemed determined to have Dramatic Irony ruin everything for him.

Namely he created a new Dwarf Steamship better then any before. Named it the Unsinkable and naturally it sunk in it's first voyage. After this he decided to get into the Airship and create the first working Airship which he called the Undestructible. Naturally it exploded and killed most of it's crew. After two massive failed projects experimenting he was kicked out of the Engineer's guild and took the Slayer Oath in Shame. Despite this he kept inventing new stuff considering it a personal battle.

With the help of a really reasonable Dwarf Elder. Malakai created a new Airship that worked near perfectly. (With them pretty much taking all precautions to make sure poo poo did not go bad.) He was also vetoed when it came to naming it so he could not tempt fate that way. His new ship the Spirit of Grungni, was considered a Marvel and from Felix's view it was a world changing invention, as it allowed them to make journeys that would take weeks or months in days. It allowed them to ignore the undefeated walls of Middenhiem and could revolutionize transport. So naturally the mission it was created for was a borderline suicide mission into the Chaos Wastes were it could easily be lost and destroyed preventing any more ships of it's type being created. (Luckily it did survive.)

Malakai also created the Goblin Hewer.

Ghost Leviathan
Mar 2, 2017

Exploration is ill-advised.
IIRC it's become a tradition for young Dwarf engineers to get kicked out of the Dwarf engineering guild and join the Empire guild instead, and eventually return once they've perfected their invention to perfect reliability.

Josef bugman
Nov 17, 2011

Pictured: Poster prepares to celebrate Holy Communion (probablY)

This avatar made possible by a gift from the Religionthread Posters Relief Fund
I like that they didn't make the Dwarves have Scottish but instead Yorkshire accents in the Total War: Warhammer games. Because it does suit them really really well.

Night10194
Feb 13, 2012

We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

Joe Slowboat posted:

I find the dwarves in Warhams, in general, extremely likable while at the same time they are definitely almost half of their own problems.
The elves I find less likable, but those of them who are likable are remarkably so.

Also it's hilarious to me that the elves are at their best when they are actively defying their own gods, like when they pulled the rug out from under Malekith and made sure he didn't become king because he's a horrible, horrible leader.

I think the biggest thing that helps the dwarfs is that they never, ever forget a favor as well as a slight. They will go through hell and high water to help out an ally or a friend the same as they'll do all kinds of stupid stuff because that's a grudgin'.

Cythereal
Nov 8, 2009

I love the potoo,
and the potoo loves you.

Night10194 posted:

I think the biggest thing that helps the dwarfs is that they never, ever forget a favor as well as a slight. They will go through hell and high water to help out an ally or a friend the same as they'll do all kinds of stupid stuff because that's a grudgin'.

And that the dwarfs are legit appreciated for their work. Sigmar made it a holy commandment to help the dwarfs whenever you can, everyone in the Empire knows that they owe a tremendous amount to the dwarfs. Kislev and Bretonnia, too, to smaller extents. Even if the dwarfs perish, their legacy will live on in humanity, which simply couldn't exist in its present form without the dwarfs.

Night10194
Feb 13, 2012

We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay: Realms of Sorcery

Mystery of the Druids

Ghyran, the Jade Wind, is the Wind of Life. It represents the creative urge in all living things, and the ebbs and flows of any healthy ecosystem. This sense of ebb and flow attracts the magic to riverways and makes it flow more like water than wind, which also explains why Jade wizards are able to control water (and why it's so hard for Nurglites to poison rivers; they're powerful and full of Life magic). Jade magic is one of the oldest magics practiced by human wizards, and unlike most of the Colleges the Order actively reaches back into older human history for inspiration and tradition. Humans may not be as sensitive to magic as elves, but even the early human shamans and druids could feel the magic of the Jade wind and it tended to pool in places where a tribe would want to settle, anyway. Jade is especially drawn to the various henges that were probably originally built by the Old Ones, and adopted as some of humanity's first sacred sites before the humans conceived of the more modern ideas of the Gods and Pantheons.

While they draw on older traditions (and indeed, even call themselves Druids), Jade wizards are a much more modern manifestation of the old fertility rites and experimental ceremonies that the old Druids used to believe fed the earth. While an older Druid may've been able to summon enough power to ensure their tribe could eat and wouldn't die from the local water source, a modern Jade wizard may have to feed an army on the march or ensure that a city's waterways stay sanitary; a much bigger and more daunting task. While they work to support the Empire's cities, most Jade wizards don't feel drawn to them. They prefer open, wild spaces and bodies of water that help pool and power their magic. They can purify water, summon great geysers from under the earth (which also act as a source of fresh water), heal the injured and sick, cure blights, restore fertility to fallow lands, animals, or people (if you need an heir, hire a Jade wizard for a blessing), and are generally amazingly helpful people to have around in an early modern context.

When Teclis was first gathering the human mages, he found people still practicing folk versions of the old Druidic beliefs, especially in areas that held standing henges. Knowing the significance of these places, he was quick to teach the newly recruited Druids (now Jade wizards) just what those henges and waystones represented. As they can feel the flow of leyline magic better than most Imperial Magisters, the Jade Order consider themselves the guardians of these sacred spaces, and travel long distances to make certain the Empire's magical balance is maintained among the stones that inspired their ancestors. The Jade Order's adventuring wizards can be found in every corner of the Empire, studying old standing stones to see if they sit at intersections of leylines and mapping the Empire's magical flows the same way cartographers map its waterways. They then use this knowledge to direct the flow of life energy throughout the Empire via ancient (and new) rituals that will promote the repair of blighted or corrupted regions in the aftermath of the Empire's conflicts.

The Jade wizards have a College building that they almost never bother with. They can be reached by leaving a message at their barely-maintained College, but they spend most of their time congregating and teaching in the rural communities surrounding Altdorf instead. Similarly, they don't concern themselves as much with the formal contracts and business deals most of the other wizardly Orders do. Instead, they are given a standing charge to ensure the Empire's farmland doesn't fall into famine and to come if there's a call to war, and in return the Emperor sets aside a sufficient endowment for the College's upkeep from the treasury. Officially, the order to keep the Empire's agriculture working is the only duty of the Jade Order. Unofficially, as I said above, they are the guardians of the Empire's leylines and waystones. They also clean up Warpstone and other magical pollutants, besides just countering intentional blights from necromancy and Nurglites. In times of war they keep dysentery away from the army, ensure the foraging of an army won't ravage the countryside, feed the Empire's armies, and spy on enemies by asking rivers and trees if they've seen anything unusual.

Unlike a lot of wizards, Jade wizards tend to be friendly and energetic people. Most find pleasure in the company of others just as much as they enjoy their gardening, and they are the most likely of all wizards to have a normal family. Most Jade wizards will marry another Jade wizard, and their children will almost always be magically gifted. By the very nature of their Wind, they are drawn to produce more of themselves. They are also prone to changing with the seasons, growing more energetic and active in spring and summer, and becoming dour and downbeat in fall and winter. Most also perk up when it rains.

Unusually, the Jade Order does not demand crippling student loans from its wizards for reasons of its own increase or upkeep. Jade Apprentices give up many of their possessions in order to teach them to survive off the land, and that they don't need money or metal, but the Order has little use for much besides its official upkeep. Jade training resembles religious ceremony more than any other school of magic, with ancient rituals re-enacted at sacred groves and places of power and lessons bound to the flow of the seasons. Some lessons can only be taught at certain times of the year, or when the moons are in specific positions, and this limits how quickly a young wizard can be trained.

Of all the Empire's wizards, Jade wizards are the most welcomed in its communities. Yes, they're still a wizard, and thus a strange imposition on the world, but where they walk the crops grow, children are born healthy, and livestock thrive; even the most superstitious and bigoted of the Empire's citizens can appreciate that. Jade wizards find more resistance in cities, where their tendency to go barefoot and walk around with flowers in their hair have them marked as backwards bumpkins compared to the more 'modern' Gold Order.

The College itself is a huge walled garden in the middle of Altdorf, built on a natural intersection of power to provide a refuge of nature within the largest city in the Old World. The gardens are larger on the inside than the outside, as is the way of places suffused with powerful magic. Very little teaching is done here. The area serves as more of a home away from home for Magisters who have business in Altdorf, a reminder that even in the heart of the city the Wind of Life still has its place. The center of the College is a huge building of living wood, grown into place from the trees that have grown up around an ancient and powerful Waystone. It is here that the Magister Lords of the Order sit and wait for someone to call on their aid, while tending to the gardens to pass the time.

The Jade Order has the only female leader in the book, Magister Matriarch Tochter Grunfeld (daughter Grunfeld? Really? Tochter is not a first name, book). She is a dedicated mother and instructor, having raised eight children who have all gone on to become successful Magisters of the Order, and was recently elected after the prior Matriarch was killed in action against Archaon's armies. An old woman who has been operating as a full Magister for at least sixty years, she hopes to begin driving back the creeping blight that has been advancing out of Sylvania while the Empire has been busy. To this end, she drives her Order to aid the communities of the eastern Empire, which will also put them in the path of the corruption spread by Archaon's armies.

Next Time: Tricky Wizards who like to steal

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Prism
Dec 22, 2007

yospos

MonsterEnvy posted:

Malakai also created the Goblin Hewer.



The automated axe murder machine is hilarious.

Edit: wait, poo poo, it THROWS them, that's even better.

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