The background that annoys you most

[Craze_b0i]

I think some folks are confusing 'dangerous' with 'evil' here. Of course magic is dangerous to use. All the more reason to have a system in place where people can be trained to use it properly.

In real life guns are considered dangerous, but try fighting a war without them. In warhammer terms humans need magic to counter the magic of their enemies. Oh the occasional battle wizard may turn to the dark side, but compared wit that the consequences of going to war having no access to magic at all is far worse.

[CommanderCax]

I had no idea Cathay worshipped Tzeentch.

The WFRP 2nd ed. sourcebook Sold Down the River featured a follower of Tzeentch (Tzeetch is better known as Tsien-Tsin (aka Chi'an Chi, Chen Chi-En) in Cathay) from Cathay and it mentions the Monkey King and the Celestial Court as well as that not much love is lost between Cathay and Nippon or at least their delegations in Marienburg.
Hong Fu Chu is the current First Secretary of the Cathayan ambassador in Marienburg and a cunning follower of Tzeentch. On his arrival in Marienburg he told the ambassador that a new faction is in power at the Celestial Court, one devoted to the Lord of Change. The ambassador, a veteran of Cathayan politics, has accepted this without question - or without having it further confirmed from his Emperor.

Just as the dragon shows infinite colours, so Truth shows infinite faces. I shall show you the Truth in the infinite forms of Chaos.

[Craze_b0i]

Seems odd to me that non-chaos aligned Cathayans tolerate Tzeench worship as an acceptable form of religion. You would think they would realise that chaos is a threat. Unless ofc the Cathay rulers are dillusional like Malekith (someone who thinks he can master and control chaos).

[grumbaki]

Or it could be that we know this from an eye of god perspective. Tzeench, being the crafty bugger that he is, could have passed himself off as being a local (and benign) deity. The Cathayans certainly don't like chaos, they build their great wall. And they don't accept the other chaos gods. If Tzeench went around passing visible mutations everywhere in Cathay, I'm sure that the cult would get a crack-down.

This isn't to say that the higher ups don't don't what is going on, especially in the cult. But for the average person? I very much doubt that they knowingly worship chaos. (All my theory!)

[Urgat]

Sounds kindda similar to Morathi's cult of Slaanesh pre-sundering.

[snottlebocket]

I think some folks are confusing 'dangerous' with 'evil' here. Of course magic is dangerous to use. All the more reason to have a system in place where people can be trained to use it properly.

In real life guns are considered dangerous, but try fighting a war without them. In warhammer terms humans need magic to counter the magic of their enemies. Oh the occasional battle wizard may turn to the dark side, but compared wit that the consequences of going to war having no access to magic at all is far worse.

You're half right there. There's a difference between dangerous and 'evil' but warhammer's magic is closer to evil than simply dangerous. It's kind of like radiation. It doesn't matter that you have the best of intentions with radioactive material (like generating energy) it will corrupt, mutate and kill you if you're not very careful. Magic is like that but worse.

Magic is the reason the warhammer world is so full of monsters, mutants, walking dead, demons and so on. Imperial wizards and the like don't just train to use magic safely. They train to filter raw magic and only use the left over bits as safely as possible, which still really isn't very safe at all. Magic is far more effective when you don't bother with all of that but it pretty much means absolute certainty of doing terrible things to your body, mind and soul.

The imperial way isn't safe by a long shot, but it at least makes magic possible without pretty much every wizard turning insane eventually or causing demonic manifestations all over the place.

Basically the difference between the realm of chaos and the real world is magic. The realm has unlimited supplies of the stuff and the high elves created a drain in the old world. All that magic pouring from the gate goes into the drain the elves created but in the meantime it's still enough to turn the old world into the evil and monster ridden place it is. So yes, magic is evil and it takes a great deal of work and a great deal of risk for the Empire wizards to use any of it with the tiniest bit of safety.

[ryng_sting]

It's kind of like radiation. It doesn't matter that you have the best of intentions with radioactive material (like generating energy) it will corrupt, mutate and kill you if you're not very careful. Magic is like that but worse.

Depends on the practitioner. A High Magic user isn't unlikely to be mutated or corrupted, or pollute their surroundings in the way of a Dark Magic user. Although all magic carries risk, a trained practitioner of the Colleges is still less of an unwitting danger than the untrained wizards that came before them, not least because they use the filtered, refined magic of a single wind with specific formulae and tested incantations, rather than crushing them all together willy-nilly and hoping for the best. There was more than one reason why Teclis restricted his students to a single wind.

[Unclejo]

New(est) Vampire Counts book, where Undead ambush Dwarves and high Elves is just a ludicrious succsession of one upmanship from the Undead side which is painful to read.

Manfredd unleashes his secret masterstroke. Kemmler unveils his own super secret spell. Manfredd reveals his true super secret plan. Kemmler espouses his views on contemporary literature, Mannfred powers up to Super Saiyan form...

Horribly written stuff. The most interesting stuff in the background (Vlads "humanity" in his love for Isabella and maybe might actually care about his subjects) is quickly glossed over so we can have another paragraph where enemies are annhilated, eradicated and eviscerated, often at the same time.

[Fear Ghoul]

New(est) Vampire Counts book, where Undead ambush Dwarves and high Elves is just a ludicrious succsession of one upmanship from the Undead side which is painful to read.

Manfredd unleashes his secret masterstroke. Kemmler unveils his own super secret spell. Manfredd reveals his true super secret plan. Kemmler espouses his views on contemporary literature, Mannfred powers up to Super Saiyan form...

Horribly written stuff. The most interesting stuff in the background (Vlads "humanity" in his love for Isabella and maybe might actually care about his subjects) is quickly glossed over so we can have another paragraph where enemies are annhilated, eradicated and eviscerated, often at the same time.

Hyperbole aside, the background on Vlad is copied exactly from the 4th edition army book. This is the dichotomy on background complaints I don't understand: most of the stuff people complain about is actually older material...

[The bearded one]

Hyperbole aside, the background on Vlad is copied exactly from the 4th edition army book. This is the dichotomy on background complaints I don't understand: most of the stuff people complain about is actually older material...

The entire vlad, konrad, mannfred &vampire wars is also copied virtually verbatim from the 7th edition book, with a small handful of words changed here and there. 2 words that were changed that I found kind of funny/noteworthy:

Vlad orders the "crucifiction" of prisoners outside of wurtenbad (or gluckdorf or something, dont recall the city name), whereas in the 8th edition book it's "execution" of prisoners. Made more kid-friendly?

And the battle between Konrad and the dwarfs of zuhfbar, in the 7th edition book Walach killed the dwarf king "with contemptuous ease", whereas in the 8th edition book it's "after a bitter duel".

But apart from that, nearly verbatim copy.

[Unclejo]

Hyperbole aside, the background on Vlad is copied exactly from the 4th edition army book. This is the dichotomy on background complaints I don't understand: most of the stuff people complain about is actually older material...

Whether its from 1st Edition or 451st edition has no bearing on whether it's naff (to me). Latest Vampire Counts is simply the first time I've been exposed to it.

[Craze_b0i]

Hyperbole aside, the background on Vlad is copied exactly from the 4th edition army book. This is the dichotomy on background complaints I don't understand: most of the stuff people complain about is actually older material...

I disagree. I think most of the complaints relate to newer material.

Oh I'm not saying the old material was ever perfect but it was a hell of a lot more coherent. The consistency seemed to drop off around 7th edition, maybe older hands like Rick Priestly were no longer around by that point meaning there was no-one to spot mistakes or provide guidance, I don't know quite what happened...

[Ultimate Life Form]

And the battle between Konrad and the dwarfs of zuhfbar, in the 7th edition book Walach killed the dwarf king "with contemptuous ease", whereas in the 8th edition book it's "after a bitter duel".

May depend on the point of view though.

[The bearded one]

May depend on the point of view though.

Nonsens! Heresy!

All dwarfs are hard to beat!

* mutter, grumble! *

[Urgat]

Well, the new fluff is in a VC book. Should have been "Walack crushed the Dwarf king with his left pinky" if it had been a point of view thing, no?

[Ultimate Life Form]

Yeah, but it's these details that annoy me the most. By now they've entered a state where they pretty much copy-paste their army books, but then they go ahead and change small stuff for no reason! Like for example the horrible Beastmen book; previously Gorthors death was descriibed along the lines that he ran into the elector count and fell. End of the story. Now they've expanded it to a two-pages story about how Gorthor and the elector count entered a fierce duel that (as is normal in these cases) lasted for several hours/days/years AND EVERYONE IN THE ENTIRE BESIEGED CITY PUT DOWN THEIR WEAPONS, GOT THEMSELVES A DRINK AND WATCHED.

And of course the elector count didn't just kill Gorthor; he fought him to a standstill and then went down along with him. Yeah. Hollywood much? Excuse me, I gotta puke. Needless to say the Beastmen hordes in the city canceled their picnic afterwards and left peacefully, leaving the remaining inhabitants to fight the mounds of trash in the city park. Great writing for a great book, more of it please! NOT!

[warboss6820]

The skaven fail attemp to take over the world. They were all like "nothing can stop us now" then the invasion failed its first battle against elves. Unprepared elves.Unpreparded elves they outnumber many time over. FAIL!!!!

[The bearded one]

Needless to say the Beastmen hordes in the city canceled their picnic afterwards and left peacefully, leaving the remaining inhabitants to fight the mounds of trash in the city park. Great writing for a great book, more of it please! NOT!

Didn't they continue fighting untill the returning crusader knights hemmed them in from behind, slaughtering them in rout?