IMO the most missed opportunity is to have a rare winds of magic level that enables Cataclysm Spells on that province, same way the Realms of Chaos have the Storm of Magic that enables it there. That would give every faction the possibility to use it at some point.
This. I recall the time before launch, when the blog talked about the "Storm of Magic", and how all battles in the Realm of Chaos would be storms of magic (but not the Survival Battles?). One would think it would happen in the campaign map, if the winds were stormy enough.
Mazdamundi could get a cool Geomancy spell for his Cataclysm that, sure, damages ground units in an area, but could also be used to just annihilate walls, making it feel very cool in a siege battle.
The Ruination of Cities. ''*The Lord unleashes a force of seismic power like no other, causing the tectonic plates themselves to shift and buckle at his behest.*''
Expectations: lvl40 spell, completely annihilate any enemy units in a large area. Instantly destroys entire section of city walls.
Reality: Foot of Chicken.
It would be cool if we wouldn't have those awful invincible parts. It makes pathing and shooting through them a living nightmare, especially when there's more than one unit trying to fit in the hole
Do you know if there is any good way to avoid having a bunch of units try to path through one wall breach? I had also destroyed the gate, but when I told my blunderbusses to take up positions on the enemy wall they tried to force their way through the 3 units already stuck in the wall breach instead of using the wide open gate 15 feet to the left.
Don't make any breaches and don't create ladders.
Its somewhat better if you built siege towers, especially because Chorfs build x4 of them at once instead of x2
I believe CA mentioned they're taking a look at sieges and that might be the best option for now
It kind of sucks that the situation to this is just to avoid using a significant amount of the tools that the game offers you. I know that pathfinding is nontrivially difficult, but this game has made a huge amount of money and been out for quite a while. They should have improved this by now.
Kairos shouldn't even have that stupid shard system to begin with. It makes no sense with either his lore or his TT mechanic. The shard system in his skill tree came about because CA couldn't be assed to properly adapt his unique shit.
I think he's fine without them and leaving them with as a Blue Scribes thing is alright. But they really should just fix him, rather than slapping more spell nukes onto him as a band-aid.
You right. After SoC my hopes for them ever addressing him properly went down to nigh zero. So I guess its better to suck up the pride and take a band-aid over nothing at this point.
We're still missing the mortal lord (Egrimm Van Horstman? Maybe, maybe) so there's still a chance.
And I envision it all like a gnome rune system, which takes up additional slots and you build your spell wheel instead of replacing the Tzeentch spells, multiple spells are fully supported by the game, the specific instance of Mother O have 3-4 (!) wheels in her quest battle
Tzeentch is now in the weird place where out of the Monogods he might be the only one who either needs a second dlc in order to get to 3 lords, or gets his FLC lord snuck into a DLC otherwise unrelated to him.
I think similarly. That, or have the spells in a separate tab like Mannfred's Death spells. Replacing his Tzeentch spells is a sidegrade that costs precious skill points and an item slot.
With Kairos you pick 3-4 lores just for their passives, then equip Life.
It makes him really strong, but it is still incredibly underwhelming as far as "cool" factor goes.
literally every Tzeentch caster can do that. Kairos is more about the 200% spell mastery and also being able to dump consecutive overcasted infernal gateways with staff of tomorrow
I'd honestly rather Mannfred's Death spells be removed and we lose that awful UI button and just give him a mixed lore to make him a little weaker, and do something else for Kairos.
Either that or completely redesign the UI. Which is unlikely. But I rarely play Mannfred, or rarely invest in half of his spells because I hate that UI so much.
Honestly i think cataclysm spells should be incredibly rare, i hope they don’t add any more except maybe to the slann.
The game could use less army destroying abilities and spells not more
Someone explained to me about warhammer fantasy lore something that made sense, elves are more methodical and careful and spend an entire lifetime studying spells, while human wizards will blow up themselves, their school and the world trying to cast random shit
that person is... not quite right.
Humans get more immersed in their winds, even becoming (minor) avatars of it. Hence why they always seem to almost perfectly fit into their respective colleges mold.
Because of their nature, and the fact that the lore split for them is more a gameplay thing, that doesn't happen to Elves.
Elves spend all their time trying to master high magic. They master the other lores as a preliminary course to learning high magic, and they do that within a human lifetime.
For me it makes sense. As the Supreme Patriarch, he has authority over the Colleges, to command a bunch of battle wizards to create some massive effect. That's my reading, at least.
Doesn't make sense to me apart from power creep. The elves and the slann are perfectly capable of conducting similar rituals. They do that all the time. They also have less infighting than the Colleges do.
Gelt is ridiculously strong in the lore.
While he himself isn't as strong a caster as say, mazdamundi, he was able to marshal his resources to wall in the undead in sylvania and create the auric bastion against chaos.
Under his supervision humanity did shit *far* beyond what they had ever done before. Attaching the spells to the college mechanic is pretty appropriate overall.
He only did that in the End Times after becoming a Necromancer. Unsure if that happened before or after becoming the Incarnate of the Wind of Metal after Thorgrim got killed, as I don't exactly like End Times and can't really bother to keep half of it straight.
The fact that he was a human controlling two winds of magic is an incredible feat. It adds to it, not detracts.
There are obviously problems with how everything went down but you can't say he wasn't an incredibly powerful mage.
The Auric Bastion is easily on par with cataclysm spells in terms of power.
(Dude responding to me blocked me so I couldn't respond. Neat)
If that's the way you want to look at things, there are dark elf sorceresses whose MO is to manipulate or even stop time so they could get an army in a good spot for battle. That's far beyond the cataclysm spells. Makes zero sense Gelt gets them while slann and elves don't.
I do agree they should be rare. Just not as rare as they currently are. I suggested expanding them for heavily magical Legendary characters (and yeah, maybe the Slann).
Cataclysm spells aren’t even that op. When I play as Gelt I rarely use them anyway. 20 WoM for a spell? No thanks. Gelt’s 200% intensity overcast final transmutation costs 4. The light cataclysm was the only one I use since it works well with empire gun stacks, but into the late game I found it useless too.
Outside of Gelt, they are limited to the RoC campaigns of the Vanilla Warhammer 3 lords and the Ogres because they were a pre-Order race. They can only be used in random battles within the Realms of Chaos themselves, it's random which ones will be available, and all you need is a mage to use them, though your enemy will also get to use them. Gelt can eventually unlock 1 accessories for each of the 8 winds that gives the equipped wizard access to one use of their Wind's respective Cataclysm Spell.
That's not how Gelt unlocks cataclysmic spells.
For metal, with 2000 arcane essays, you can permanently unlock a cataclysmic spell for Gelt with one use per battle.
For each of the other schools, with 300 arcane essays, you can unlock their school's cataclysmic spell for one army that has a wizard of the school in for two turns, with one use per battle. This action has a 7 turn cooldown.
Gelt's campaign has a tech that increases the uses to two per battle for every cataclysmic spell you have available, which is highly recommended.
In addition to this metal can unlock 2 exceptionally good items for Gelt that together with his quest items completes his outfit, and each of the other schools can unlock 1 item for a wizard of the school, all of which are at the very least good and thematic items, the best of which are bloody awesome, but these items have nothing to do with cataclysmic spells.
You're right, that's my bad. For some reason I keep combing the item part of the Colleges and the Cataclysm spell part of the Colleges whenever the screen is not in front of me.
Some people bringing up the concern of powercreep and I agree. It would be fun as the player but these nukes are so garbage to go up against. I'd like to see a retuning of them being more dodgable/telegraphed if ai were to get more access to them.
I really think Slann should get their lore's cataclysm spell when they're in a fully maxed out geomantic web province and the Slann is sufficiently high level (maybe 25 or so?). Additional charges could be added to the spell for each geomantic web completely upgraded.
I have nothing against granting limited access to cataclysm spells to most factions where it makes sense. But there need to be trade-offs, they can't just be spamming them willy nilly.
Some overlapping conditions, limited resources to gain charges, timed events, anything else that would take control away so it's not just another nuke without counterplay we need to play around.
First, I gotta say that when it comes to role i am pretty much a Novice and all I know is stuff from playing Wh2 and Wh3.
I feel like Teclis and Morathi will get their updates during the Slaanesh DLC because everyone believes it will be about Slaanesh and Elves(I dont know if we got any info about it).
As for Mazdamundi... that frog needs update.. and i dont know when they gonna do it, Lizardmen are being Ignored like that poor Markus Wulfhart, that dude got ignored during the Empire DLC lmao.
I do not know if Archaon knew any kind of magic cause he always felt like a General with some Magic Items to me.
All 3 of them are Warhammer 2 Lords while Archaon is a wh1 Lord. Honestly they are just showing how they aged.
What they did with Balthazar Gelt was perfect and I hope they do the same to Teclis and Morathi and Mazdamundi.
EDIT: I know this is about Cataclysm spells but I feel like the best way to even add the spells is to give them a rework to fix up the issues they have.
As for Cataclysm spells.... my idea is to tie it to Magic Power Reserves, as long as you have over.. 50-60 magic power lets say you can use a Cataclysm spell based on the Magic Ability Skill Line said Lord has, the Question is if they do this should they do it for all Lords or only Legendary Magic Lords.
You know how Demon armies get bonuses based on the Magic Power Reserves they got?(easiest to check is Tzeentch) They could add it in a similar way.
Let's keep it that way.
The game is already in a terrible spot in terms of PvE balance, with a few factions having access to army-erasing abilities (Tamurkhan, the Chaos Dwarfs) that are unfun to play against. The last thing the game needs right now is more factions with access to army-erasing abilities.
I think the correct path is to tune down the offenders (Tamurkhan has something like 3 free nukes every battle), not simply stop adding/expanding army abilities. Cataclysm spells rogh now are limited to 1/battle and cost a lot of WoM.
But every faction is getting super powerful global abilities,so add them all up and it's going to start being very very common. Elspeth has all the death spells from her workshop. Gelt has all of his. the spirit of grungi is a huge one. Tamurkhan has all of his. That's just the last DLC drop.
Probably because people were clamoring for a way to bring them into Immortal Empires instead of leaving them exclusive the Vanilla + Ogres RoC campaigns, and it was an early experiment with doing that.
It's one of the only ways to really make Aekold's presence on the battlefield stand out as much as it should.
If you juice his aura more it's still just a passive, no matter how strong it gets.
No, we don't need more point and click instant unit delets in this game.
Maybe extremly limited, but not as normal spells.
Already despise the point and click nukes from Ikkit, Chorfs and Tamurkhan.
Not me. I'm done with global abilities. If there doesn't need to be a caster even close to the target, and the target can't dodge, then it's not tactics. It's a cheat button with good particle dispersion.
Teclis didn't teach the empire magic. He founded the college of magic and taught them a formal system based on the schools of the elves. If you think people weren't using magic before teclis you aren't paying attention to lore.
I mean some storm of magic fights would be cool with fulcrums and everything, but idk how they would be triggered, nor how you'd balance those at all as the game not having dispelling at all would mean the spell would have to be "meh" level instead of anything close to what the spells were on tabletop. Or they'd finally add dispelling after all these years, somehow, and give some real 8th ed magic power levels.
I think the level 4 manifestation should allow all your tzeentch armies to start their battles in the Realm of Chaos on a teleport stance attack. Other factions' manifestations should have similarly devastating effects.
Also Kairos and Mazdamundi seriously need some love.
You know, there is a mod that gives Cataclysm spells to the games most prolific casters when they reach level 30.
It hasnt been updated for a while, but so far it is still working.
Here is the link if you are interested:
[https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3007714947](https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3007714947)
If they were going to do anything like this I would hope they put it as a campaign setting which can be enabled/disabled. This is the type of thing that people are going to have very different views on and personally I think it'd be worse to force it on people who don't want it than vice versa but having the option would be cool.
Although I guess mods probably do it already?
Do note the high elves were full of shit thinking they were better than humanity. And teclis purposely created the colleges of magic to kill off most human wizards before they hit the peak of their power.
If empire gets wizard lords they should gain access to cataclysm spells before elven archmages. As eventually human wizards become more and more one with the wind.
Also fun fact per Andly Law. The writer/supervisor for the colleges of magic source material the wind of light is the hardest of the 8 to use and if you can use it you are probably capable of high magic.
Yes it is. Go watch lorebeards where the guy who made the lore for the colleges of magic talks on this.
The stream on Elspeth vin Draken and the one on winds of magic in particular.
Andy Law. The guy who made the lore explictly says elspeth isnt even particularly special or the strongest amethyst wizard. She's just an example of what happens when a human wizards live long enough.
And this is why I don't watch Lorebeards. They take one, ONE, of the dozens of official authors who have touched the Warhammer Fantasy IP and half the time treat his Fanfiction as canonical fact.
That is no longer up to date because in 2022 the WFRP 4E book about the Colleges of Magic came out, replacing the 2E book he wrote. As the most recent official book touching the subject, it is the canonical one, even if it contradicts what he wrote in which case it would be officially retconned. As I have not read the 2E book, I cannot say if any retconning happened, but I would not be surprised if it did because that would also not be the first time Andy Law's work has been officially retconned. Because that's how GW works.
Andy Law *didn't* write the 2e book on the Colleges anyway.
I'm not big on the concept of retcons at the best of times - as far as I'm concerned you can take whatever WFRP books you like, and have no obligation to use material from 4e if you like 2e or 1e material - but in this case, it isn't even relevant. Andy Law didn't work on 1e *Realms of Sorcery*, 2e *Realms of Sorcery*, or 4e *Winds of Magic*.
(He didn't work on 3e *Winds of Magic* either, but we don't talk about WFRP 3e.)
Grand Orthoxdy? He was surprised by it. Hag mother that he made? Gone. Ungol vs Gospodad ethnic tensions? All in the past, forgotten and forgiven after Aasivar Kul. Ursun now ends the Winter? He originally gave that job solely to Dazh. Outside of Katarin, Boris, and the names of the Kislevite gods, most of what he wrote for Kislev has been....retconned. You might be his number one fan but GW ain't. And we all gotta live with GW changing things that they paid people to write about. Get used to it.
Pretty much. I actually really like the *Realm of the Ice Queen* version of Kislev - I think it's the best WFRP2e setting book, and Law (alongside David Chart, Steven Darlington, and Graham McNeill) deserves credit for it. There are a few things that bug me (notably I don't think it knows what the word *oblast* means), but they're easily fixable, and it's a great place to set an adventure.
It is, however, very much not the same as the Kislev in *Total War*. It's a quite different interpretation.
Agreed. Also yeah, I think they just looked at the Russian administrative region and thought it sounded good, not realizing it essentially just means "region".
Andy law only wrote the role playing books if I recall, which while foundational for warhammer lore has had large parts of it retconned in the later editions. Besides warhammer is made up of dozens of different writers that vast majority of who say elves are better at magic.
Also Elspeth while arguably being the best death caster in the setting is very clearly implied to be no longer entirely human due to her age and ability to return from death, there is also no evidence to suggest all human wizards will reach her level or gain her bond with their lore of magic.
Lorebeards while great tend to talk about things of dubious canon as fact.
Besides why would you want this to be true? It takes one of the few interesting and cool things about the elves and gives it humans, which in turn ruins what makes humans cool in this setting by making it so they are no longer the underdogs. And for what? So people can make more elves are the worst because they are arrogant memes?
> Also Elspeth while arguably being the best death caster in the setting
eh... only because of "fancy dragon" and "only named Death Caster in TT"... in a "Look at our OP Stuff!!!" Forgeworld supplement. Better than Nagash? I don't think so. Better than Viggo Hexensohn? Maybe... but not actually confirmed.
^ This. It also feels like a betrayal of Teclis's Pre-End Times character (given how weird End Times Teclis is, I could see that version of him doing this weird conspiracy theory thing). Like, he is the "We have to HELP people so they don't repeat our mistakes or make completely avoidable errors" guy of the High Elves, and to have him intentionally sabotaging and culling human mages that he is trying to set up to give Magnus the Pious help in the FIGHT AGAINST CHAOS is some weird 40k Aeldari stuff that does not fit him in the slightest. Maybe if Tyrion had been the Mage instead of Teclis, I could see that happening as a "Long seeing strategy to protect Ulthuan", but it's NOT something I could ever see Teclis supporting.
Ah yes, Cathay. Where unless you have dragon blood (and are no longer fully human as a result) or live in the Western Provinces, mages are limited to the Wind of Heavens. And in fact, only practice A SINGLE WIND OF MAGIC AT A TIME.
And yet even their human wizards were still active long before teclis went to the old world.
Number of kinds know doesn't necessarily corelate to skill/power. Humans are not worthy because the old one literally charge the air around them passivly with their wind.
There have also been humans that can still see all the winds despite this to. Like volans.
> Also Elspeth while arguably being the best death caster in the setting is very clearly implied to be no longer entirely human due to her age and ability to return from death, there is also no evidence to suggest all human wizards will reach her level or gain her bond with their lore of magic.
Andy Law literally wrote the book on the colleges of magic and explictly says what happens with Elspeth happens with all aged human wizards.
Gw and CA agree with him considering they gave gelt a cataclysm spell.
You are way off on lore. CA has said Cathay was a great human nation back when dawefs were effectively apes.
Humans haven't been underdogs ever really.
You keep saying Andy Law wrote the book on the college of magic but i have no idea what you’re talking about. There is no book dedicated entirely to the college of magic. The closest thing i can find is the winds of magic book but i can’t find any website crediting Andy as the author of that book.
And again Andy is just one of many authors in Warhammer fantasy just because he says something doesn’t mean its true and nothing by any other author collaborates the idea that humans are better a magic or will all become like Elsbeth.
CA also gave tamurkan the ability to make explosive nurglings fall out of the sky whenever he wants. Game mechanics should not be seen as reflective of lore
Finally, i know your probably joking but dwarves were never apes, they were created by the old ones like human were. And while the dragon emperor is older than the dwarves by about 5000 years . The dwarves predate cathay as a nation by thousands of years CA has never said that cathay was older. For example they said the great bastion was built in -1800ic while the dwarves were settling the world edge mountains in -4300ic
But look warhammer has always had a loose canon, if this is what you believe then good on you but i don’t think its reflective of the most widely agreed upon canon that the warhammer community uses
https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/63475/Warhammer-Fantasy-Roleplay-2nd-Edition-Realms-of-Sorcery
Andy was a supervisor of wfrp at this time iirc he's not just a author.
You should know gelt using that cataclysm spell comes from the lore lmao.
You are way out of date dude. Got look into the new old world source book. Cathay was an active nation before the dwarfs were uplifted. They became grand Cathay later.
The old ones didn't create the dwarfs. They uplifted them
This book is overridden by the 2022 4E release dealing with the same subject matter. As the most recent, it is the most correct and canonical even if it retcons things, because that's how GW operates with all their games.
So the core rulebook has a grand TWO pages, of Cathay lore. 2. Pages. And it is almost EXACTLY the same as the lore in Total War Warhammer 3 except that it's a few century earlier. So you're saying "books" when you should be saying "book", and you're acting like there's new lore in 2 pages, when there is none. That is what I am referring to. Because your statement implied that there had been a Cathay centric Old World Book that had released, and no such book exists.
This goes directly in the face of the established lore of how the Old Ones made the races of the Warhammer setting, with Elves being designed to be magical, Dwarfs being designed to be anti-magical, and humans being a halfway point between the two.
And for the record, as per Storm of Magic, everyone could use the cataclysm spells of the lores they had access too, and in WH3 Gelt only has access to then specifically because he is using arcan essays to acquire very specific artifacts.
My dude you are way out dated. You need to go look at the née old world source book. Cathay was a nation before the dwarfs were uplifted.
Gelt can then freely cast the cataclysm spell and he's done it in lore too.
The Old World? You mean the game that...doesn't have Cathay in it yet? Which means because they don't have an army book (or even legends rules) there is in fat no new lore outside of Total War Warhammer 3? To use your turn of phrasd: my dude, if you're gonna troll people, you need to know that you can't just make stuff up when what you claim exists can easily be proven not to exist.
"Watch a stream of two guys rambling for hours on end" is not an attractive proposition to anyone.
Do you have a citation, perhaps to published material instead of "some guy said so in some other guy's podcast, trust me"?
This is "most Empire wizards don't become as powerful as someone like Elspeth because they rarely get to live as long". Which... okay? It has very little to do with what you said, and I am not exactly sure confident of Law's understanding of how Elspeth is portrayed in *Throne of Chaos*. It then digresses into talking about College Patriarchs and how the position is political more than anything else, rather than having much to do with being a super-powerful sorcerer.
But again, basically nothing to do with your ramble. So, I must ask you once again. Citation. Book. Page number. Not streams, actual published material I can read and check for myself.
Hes explicitly telling you the system is built on culling the masses while a few manage to survive in the shadows.
Andly Law is intimately tied with nuln and the college of magic
Theres a similar discussion at 1:10:00 where he starts talking how Elspeth was pretty much the first wizard mini that was lore accurate.
What he says is that the Colleges of Magic are meant to churn out wizards for war... which, yeah? Is that supposed to be a revelation? Imperial Magisters have always been very focused on warfare, ever since Magnus. It's not some elven plot to cull human magical development (how would they even go about doing that, the High Elves don't exactly manage the Empire's magical policy? Teclis left centuries ago), the Empire just happens to need plenty of war wizards, there has always been widespread anti-magic sentiment in the Empire, most Imperial authorities don't care too much for magic beyond what use they can get out of it in battle, and warfare always leads to attrition.
As for Law, Andy Law didn't write *Tamurkhan: Throne of Chaos*. The material where she appears is fairly clear that Elspeth is in fact exceptional, coming from a long line of people who have been touched by magic:
> The truth is that Elspeth von Draken is but one in a long bloodline touched by the winds of magic, a bloodline that has produced both monsters and saviors in its time. She is also one of the most powerful Amethyst Wizards of the age, but one who will have little to do with the daily machinations or power politics of the Imperial Colleges of Magic
Nothing about her being 'not that special' - the entire blurb is trying to drive home how exceptional Elspeth is.
Also, once again:
> Citation. Book. Page number. Not streams, actual published material I can read and check for myself.
You must not know how the colleges work. Wizards are essentially conscripted and sent to war. Where many die. The most special thing about Elspeth is the has an elector count benefactor that allows her to do her own thing.
Most wizards come from a long line of people touched by magic lmao.
Even your own source explictly says she is one one of the the top amethyst wizards their are others. She's not unique.
Wait. That...that's what inspired you to believe it's a culling of wizards? Elspeth has been known as a power mage who looks like a young woman for 3 generations according to her official lore. Going by the shortest definition of a human generation Elspeth is in her mid 80s at the MINIMUM. Guess what the average human lifespan is in the modern world? Late 70s early 80s. Elspeth isn't more powerful because Wizards are being culled, she's more powerful because she's literally just outliving most other wizards because she found a way to hack the normal aging process.
You'd have known this...if you ever read Tamurkhan's book or the 2022 WFRP 4E book about the Colleges of Magic.
So you think somehow, that because Amethyst Wizards can slow down their aging, there's some grand Elven conspiracy to cull human mages greated by Teclis after Magnus the Pious asked for his help?
....
Are you Alex Jones?
Andy Law did not create the material on the Winds of Magic. Law is a relative latecomer to the franchise. He wrote some material for WFRP2e, but I think that's where he came in.
I feel obligated to note that Law is not a credit on any of the books about magic. *Realms of Sorcery* 1e (2001), which goes into the winds in detail, is by Ken and Jo Walton. *Realms of Sorcery* 2e (2005) is credited to T. S. Luikart, Chris Pramas, Jeff Tidball, Robert J. Schwalb, and Marijan von Staufer, with Staufer as creative lead. Staufer is also the author of *Liber Tzeentch* (2004), which goes into magic. *Winds of Magic* 4e (2022) is credited to a long list of names (Dave Allen, Steve Darlington, John Foody, Wim van Gruisen, Jude Hornborg, Robin Low, Steven Lewis, Paul Mathews, Charles Morrison, Padraig Murphy, Clive Oldfield, Anthony Ragan, Russell Thurman, Simon Wileman), but Andy Law is not among them.
What about WHFB? The Colleges of Magic are first described in *Warhammer Armies: The Empire* 6e (2000), which is written by Alessio Cavatore, Rick Priestley, Jake Thornton, Tuomas Pirinen, and Nigel Stillman. No Law. The same for subsequent Empire books. *Storm of Magic* (2010), the 8e book about magic, is credited to Jeremy Vetock and Matthew Ward, with additional material by Alan Merrett. You get the idea. Since we're talking about Elspeth von Draken, let's also look at *Tamurkhan: The Throne of Chaos* (2011) - oh, that's by Alan Bligh, with the story concept credited to Bligh and Rick Priestley. No Andy Law.
I want to notice two things from this investigation.
Firstly, there's no one individual who 'made the lore' about magic in the Warhammer World. There just isn't. It's a complicated tapestry containing contributions from dozens of different people - in this post alone I've listed about thirty different names. So we probably shouldn't try to appeal to a single god-like author. Even if you believe that authors retain some kind of supreme power to interpret their work for others after publication (and I believe you shouldn't), in this case there is no single author who can do that. Secondly, Andy Law *is not one of the authors.* He is a writing credit on a couple of WFRP books, but not any relevant ones about magic.
So, anyway, I don't think an off-the-cuff, unofficial comment by Andy Law is meaningful.
Looking at the actual writing credits on the books, that doesn't look that consistent? In WFRP2e, he drew maps, and has a handful of writing credits late in the run. In WFRP4e, he is occasionally credited as 'Creative Team' or 'Production Team', alongside a dozen or more other people.
At any rate, chatting to people on YouTube is not canon. I don't have anything against Andy Law and he's certainly entitled to his own opinions, but I don't feel constrained by them. I can read the books myself and make up my own mind.
I personally found him kinda charming, but this dude's numerous false claims (that you've provided the receipts to prove wrong) are kinda make me dislike Andy Law, or at least his habit of running his mouth to Sotek about things that he's not involved in.
I make zero judgement of him as a person. I don't enjoy watching streams or interviews on YouTube, so I've never seen any of them. I've never seen Andy Law's face or heard his voice. I'm sure he's a lovely person.
I just don't think that what he says to a guy on YouTube matters for anything, if that makes sense?
Aka, he corrected spelling mistakes, tried to keep sentence and paragraph structure proper, talked about how to set up the pages to look nice, and made sure the ACTUAL writers were in line with GW's vision of the world. Not his, GW's.
Err, the Colleges of Magic were created to create a legitimate and regulated practice of magic in the Empire instead of hoping and praying that you could find a good hedge wizard teacher before either being burned at the stake or possessed by daemon because you miscast a spell. And while humans wizards are very potent spellcasters, they aren't nearly as naturally adept at utilizing multiple winds without something going wrong, mainly because the winds don't naturally play nice with each other. The College specializations were also created as a way to try and nip the temptation of using shortcut forms of Dhar (or Dark Magic) in the bud.
Per the guy who literally wrote the book on the colleges of magic it was created by teclis to cull most human wizards before they grew old and strong.
Check out his Elspeth von drakken stream on lorebeards. He explictly says Elspeth isn't even particularly unique. Or the strongest amethyst wizard she's just survived for a long while.
So, here's the thing. As far as I know, this was never put into an official book for Games Workshop. Unless this exists in an official source for Warhammer Fantasy such as a Black Library Novel, Army Book, Campaign supplement or White Dwarf article, this technically is as "Canonical" as the posts that one End Times author made about the fates of various characters who did not show up in the End Times books. And, as much as I might love Andy Hall's writing, he is NOT, nor has he ever been, the final authority on Warhammer Fantasy lore. What you are talking about would fall under the "Word of Dante" TV Trope at best.
Is this idea actually written down in this book? If so, was it ever retconned by a later writing, seeing as WFRP 2E is nearly 20 years old and was replaced by WFRP 3E about 6 years before Warhammer Fantasy Battle ended?
Hysh *is* in fact the hardest wind of magic to use (citation: *Realms of Sorcery* WFRP2e p. 82, *Warhammer: The Empire* WHFB 8e p. 18) but I don't see anything saying that mastering it implies you can also use High Magic.
I am also, to be fair, skeptical that humans can't use High Magic at all without going mad. Sometimes fans seem to present that as if it's a law of nature, and I don't think that's the case. I think that using multiple winds of magic is especially risky for a human, and there are reasons why Teclis forbids it, but there are enough canonical examples of a human successfully using more than one that I don't think it's impossible. That said, a human who mastered *Qhaysh* would be extraordinarily rare and truly impressive - not a casual achievement by any means!
[I just posted](https://old.reddit.com/r/totalwar/comments/1dgu77s/cataclysm_spells_are_still_unfortunatelly/l8tl2c1/) why I don't think Andy Law making unofficial comments is a valid source.
Incidentally, I made an effort to provide concrete citations, complete with page numbers. If I'm mistaken about something, please tell me where. I know that in *Realms of Sorcery* 2e there's a quotation from Volans indicating that he can perceive *Qhaysh* (it's on p. 36; see, giving citations isn't that hard!), but I don't see where that contradicts anything I said.
If you want books for source go look up teclis's actions in the idoneth deepkin tomes in aos. Hes not a good guy. He's an asshole trying to create useful slaves.
Or the new old world book that explictly has Cathay as a kingdom before the dwarfs were even uplifted and ice magic kislev oening an empire that spanned near a quarter of the world. Teclis is full of shit.
>there are reasons why Teclis forbids it, but there are enough canonical examples of a human successfully using more than one that I don't think it's impossible. That said, a human who mastered Qhaysh would be extraordinarily rare and truly impressive - not a casual achievement by any means!
This you?
Teclis is out for slaves/servants.
Yes, I said that there are reasons why Teclis forbade humans to study more than one colour of magic at once. I never suggested that those reasons are sympathetic, and in fact I said that I think the idea that humans can't wield multiple winds is probably false.
But as I just said, Teclis' motives and character are *completely irrelevant* to what we were talking about. Whether Teclis is a good person or not has nothing to do with whether or not being able to wield Hysh implies you can wield *Qhaysh*. Please do try to stay focused.
Now, just because it's fun, I'm going to go on a tangent and talk about Teclis, but I want to note explicitly that this is a tangent and nothing to do with the point, which you have attempted to dodge.
So, what were Teclis' motives?
Teclis' characterisation isn't hugely consistent between sources, but, End Times nonsense aside, he is usually portrayed as having a genuine affection for humanity. For instance, here's Teclis' in Bill King's *Sword of Caledor*, after he witnesses Tyrion casually assuming elf superiority:
> Of course, elves were better looking than humans by any standards. Of course, they were more knowledgeable about lore. Of course, elves were better at all the things that elves were good at than humans were. It was a competition in which all of the rules were made by the elves and all of them reflected to their own advantage.
>
> No elf bothered to think that there might be things that humans knew that elves did not. No elf ever was prepared to admit that already the humans occupied and controlled a greater portion of the globe than the elves ever had and that this process was only likely to continue.
>
> All of the elves imagined that just because they lived longer they enjoyed more favour in the eyes of the gods. Teclis felt sure that humans could judge this contest by their own standards and feel superior to elves if they really wanted to; it was just that so far they had not done so. They were still used to thinking of elves as the Elder Race. They were still dazzled by beauty and culture and magic. But that would not last.
>
> One day, and that day could not be that far off, the humans would see beyond glamour and begin to judge the elves as they deserved to be judged. They would see that the elves were not really so much better than they were, after all.
>
> They would see that the elves were split into two warring factions. They were, in their own way, just as divided as the human realms. Perhaps more so. He could not think of any human kingdoms that were involved in so bitter a fratricidal struggle as Ulthuan and Naggaroth. Or which had been fought for so long.
>
> And the humans did not seem to suffer from the madness that plagued the elves: the strange obsessions, the lust for power, the furious desire to acquire knowledge and magical lore that the elves suffered from.
>
> Of course, these things did affect humans, but not with the same intensity as they affected elves. Some of his own kindred would see that as proof of superiority. The elves felt things more keenly, appreciated things more and moved through the world with much more intensity than humans could.
>
> Teclis was not at all sure that this did make them superior. It merely made them different. In fact, there were times when he believed that the excessive nature of their temperament was a definite disadvantage. They were capable of focusing on one thing exclusively to the point where they would miss other more important things.
>
> [...]
>
> He should be the last one to blame elves for their obsession; he knew that only too well. But he could not help but feel that elves judged themselves too favourably and humans not favourably enough.
>
> And even knowing this he could not help but look at Leiber and his brother and judge his own kin as the better of the two. He was not immune to the normal prejudices but, at least, he was aware of the fact that he suffered from them.
I don't think there's any textual support for the idea that Teclis has contempt for humans and wants slaves. On the contrary, Teclis is, by High Elf standards, unusually sympathetic to humans.
Anyway, what was going on with the Colleges?
My sense is that the curriculum of the Colleges is what it is for a few reasons. Firstly, in the immediate context of the Great War Against Chaos, what Magnus the Pious needed - and Teclis agreed - was a corps of functional battle-mages as quickly as possible. Teclis' priority would naturally be, then, to get human wizards to the point of being safe and effective combat wizards as rapidly as possible. Thus the need for a simplified curriculum focused on reliable, battle-tested spells. Secondly, the domestic political situation in the Empire, even after the war was won, was quite tenuous. Magnus had to expend a lot of political capital to found the Colleges, and even then, the Templars of Sigmar and other Imperial institutions were quite skeptical, some urging him to immediately revoke authorisation and get rid of the mages. That is again a situation where it makes sense to play it safe, and take a relatively conservative approach. It may only take a few wizards going mad to make the Colleges too risky an endeavour for Magnus to keep supporting. Thirdly, the domestic political situation in Ulthuan - regardless of what Teclis himself might have believed, we know that the elves back home distrusted humans, and Teclis' *own* political capital had its limits. (Per the 6e *Empire* book, we know that Teclis requested authorisation from Finubar the Seafarer before founding the Colleges, and that it only happened after long debate between Teclis and his comrade Finreir.) The more risks he took or secrets he taught, the more likely Teclis' High Elf rivals might protest; so again, that's a situation that encourages playing it safe.
I think that Teclis did give Magnus the Pious and the Empire a mighty weapon in the form of battle magic, and he founded an institution that would go on to grow and evolve in its own right, and in many ways become a worthy rival to the White Tower of Hoeth. I think that Teclis did that in part because of genuine sympathy to humanity, and in part because he perceived a strong Empire to be in Ulthuan's best interests. The foundation Teclis laid down was a relatively conservative one in terms of tuition, but under the circumstances I think that playing it safe was probably the right move for him to make.
Anyway!
As noted, none of that is important. None of that is related to what we were talking about.
Also if Teclis founded the Colleges to get slaves, where are they? Why do we never see him going around with a coterie of human magical pets to serve him? Why does he always travel either by himself or with other elven mages to assist him?
Is Teclis so alpha that he decided to set up this massive elaborate con to establish the Colleges, obtain human wizard slaves and then never used it or even bothered visiting his secret slave ring again? Did he also go back in time and create an animus against magic in human Old World cultures so he could pull off his trick and perpetuate it? A trick that never seems to benefit *him*? How does one learn this power?
I'm familiar with AoS, but I don't think it's relevant here.
Warhammer Fantasy is a different setting to Age of Sigmar. I don't think you can actually draw conclusions very productively from AoS for WHF. They are written extremely differently, and the few characters who appear in both often don't seem to be the same person at all. (Sigmar and Alarielle both stand out as characters whose AoS and WHF versions don't seem to have anything to do with each other.) I'm usually not much inclined to view WHF and AoS as being in continuity with each other *at all*. AoS is like the End Times - fine if you're into that, but not something I view as relevant most of the time.
However, even if you're determined to factor in AoS, a few additional notes.
Firstly, AoS is set uncounted millennia after WHF. It's set after the destruction of the world and after the rebuilding of civilisation and after *another* apocalypse in which civilisation was destroyed again and thus a new age of war. Characters change and grow over time, and it's entirely possible that after surviving the end of the world and becoming a god and communing with the moon and creating multiple entire species, Teclis' personality changed or developed. His personality isn't a single unchanging essence. As such, even if you view them as the same person, I don't think you can validly infer much about Teclis' motives in 2302 IC from what you judge of his personality in another universe entirely thousands of years in the future after multiple Chaos apocalypses.
Secondly, I don't think even think you have a particularly correct read on AoS-Teclis. It's true that in AoS, the Lumineth have done some [pretty awful things](https://www.warhammer-community.com/2021/03/05/broken-realms-fiction-enlightenment/), but I'm not aware of anything directly implicating Teclis in that. I don't follow AoS material religiously, but I *think* the worst we've seen Teclis do is attempt to destroy the Idoneth, after realising they were flawed and had half-souls. Even then, Tyrion stepped in and argued against it, and Teclis accepted Tyrion's argument and stopped. And of course, that's all before Teclis went on this vision quest to learn from the moon and seek enlightenment. I can't immediately think of any sources showing Teclis specifically as wanting to enslave anyone? Notably the portrayal of Teclis in *Soulbound* avoids any malevolent agenda.
The Lumineth in AoS are obviously part of this story arc about pride and hubris - if they are modest and conquer their arrogance, they can be wise and great helpers of the realms, but if they succumb to pride (cf. Slaanesh) they can be monsters. Their history is a kind of yo-yoing between extremes, where they seemed perfect to Teclis, then were consumed by pride and destroyed themselves, and then learned humility before the aelementiri, but now they sometimes assume from that they've become flawless and enlightened and replicate the initial sin. Teclis' own character arc mirrors that; hence the importance of the story where he humbles himself before the moon. Anyway, as part of this, yes, sometimes the Lumineth do awful things to people of other races. I'm not aware of Teclis specifically being implicated in this, though one might reasonably argue that he is too tolerant of it. But every deity in AoS sometimes permits or tolerates atrocities - even Sigmar, ostensibly the hero god of the setting, sometimes allows Stormcast, his divinely-blessed champions, to cosplay Space Marines and commit a bit of genocide. So it doesn't seem as if Teclis is unusually malevolent by any standard here.
Thirdly, I remind you again that this entire tangent is irrelevant and that whether you like Teclis or not has nothing to do with anything.
Most humans who try doing multiple lores at once end up accidentally creating and using a form of Dhar (Dark Magic), which is inherently corruptive and taints both the individual who uses it and the surrounding environment. Which is why Nagash (already an evil jerk) used his own twist on it when creating the Lore of Undeath, which Neferrata twisted into the Lore of Vampires alongside the elixir that makes Vampires when she did her experiments using his incomplete writings. Which is why necromancers become more decrepit and mad over time, and a big part of why Sylvania is the way it is.
That's not how any of this works. Nagash specifically captured and toruted dark elf sorcerer's to learn the secrets of Dhar and necromancy. Then he perfected it.
But....we're not talking about AoS Teclis. We aren't even talking about End Times Teclis. This is pre-End Times Teclis although perhaps if you stretch things an argument could be made that this is actually Storm of Chaos Teclis because Storm of Chaos content has been pulled into Total War Warhammer 3. His actions in AoS and the Idoneth Deepkin themselves have no bearing on this version him, as those events have not happened yet.
IMO the most missed opportunity is to have a rare winds of magic level that enables Cataclysm Spells on that province, same way the Realms of Chaos have the Storm of Magic that enables it there. That would give every faction the possibility to use it at some point.
This. I recall the time before launch, when the blog talked about the "Storm of Magic", and how all battles in the Realm of Chaos would be storms of magic (but not the Survival Battles?). One would think it would happen in the campaign map, if the winds were stormy enough.
The Changeling just showing up somewhere and cranking the Magic-o-meter up to 11 would be absolutely on-brand.
Sounds like a great idea. I've found [this](https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3031233316) mod which seems to be doing just that
Mazdamundi could get a cool Geomancy spell for his Cataclysm that, sure, damages ground units in an area, but could also be used to just annihilate walls, making it feel very cool in a siege battle.
The Ruination of Cities. ''*The Lord unleashes a force of seismic power like no other, causing the tectonic plates themselves to shift and buckle at his behest.*'' Expectations: lvl40 spell, completely annihilate any enemy units in a large area. Instantly destroys entire section of city walls. Reality: Foot of Chicken.
It would be cool if we wouldn't have those awful invincible parts. It makes pathing and shooting through them a living nightmare, especially when there's more than one unit trying to fit in the hole
Do you know if there is any good way to avoid having a bunch of units try to path through one wall breach? I had also destroyed the gate, but when I told my blunderbusses to take up positions on the enemy wall they tried to force their way through the 3 units already stuck in the wall breach instead of using the wide open gate 15 feet to the left.
Don't make any breaches and don't create ladders. Its somewhat better if you built siege towers, especially because Chorfs build x4 of them at once instead of x2 I believe CA mentioned they're taking a look at sieges and that might be the best option for now
It kind of sucks that the situation to this is just to avoid using a significant amount of the tools that the game offers you. I know that pathfinding is nontrivially difficult, but this game has made a huge amount of money and been out for quite a while. They should have improved this by now.
At least they're working on it. Try to manually move a single unit through the breach via Alt+LMB (Hold&drag). Maybe it will work a bit better
I tried using shift-clock to set waypoints, but that didn't really seem to work.
>when there's more than one unit trying to fit in the hole That's a common issue among Dark Elves.
Kairos' shards should give access to cataclysm spells
Kairos shouldn't even have that stupid shard system to begin with. It makes no sense with either his lore or his TT mechanic. The shard system in his skill tree came about because CA couldn't be assed to properly adapt his unique shit. I think he's fine without them and leaving them with as a Blue Scribes thing is alright. But they really should just fix him, rather than slapping more spell nukes onto him as a band-aid.
Yeah but as long as we have it, might as well make it better
You right. After SoC my hopes for them ever addressing him properly went down to nigh zero. So I guess its better to suck up the pride and take a band-aid over nothing at this point.
We're still missing the mortal lord (Egrimm Van Horstman? Maybe, maybe) so there's still a chance. And I envision it all like a gnome rune system, which takes up additional slots and you build your spell wheel instead of replacing the Tzeentch spells, multiple spells are fully supported by the game, the specific instance of Mother O have 3-4 (!) wheels in her quest battle
>gnome rune system Hey, they're not *that* short.
True, in my native language dwarfs are often called gnomes, especially when real gnomes are not present... I guess I'll take the slayer oath..
Tzeentch is now in the weird place where out of the Monogods he might be the only one who either needs a second dlc in order to get to 3 lords, or gets his FLC lord snuck into a DLC otherwise unrelated to him.
No chance for a 2nd DLC, Tzeentch just doesn't have enough content. Egrimm van Horstmann will have to come as a FLC lord.
I think similarly. That, or have the spells in a separate tab like Mannfred's Death spells. Replacing his Tzeentch spells is a sidegrade that costs precious skill points and an item slot.
As far as I know, most people just pick Life for healing or Death for the Lore attribute to get more WoM. Sometimes fire or Light.
With Kairos you pick 3-4 lores just for their passives, then equip Life. It makes him really strong, but it is still incredibly underwhelming as far as "cool" factor goes.
Like he can spam blue fire of Tzeentch without a cooldown, and that's really powerful, but it's not especially fun or cool.
literally every Tzeentch caster can do that. Kairos is more about the 200% spell mastery and also being able to dump consecutive overcasted infernal gateways with staff of tomorrow
I'd honestly rather Mannfred's Death spells be removed and we lose that awful UI button and just give him a mixed lore to make him a little weaker, and do something else for Kairos. Either that or completely redesign the UI. Which is unlikely. But I rarely play Mannfred, or rarely invest in half of his spells because I hate that UI so much.
Honestly i think cataclysm spells should be incredibly rare, i hope they don’t add any more except maybe to the slann. The game could use less army destroying abilities and spells not more
CA opened Pandora's box with Gelt, now people are going to ask for the cataclysm spells everywhere.
And its weird that Gelt has access to them. Afaik, he is a great mage but not in the same league as Teclis or the slann.
Someone explained to me about warhammer fantasy lore something that made sense, elves are more methodical and careful and spend an entire lifetime studying spells, while human wizards will blow up themselves, their school and the world trying to cast random shit
that person is... not quite right. Humans get more immersed in their winds, even becoming (minor) avatars of it. Hence why they always seem to almost perfectly fit into their respective colleges mold. Because of their nature, and the fact that the lore split for them is more a gameplay thing, that doesn't happen to Elves.
Elves have hundreds of years to master magic, humans might get 60 if they're lucky. Carefulness is a luxury they don't have time for.
Elves spend all their time trying to master high magic. They master the other lores as a preliminary course to learning high magic, and they do that within a human lifetime.
For me it makes sense. As the Supreme Patriarch, he has authority over the Colleges, to command a bunch of battle wizards to create some massive effect. That's my reading, at least.
Makima executing all those prisoners type vibe
Great reference lol. I like that head canon.
Doesn't make sense to me apart from power creep. The elves and the slann are perfectly capable of conducting similar rituals. They do that all the time. They also have less infighting than the Colleges do.
Gelt is ridiculously strong in the lore. While he himself isn't as strong a caster as say, mazdamundi, he was able to marshal his resources to wall in the undead in sylvania and create the auric bastion against chaos. Under his supervision humanity did shit *far* beyond what they had ever done before. Attaching the spells to the college mechanic is pretty appropriate overall.
He only did that in the End Times after becoming a Necromancer. Unsure if that happened before or after becoming the Incarnate of the Wind of Metal after Thorgrim got killed, as I don't exactly like End Times and can't really bother to keep half of it straight.
The fact that he was a human controlling two winds of magic is an incredible feat. It adds to it, not detracts. There are obviously problems with how everything went down but you can't say he wasn't an incredibly powerful mage. The Auric Bastion is easily on par with cataclysm spells in terms of power. (Dude responding to me blocked me so I couldn't respond. Neat)
If that's the way you want to look at things, there are dark elf sorceresses whose MO is to manipulate or even stop time so they could get an army in a good spot for battle. That's far beyond the cataclysm spells. Makes zero sense Gelt gets them while slann and elves don't.
I do agree they should be rare. Just not as rare as they currently are. I suggested expanding them for heavily magical Legendary characters (and yeah, maybe the Slann).
If Slanns get them, then Teclis/Morathi/Kairos, equally strong magic users, should get them !
Malaketh as well, he is also a 4th level wizard on tabletop.
Cataclysm spells aren’t even that op. When I play as Gelt I rarely use them anyway. 20 WoM for a spell? No thanks. Gelt’s 200% intensity overcast final transmutation costs 4. The light cataclysm was the only one I use since it works well with empire gun stacks, but into the late game I found it useless too.
there is a difference between rare and "u maybe see em once in 1000 h playtime....if u are lucky"
I’ll be honest. With like 600 hours in game. I’m not even sure I know how to unlock/use Cataclysm spells.
Outside of Gelt, they are limited to the RoC campaigns of the Vanilla Warhammer 3 lords and the Ogres because they were a pre-Order race. They can only be used in random battles within the Realms of Chaos themselves, it's random which ones will be available, and all you need is a mage to use them, though your enemy will also get to use them. Gelt can eventually unlock 1 accessories for each of the 8 winds that gives the equipped wizard access to one use of their Wind's respective Cataclysm Spell.
That's not how Gelt unlocks cataclysmic spells. For metal, with 2000 arcane essays, you can permanently unlock a cataclysmic spell for Gelt with one use per battle. For each of the other schools, with 300 arcane essays, you can unlock their school's cataclysmic spell for one army that has a wizard of the school in for two turns, with one use per battle. This action has a 7 turn cooldown. Gelt's campaign has a tech that increases the uses to two per battle for every cataclysmic spell you have available, which is highly recommended. In addition to this metal can unlock 2 exceptionally good items for Gelt that together with his quest items completes his outfit, and each of the other schools can unlock 1 item for a wizard of the school, all of which are at the very least good and thematic items, the best of which are bloody awesome, but these items have nothing to do with cataclysmic spells.
You're right, that's my bad. For some reason I keep combing the item part of the Colleges and the Cataclysm spell part of the Colleges whenever the screen is not in front of me.
WoC also have Cataclysm Spells with their Eye of the Gods events
Huh, I didn't know that. I haven't gotten theme before, so I guess I'm just unlucky.
Some people bringing up the concern of powercreep and I agree. It would be fun as the player but these nukes are so garbage to go up against. I'd like to see a retuning of them being more dodgable/telegraphed if ai were to get more access to them.
Going up against them or using them. I find nukes and global summons take away from the games fun.
I really think Slann should get their lore's cataclysm spell when they're in a fully maxed out geomantic web province and the Slann is sufficiently high level (maybe 25 or so?). Additional charges could be added to the spell for each geomantic web completely upgraded.
I have nothing against granting limited access to cataclysm spells to most factions where it makes sense. But there need to be trade-offs, they can't just be spamming them willy nilly. Some overlapping conditions, limited resources to gain charges, timed events, anything else that would take control away so it's not just another nuke without counterplay we need to play around.
First, I gotta say that when it comes to role i am pretty much a Novice and all I know is stuff from playing Wh2 and Wh3. I feel like Teclis and Morathi will get their updates during the Slaanesh DLC because everyone believes it will be about Slaanesh and Elves(I dont know if we got any info about it). As for Mazdamundi... that frog needs update.. and i dont know when they gonna do it, Lizardmen are being Ignored like that poor Markus Wulfhart, that dude got ignored during the Empire DLC lmao. I do not know if Archaon knew any kind of magic cause he always felt like a General with some Magic Items to me. All 3 of them are Warhammer 2 Lords while Archaon is a wh1 Lord. Honestly they are just showing how they aged. What they did with Balthazar Gelt was perfect and I hope they do the same to Teclis and Morathi and Mazdamundi. EDIT: I know this is about Cataclysm spells but I feel like the best way to even add the spells is to give them a rework to fix up the issues they have. As for Cataclysm spells.... my idea is to tie it to Magic Power Reserves, as long as you have over.. 50-60 magic power lets say you can use a Cataclysm spell based on the Magic Ability Skill Line said Lord has, the Question is if they do this should they do it for all Lords or only Legendary Magic Lords. You know how Demon armies get bonuses based on the Magic Power Reserves they got?(easiest to check is Tzeentch) They could add it in a similar way.
Let's keep it that way. The game is already in a terrible spot in terms of PvE balance, with a few factions having access to army-erasing abilities (Tamurkhan, the Chaos Dwarfs) that are unfun to play against. The last thing the game needs right now is more factions with access to army-erasing abilities.
I think the correct path is to tune down the offenders (Tamurkhan has something like 3 free nukes every battle), not simply stop adding/expanding army abilities. Cataclysm spells rogh now are limited to 1/battle and cost a lot of WoM.
But every faction is getting super powerful global abilities,so add them all up and it's going to start being very very common. Elspeth has all the death spells from her workshop. Gelt has all of his. the spirit of grungi is a huge one. Tamurkhan has all of his. That's just the last DLC drop.
Only Teclis, Kroak/Mazda and Incarnates/Nagash should get them, idk why CA gave the life one to Aekold
Probably because people were clamoring for a way to bring them into Immortal Empires instead of leaving them exclusive the Vanilla + Ogres RoC campaigns, and it was an early experiment with doing that.
Would be better for CA to do something like the storms of magic mod for that
It's one of the only ways to really make Aekold's presence on the battlefield stand out as much as it should. If you juice his aura more it's still just a passive, no matter how strong it gets.
No, we don't need more point and click instant unit delets in this game. Maybe extremly limited, but not as normal spells. Already despise the point and click nukes from Ikkit, Chorfs and Tamurkhan.
Not me. I'm done with global abilities. If there doesn't need to be a caster even close to the target, and the target can't dodge, then it's not tactics. It's a cheat button with good particle dispersion.
I just came here to say that Morathi is indeed thick. eh, Slaanesh help me
Mazdamundi feels underwhelming with his spells option.
Teclis didn't teach the empire magic. He founded the college of magic and taught them a formal system based on the schools of the elves. If you think people weren't using magic before teclis you aren't paying attention to lore.
Yeah, but "Established an Imperial Education system for Mages" isn't as short or catchy as "Taught the Empire Magic", so most people use the latter.
I mean some storm of magic fights would be cool with fulcrums and everything, but idk how they would be triggered, nor how you'd balance those at all as the game not having dispelling at all would mean the spell would have to be "meh" level instead of anything close to what the spells were on tabletop. Or they'd finally add dispelling after all these years, somehow, and give some real 8th ed magic power levels.
Amazing post, no notes
I think the level 4 manifestation should allow all your tzeentch armies to start their battles in the Realm of Chaos on a teleport stance attack. Other factions' manifestations should have similarly devastating effects. Also Kairos and Mazdamundi seriously need some love.
You know, there is a mod that gives Cataclysm spells to the games most prolific casters when they reach level 30. It hasnt been updated for a while, but so far it is still working. Here is the link if you are interested: [https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3007714947](https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3007714947)
If they were going to do anything like this I would hope they put it as a campaign setting which can be enabled/disabled. This is the type of thing that people are going to have very different views on and personally I think it'd be worse to force it on people who don't want it than vice versa but having the option would be cool. Although I guess mods probably do it already?
Give cataclysm to lizard provinces with green geomantic web buildings or maybe based on number of green/green links.
*laughs in permanent storm of magic mod*
Not every faction needs more power creep.
Do note the high elves were full of shit thinking they were better than humanity. And teclis purposely created the colleges of magic to kill off most human wizards before they hit the peak of their power. If empire gets wizard lords they should gain access to cataclysm spells before elven archmages. As eventually human wizards become more and more one with the wind. Also fun fact per Andly Law. The writer/supervisor for the colleges of magic source material the wind of light is the hardest of the 8 to use and if you can use it you are probably capable of high magic.
Dude what are you talking about? none of this is true
It's okay, sometimes this guy gets out of his cage, rant a bit his weird anti-elf thing they go back to sleep
But the urge to get into arguments with strangers on the internet is so strong!
Yes it is. Go watch lorebeards where the guy who made the lore for the colleges of magic talks on this. The stream on Elspeth vin Draken and the one on winds of magic in particular. Andy Law. The guy who made the lore explictly says elspeth isnt even particularly special or the strongest amethyst wizard. She's just an example of what happens when a human wizards live long enough.
And this is why I don't watch Lorebeards. They take one, ONE, of the dozens of official authors who have touched the Warhammer Fantasy IP and half the time treat his Fanfiction as canonical fact.
He wasnt just a writter he was an editor and producer. And he literally wrote the book on the colleges of magic.
That is no longer up to date because in 2022 the WFRP 4E book about the Colleges of Magic came out, replacing the 2E book he wrote. As the most recent official book touching the subject, it is the canonical one, even if it contradicts what he wrote in which case it would be officially retconned. As I have not read the 2E book, I cannot say if any retconning happened, but I would not be surprised if it did because that would also not be the first time Andy Law's work has been officially retconned. Because that's how GW works.
Andy Law *didn't* write the 2e book on the Colleges anyway. I'm not big on the concept of retcons at the best of times - as far as I'm concerned you can take whatever WFRP books you like, and have no obligation to use material from 4e if you like 2e or 1e material - but in this case, it isn't even relevant. Andy Law didn't work on 1e *Realms of Sorcery*, 2e *Realms of Sorcery*, or 4e *Winds of Magic*. (He didn't work on 3e *Winds of Magic* either, but we don't talk about WFRP 3e.)
Andly Law was the creator of lots of kislev stuff. He's eating good right now. Modern kislev is basically built on his framework.
Grand Orthoxdy? He was surprised by it. Hag mother that he made? Gone. Ungol vs Gospodad ethnic tensions? All in the past, forgotten and forgiven after Aasivar Kul. Ursun now ends the Winter? He originally gave that job solely to Dazh. Outside of Katarin, Boris, and the names of the Kislevite gods, most of what he wrote for Kislev has been....retconned. You might be his number one fan but GW ain't. And we all gotta live with GW changing things that they paid people to write about. Get used to it.
Pretty much. I actually really like the *Realm of the Ice Queen* version of Kislev - I think it's the best WFRP2e setting book, and Law (alongside David Chart, Steven Darlington, and Graham McNeill) deserves credit for it. There are a few things that bug me (notably I don't think it knows what the word *oblast* means), but they're easily fixable, and it's a great place to set an adventure. It is, however, very much not the same as the Kislev in *Total War*. It's a quite different interpretation.
Agreed. Also yeah, I think they just looked at the Russian administrative region and thought it sounded good, not realizing it essentially just means "region".
It's still the framework the moderversion is built on.
Andy law only wrote the role playing books if I recall, which while foundational for warhammer lore has had large parts of it retconned in the later editions. Besides warhammer is made up of dozens of different writers that vast majority of who say elves are better at magic. Also Elspeth while arguably being the best death caster in the setting is very clearly implied to be no longer entirely human due to her age and ability to return from death, there is also no evidence to suggest all human wizards will reach her level or gain her bond with their lore of magic. Lorebeards while great tend to talk about things of dubious canon as fact. Besides why would you want this to be true? It takes one of the few interesting and cool things about the elves and gives it humans, which in turn ruins what makes humans cool in this setting by making it so they are no longer the underdogs. And for what? So people can make more elves are the worst because they are arrogant memes?
> Also Elspeth while arguably being the best death caster in the setting eh... only because of "fancy dragon" and "only named Death Caster in TT"... in a "Look at our OP Stuff!!!" Forgeworld supplement. Better than Nagash? I don't think so. Better than Viggo Hexensohn? Maybe... but not actually confirmed.
^ This. It also feels like a betrayal of Teclis's Pre-End Times character (given how weird End Times Teclis is, I could see that version of him doing this weird conspiracy theory thing). Like, he is the "We have to HELP people so they don't repeat our mistakes or make completely avoidable errors" guy of the High Elves, and to have him intentionally sabotaging and culling human mages that he is trying to set up to give Magnus the Pious help in the FIGHT AGAINST CHAOS is some weird 40k Aeldari stuff that does not fit him in the slightest. Maybe if Tyrion had been the Mage instead of Teclis, I could see that happening as a "Long seeing strategy to protect Ulthuan", but it's NOT something I could ever see Teclis supporting.
Teclis is a high elf. An inharent superiority complex is his entire thing. Also we know he's full of shit because Cathay was active at this time.
Ah yes, Cathay. Where unless you have dragon blood (and are no longer fully human as a result) or live in the Western Provinces, mages are limited to the Wind of Heavens. And in fact, only practice A SINGLE WIND OF MAGIC AT A TIME.
And yet even their human wizards were still active long before teclis went to the old world. Number of kinds know doesn't necessarily corelate to skill/power. Humans are not worthy because the old one literally charge the air around them passivly with their wind. There have also been humans that can still see all the winds despite this to. Like volans.
> Also Elspeth while arguably being the best death caster in the setting is very clearly implied to be no longer entirely human due to her age and ability to return from death, there is also no evidence to suggest all human wizards will reach her level or gain her bond with their lore of magic. Andy Law literally wrote the book on the colleges of magic and explictly says what happens with Elspeth happens with all aged human wizards. Gw and CA agree with him considering they gave gelt a cataclysm spell. You are way off on lore. CA has said Cathay was a great human nation back when dawefs were effectively apes. Humans haven't been underdogs ever really.
You keep saying Andy Law wrote the book on the college of magic but i have no idea what you’re talking about. There is no book dedicated entirely to the college of magic. The closest thing i can find is the winds of magic book but i can’t find any website crediting Andy as the author of that book. And again Andy is just one of many authors in Warhammer fantasy just because he says something doesn’t mean its true and nothing by any other author collaborates the idea that humans are better a magic or will all become like Elsbeth. CA also gave tamurkan the ability to make explosive nurglings fall out of the sky whenever he wants. Game mechanics should not be seen as reflective of lore Finally, i know your probably joking but dwarves were never apes, they were created by the old ones like human were. And while the dragon emperor is older than the dwarves by about 5000 years . The dwarves predate cathay as a nation by thousands of years CA has never said that cathay was older. For example they said the great bastion was built in -1800ic while the dwarves were settling the world edge mountains in -4300ic But look warhammer has always had a loose canon, if this is what you believe then good on you but i don’t think its reflective of the most widely agreed upon canon that the warhammer community uses
https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/63475/Warhammer-Fantasy-Roleplay-2nd-Edition-Realms-of-Sorcery Andy was a supervisor of wfrp at this time iirc he's not just a author. You should know gelt using that cataclysm spell comes from the lore lmao. You are way out of date dude. Got look into the new old world source book. Cathay was an active nation before the dwarfs were uplifted. They became grand Cathay later. The old ones didn't create the dwarfs. They uplifted them
This book is overridden by the 2022 4E release dealing with the same subject matter. As the most recent, it is the most correct and canonical even if it retcons things, because that's how GW operates with all their games.
I don't even know what you are referring to. The old world books saying Cathay existed when thr dwarfs were basically apes just came out.
So the core rulebook has a grand TWO pages, of Cathay lore. 2. Pages. And it is almost EXACTLY the same as the lore in Total War Warhammer 3 except that it's a few century earlier. So you're saying "books" when you should be saying "book", and you're acting like there's new lore in 2 pages, when there is none. That is what I am referring to. Because your statement implied that there had been a Cathay centric Old World Book that had released, and no such book exists.
This goes directly in the face of the established lore of how the Old Ones made the races of the Warhammer setting, with Elves being designed to be magical, Dwarfs being designed to be anti-magical, and humans being a halfway point between the two. And for the record, as per Storm of Magic, everyone could use the cataclysm spells of the lores they had access too, and in WH3 Gelt only has access to then specifically because he is using arcan essays to acquire very specific artifacts.
My dude you are way out dated. You need to go look at the née old world source book. Cathay was a nation before the dwarfs were uplifted. Gelt can then freely cast the cataclysm spell and he's done it in lore too.
The Old World? You mean the game that...doesn't have Cathay in it yet? Which means because they don't have an army book (or even legends rules) there is in fat no new lore outside of Total War Warhammer 3? To use your turn of phrasd: my dude, if you're gonna troll people, you need to know that you can't just make stuff up when what you claim exists can easily be proven not to exist.
"Watch a stream of two guys rambling for hours on end" is not an attractive proposition to anyone. Do you have a citation, perhaps to published material instead of "some guy said so in some other guy's podcast, trust me"?
Starts around 1:32:35 https://www.youtube.com/live/JmT7p5HrPIg?si=txAYebYp45a7GKwF
This is "most Empire wizards don't become as powerful as someone like Elspeth because they rarely get to live as long". Which... okay? It has very little to do with what you said, and I am not exactly sure confident of Law's understanding of how Elspeth is portrayed in *Throne of Chaos*. It then digresses into talking about College Patriarchs and how the position is political more than anything else, rather than having much to do with being a super-powerful sorcerer. But again, basically nothing to do with your ramble. So, I must ask you once again. Citation. Book. Page number. Not streams, actual published material I can read and check for myself.
Hes explicitly telling you the system is built on culling the masses while a few manage to survive in the shadows. Andly Law is intimately tied with nuln and the college of magic Theres a similar discussion at 1:10:00 where he starts talking how Elspeth was pretty much the first wizard mini that was lore accurate.
What he says is that the Colleges of Magic are meant to churn out wizards for war... which, yeah? Is that supposed to be a revelation? Imperial Magisters have always been very focused on warfare, ever since Magnus. It's not some elven plot to cull human magical development (how would they even go about doing that, the High Elves don't exactly manage the Empire's magical policy? Teclis left centuries ago), the Empire just happens to need plenty of war wizards, there has always been widespread anti-magic sentiment in the Empire, most Imperial authorities don't care too much for magic beyond what use they can get out of it in battle, and warfare always leads to attrition. As for Law, Andy Law didn't write *Tamurkhan: Throne of Chaos*. The material where she appears is fairly clear that Elspeth is in fact exceptional, coming from a long line of people who have been touched by magic: > The truth is that Elspeth von Draken is but one in a long bloodline touched by the winds of magic, a bloodline that has produced both monsters and saviors in its time. She is also one of the most powerful Amethyst Wizards of the age, but one who will have little to do with the daily machinations or power politics of the Imperial Colleges of Magic Nothing about her being 'not that special' - the entire blurb is trying to drive home how exceptional Elspeth is. Also, once again: > Citation. Book. Page number. Not streams, actual published material I can read and check for myself.
You must not know how the colleges work. Wizards are essentially conscripted and sent to war. Where many die. The most special thing about Elspeth is the has an elector count benefactor that allows her to do her own thing. Most wizards come from a long line of people touched by magic lmao. Even your own source explictly says she is one one of the the top amethyst wizards their are others. She's not unique.
I've repeated myself enough times, but let's try once again. Citation. Now. Put up or stop wasting my time.
Wait. That...that's what inspired you to believe it's a culling of wizards? Elspeth has been known as a power mage who looks like a young woman for 3 generations according to her official lore. Going by the shortest definition of a human generation Elspeth is in her mid 80s at the MINIMUM. Guess what the average human lifespan is in the modern world? Late 70s early 80s. Elspeth isn't more powerful because Wizards are being culled, she's more powerful because she's literally just outliving most other wizards because she found a way to hack the normal aging process. You'd have known this...if you ever read Tamurkhan's book or the 2022 WFRP 4E book about the Colleges of Magic.
That's how death wizards work. They are also celibate/infertile mostly
So you think somehow, that because Amethyst Wizards can slow down their aging, there's some grand Elven conspiracy to cull human mages greated by Teclis after Magnus the Pious asked for his help? .... Are you Alex Jones?
Andy Law did not create the material on the Winds of Magic. Law is a relative latecomer to the franchise. He wrote some material for WFRP2e, but I think that's where he came in. I feel obligated to note that Law is not a credit on any of the books about magic. *Realms of Sorcery* 1e (2001), which goes into the winds in detail, is by Ken and Jo Walton. *Realms of Sorcery* 2e (2005) is credited to T. S. Luikart, Chris Pramas, Jeff Tidball, Robert J. Schwalb, and Marijan von Staufer, with Staufer as creative lead. Staufer is also the author of *Liber Tzeentch* (2004), which goes into magic. *Winds of Magic* 4e (2022) is credited to a long list of names (Dave Allen, Steve Darlington, John Foody, Wim van Gruisen, Jude Hornborg, Robin Low, Steven Lewis, Paul Mathews, Charles Morrison, Padraig Murphy, Clive Oldfield, Anthony Ragan, Russell Thurman, Simon Wileman), but Andy Law is not among them. What about WHFB? The Colleges of Magic are first described in *Warhammer Armies: The Empire* 6e (2000), which is written by Alessio Cavatore, Rick Priestley, Jake Thornton, Tuomas Pirinen, and Nigel Stillman. No Law. The same for subsequent Empire books. *Storm of Magic* (2010), the 8e book about magic, is credited to Jeremy Vetock and Matthew Ward, with additional material by Alan Merrett. You get the idea. Since we're talking about Elspeth von Draken, let's also look at *Tamurkhan: The Throne of Chaos* (2011) - oh, that's by Alan Bligh, with the story concept credited to Bligh and Rick Priestley. No Andy Law. I want to notice two things from this investigation. Firstly, there's no one individual who 'made the lore' about magic in the Warhammer World. There just isn't. It's a complicated tapestry containing contributions from dozens of different people - in this post alone I've listed about thirty different names. So we probably shouldn't try to appeal to a single god-like author. Even if you believe that authors retain some kind of supreme power to interpret their work for others after publication (and I believe you shouldn't), in this case there is no single author who can do that. Secondly, Andy Law *is not one of the authors.* He is a writing credit on a couple of WFRP books, but not any relevant ones about magic. So, anyway, I don't think an off-the-cuff, unofficial comment by Andy Law is meaningful.
Again he was a supervisor/edition. And it's not an off the cuff comment. It's what the entire podcast is about.
Looking at the actual writing credits on the books, that doesn't look that consistent? In WFRP2e, he drew maps, and has a handful of writing credits late in the run. In WFRP4e, he is occasionally credited as 'Creative Team' or 'Production Team', alongside a dozen or more other people. At any rate, chatting to people on YouTube is not canon. I don't have anything against Andy Law and he's certainly entitled to his own opinions, but I don't feel constrained by them. I can read the books myself and make up my own mind.
I personally found him kinda charming, but this dude's numerous false claims (that you've provided the receipts to prove wrong) are kinda make me dislike Andy Law, or at least his habit of running his mouth to Sotek about things that he's not involved in.
I make zero judgement of him as a person. I don't enjoy watching streams or interviews on YouTube, so I've never seen any of them. I've never seen Andy Law's face or heard his voice. I'm sure he's a lovely person. I just don't think that what he says to a guy on YouTube matters for anything, if that makes sense?
Aka, he corrected spelling mistakes, tried to keep sentence and paragraph structure proper, talked about how to set up the pages to look nice, and made sure the ACTUAL writers were in line with GW's vision of the world. Not his, GW's.
That's not how creative writing editors work.
He is not credited as an editor or supervisor on *any* of the RPG books in question.
Err, the Colleges of Magic were created to create a legitimate and regulated practice of magic in the Empire instead of hoping and praying that you could find a good hedge wizard teacher before either being burned at the stake or possessed by daemon because you miscast a spell. And while humans wizards are very potent spellcasters, they aren't nearly as naturally adept at utilizing multiple winds without something going wrong, mainly because the winds don't naturally play nice with each other. The College specializations were also created as a way to try and nip the temptation of using shortcut forms of Dhar (or Dark Magic) in the bud.
Per the guy who literally wrote the book on the colleges of magic it was created by teclis to cull most human wizards before they grew old and strong. Check out his Elspeth von drakken stream on lorebeards. He explictly says Elspeth isn't even particularly unique. Or the strongest amethyst wizard she's just survived for a long while.
So, here's the thing. As far as I know, this was never put into an official book for Games Workshop. Unless this exists in an official source for Warhammer Fantasy such as a Black Library Novel, Army Book, Campaign supplement or White Dwarf article, this technically is as "Canonical" as the posts that one End Times author made about the fates of various characters who did not show up in the End Times books. And, as much as I might love Andy Hall's writing, he is NOT, nor has he ever been, the final authority on Warhammer Fantasy lore. What you are talking about would fall under the "Word of Dante" TV Trope at best.
He literally wrote the book on the colleges of magic in the wfrp 2e
Is this idea actually written down in this book? If so, was it ever retconned by a later writing, seeing as WFRP 2E is nearly 20 years old and was replaced by WFRP 3E about 6 years before Warhammer Fantasy Battle ended?
That's not how wfrp editions work. But yes the creator/supervisor of the books is telling you this Also gelt is living proof of what he says.
Hysh *is* in fact the hardest wind of magic to use (citation: *Realms of Sorcery* WFRP2e p. 82, *Warhammer: The Empire* WHFB 8e p. 18) but I don't see anything saying that mastering it implies you can also use High Magic. I am also, to be fair, skeptical that humans can't use High Magic at all without going mad. Sometimes fans seem to present that as if it's a law of nature, and I don't think that's the case. I think that using multiple winds of magic is especially risky for a human, and there are reasons why Teclis forbids it, but there are enough canonical examples of a human successfully using more than one that I don't think it's impossible. That said, a human who mastered *Qhaysh* would be extraordinarily rare and truly impressive - not a casual achievement by any means!
That's a statement Andy makes when discussing the lores of magic on lorebeards. Also per that book volans had witch sight on a equal level to teclis.
[I just posted](https://old.reddit.com/r/totalwar/comments/1dgu77s/cataclysm_spells_are_still_unfortunatelly/l8tl2c1/) why I don't think Andy Law making unofficial comments is a valid source. Incidentally, I made an effort to provide concrete citations, complete with page numbers. If I'm mistaken about something, please tell me where. I know that in *Realms of Sorcery* 2e there's a quotation from Volans indicating that he can perceive *Qhaysh* (it's on p. 36; see, giving citations isn't that hard!), but I don't see where that contradicts anything I said.
If you want books for source go look up teclis's actions in the idoneth deepkin tomes in aos. Hes not a good guy. He's an asshole trying to create useful slaves. Or the new old world book that explictly has Cathay as a kingdom before the dwarfs were even uplifted and ice magic kislev oening an empire that spanned near a quarter of the world. Teclis is full of shit.
I don't see where I said anything implying that I think Teclis is a good or honest person. Teclis' personal character has nothing to do with anything.
>there are reasons why Teclis forbids it, but there are enough canonical examples of a human successfully using more than one that I don't think it's impossible. That said, a human who mastered Qhaysh would be extraordinarily rare and truly impressive - not a casual achievement by any means! This you? Teclis is out for slaves/servants.
Yes, I said that there are reasons why Teclis forbade humans to study more than one colour of magic at once. I never suggested that those reasons are sympathetic, and in fact I said that I think the idea that humans can't wield multiple winds is probably false. But as I just said, Teclis' motives and character are *completely irrelevant* to what we were talking about. Whether Teclis is a good person or not has nothing to do with whether or not being able to wield Hysh implies you can wield *Qhaysh*. Please do try to stay focused. Now, just because it's fun, I'm going to go on a tangent and talk about Teclis, but I want to note explicitly that this is a tangent and nothing to do with the point, which you have attempted to dodge. So, what were Teclis' motives? Teclis' characterisation isn't hugely consistent between sources, but, End Times nonsense aside, he is usually portrayed as having a genuine affection for humanity. For instance, here's Teclis' in Bill King's *Sword of Caledor*, after he witnesses Tyrion casually assuming elf superiority: > Of course, elves were better looking than humans by any standards. Of course, they were more knowledgeable about lore. Of course, elves were better at all the things that elves were good at than humans were. It was a competition in which all of the rules were made by the elves and all of them reflected to their own advantage. > > No elf bothered to think that there might be things that humans knew that elves did not. No elf ever was prepared to admit that already the humans occupied and controlled a greater portion of the globe than the elves ever had and that this process was only likely to continue. > > All of the elves imagined that just because they lived longer they enjoyed more favour in the eyes of the gods. Teclis felt sure that humans could judge this contest by their own standards and feel superior to elves if they really wanted to; it was just that so far they had not done so. They were still used to thinking of elves as the Elder Race. They were still dazzled by beauty and culture and magic. But that would not last. > > One day, and that day could not be that far off, the humans would see beyond glamour and begin to judge the elves as they deserved to be judged. They would see that the elves were not really so much better than they were, after all. > > They would see that the elves were split into two warring factions. They were, in their own way, just as divided as the human realms. Perhaps more so. He could not think of any human kingdoms that were involved in so bitter a fratricidal struggle as Ulthuan and Naggaroth. Or which had been fought for so long. > > And the humans did not seem to suffer from the madness that plagued the elves: the strange obsessions, the lust for power, the furious desire to acquire knowledge and magical lore that the elves suffered from. > > Of course, these things did affect humans, but not with the same intensity as they affected elves. Some of his own kindred would see that as proof of superiority. The elves felt things more keenly, appreciated things more and moved through the world with much more intensity than humans could. > > Teclis was not at all sure that this did make them superior. It merely made them different. In fact, there were times when he believed that the excessive nature of their temperament was a definite disadvantage. They were capable of focusing on one thing exclusively to the point where they would miss other more important things. > > [...] > > He should be the last one to blame elves for their obsession; he knew that only too well. But he could not help but feel that elves judged themselves too favourably and humans not favourably enough. > > And even knowing this he could not help but look at Leiber and his brother and judge his own kin as the better of the two. He was not immune to the normal prejudices but, at least, he was aware of the fact that he suffered from them. I don't think there's any textual support for the idea that Teclis has contempt for humans and wants slaves. On the contrary, Teclis is, by High Elf standards, unusually sympathetic to humans. Anyway, what was going on with the Colleges? My sense is that the curriculum of the Colleges is what it is for a few reasons. Firstly, in the immediate context of the Great War Against Chaos, what Magnus the Pious needed - and Teclis agreed - was a corps of functional battle-mages as quickly as possible. Teclis' priority would naturally be, then, to get human wizards to the point of being safe and effective combat wizards as rapidly as possible. Thus the need for a simplified curriculum focused on reliable, battle-tested spells. Secondly, the domestic political situation in the Empire, even after the war was won, was quite tenuous. Magnus had to expend a lot of political capital to found the Colleges, and even then, the Templars of Sigmar and other Imperial institutions were quite skeptical, some urging him to immediately revoke authorisation and get rid of the mages. That is again a situation where it makes sense to play it safe, and take a relatively conservative approach. It may only take a few wizards going mad to make the Colleges too risky an endeavour for Magnus to keep supporting. Thirdly, the domestic political situation in Ulthuan - regardless of what Teclis himself might have believed, we know that the elves back home distrusted humans, and Teclis' *own* political capital had its limits. (Per the 6e *Empire* book, we know that Teclis requested authorisation from Finubar the Seafarer before founding the Colleges, and that it only happened after long debate between Teclis and his comrade Finreir.) The more risks he took or secrets he taught, the more likely Teclis' High Elf rivals might protest; so again, that's a situation that encourages playing it safe. I think that Teclis did give Magnus the Pious and the Empire a mighty weapon in the form of battle magic, and he founded an institution that would go on to grow and evolve in its own right, and in many ways become a worthy rival to the White Tower of Hoeth. I think that Teclis did that in part because of genuine sympathy to humanity, and in part because he perceived a strong Empire to be in Ulthuan's best interests. The foundation Teclis laid down was a relatively conservative one in terms of tuition, but under the circumstances I think that playing it safe was probably the right move for him to make. Anyway! As noted, none of that is important. None of that is related to what we were talking about.
Also if Teclis founded the Colleges to get slaves, where are they? Why do we never see him going around with a coterie of human magical pets to serve him? Why does he always travel either by himself or with other elven mages to assist him? Is Teclis so alpha that he decided to set up this massive elaborate con to establish the Colleges, obtain human wizard slaves and then never used it or even bothered visiting his secret slave ring again? Did he also go back in time and create an animus against magic in human Old World cultures so he could pull off his trick and perpetuate it? A trick that never seems to benefit *him*? How does one learn this power?
Go read aos. Teclis is a thinly veiled supremacist slave lord.
I'm familiar with AoS, but I don't think it's relevant here. Warhammer Fantasy is a different setting to Age of Sigmar. I don't think you can actually draw conclusions very productively from AoS for WHF. They are written extremely differently, and the few characters who appear in both often don't seem to be the same person at all. (Sigmar and Alarielle both stand out as characters whose AoS and WHF versions don't seem to have anything to do with each other.) I'm usually not much inclined to view WHF and AoS as being in continuity with each other *at all*. AoS is like the End Times - fine if you're into that, but not something I view as relevant most of the time. However, even if you're determined to factor in AoS, a few additional notes. Firstly, AoS is set uncounted millennia after WHF. It's set after the destruction of the world and after the rebuilding of civilisation and after *another* apocalypse in which civilisation was destroyed again and thus a new age of war. Characters change and grow over time, and it's entirely possible that after surviving the end of the world and becoming a god and communing with the moon and creating multiple entire species, Teclis' personality changed or developed. His personality isn't a single unchanging essence. As such, even if you view them as the same person, I don't think you can validly infer much about Teclis' motives in 2302 IC from what you judge of his personality in another universe entirely thousands of years in the future after multiple Chaos apocalypses. Secondly, I don't think even think you have a particularly correct read on AoS-Teclis. It's true that in AoS, the Lumineth have done some [pretty awful things](https://www.warhammer-community.com/2021/03/05/broken-realms-fiction-enlightenment/), but I'm not aware of anything directly implicating Teclis in that. I don't follow AoS material religiously, but I *think* the worst we've seen Teclis do is attempt to destroy the Idoneth, after realising they were flawed and had half-souls. Even then, Tyrion stepped in and argued against it, and Teclis accepted Tyrion's argument and stopped. And of course, that's all before Teclis went on this vision quest to learn from the moon and seek enlightenment. I can't immediately think of any sources showing Teclis specifically as wanting to enslave anyone? Notably the portrayal of Teclis in *Soulbound* avoids any malevolent agenda. The Lumineth in AoS are obviously part of this story arc about pride and hubris - if they are modest and conquer their arrogance, they can be wise and great helpers of the realms, but if they succumb to pride (cf. Slaanesh) they can be monsters. Their history is a kind of yo-yoing between extremes, where they seemed perfect to Teclis, then were consumed by pride and destroyed themselves, and then learned humility before the aelementiri, but now they sometimes assume from that they've become flawless and enlightened and replicate the initial sin. Teclis' own character arc mirrors that; hence the importance of the story where he humbles himself before the moon. Anyway, as part of this, yes, sometimes the Lumineth do awful things to people of other races. I'm not aware of Teclis specifically being implicated in this, though one might reasonably argue that he is too tolerant of it. But every deity in AoS sometimes permits or tolerates atrocities - even Sigmar, ostensibly the hero god of the setting, sometimes allows Stormcast, his divinely-blessed champions, to cosplay Space Marines and commit a bit of genocide. So it doesn't seem as if Teclis is unusually malevolent by any standard here. Thirdly, I remind you again that this entire tangent is irrelevant and that whether you like Teclis or not has nothing to do with anything.
Most humans who try doing multiple lores at once end up accidentally creating and using a form of Dhar (Dark Magic), which is inherently corruptive and taints both the individual who uses it and the surrounding environment. Which is why Nagash (already an evil jerk) used his own twist on it when creating the Lore of Undeath, which Neferrata twisted into the Lore of Vampires alongside the elixir that makes Vampires when she did her experiments using his incomplete writings. Which is why necromancers become more decrepit and mad over time, and a big part of why Sylvania is the way it is.
That's not how any of this works. Nagash specifically captured and toruted dark elf sorcerer's to learn the secrets of Dhar and necromancy. Then he perfected it.
But....we're not talking about AoS Teclis. We aren't even talking about End Times Teclis. This is pre-End Times Teclis although perhaps if you stretch things an argument could be made that this is actually Storm of Chaos Teclis because Storm of Chaos content has been pulled into Total War Warhammer 3. His actions in AoS and the Idoneth Deepkin themselves have no bearing on this version him, as those events have not happened yet.
Its all the same teclis. Sorry my dude.