"What If..." Lord Mazdamundi Took Control of the Great Plan? A New Lorebeards Series!

[@avachelno]

I absolutely loved this. As one of the few WFRP and TWW3 players in New Zealand having this live for my drive home from work was wonderful. Love the mahi (work/effort) lads!!

[@adammcdonald2251]

Right there with ya, another kiwi listening at work.

[@beebeebees]

This was such an amazing bit of cooperative story telling! ❤ I'm looking forward to you guys doing it again!

[@residentfacehead3465]

What if Neferata never bulldozed Strygos?

[@hangebza6625]

I'd guess it would radicly change the entirety of the Old World. If strygos persists, then there are much less greenskins in the bad lands to threaten dwarfs and humans. The border princes would be much safer for example. Then the cultural influence this old culture would have on the Southern Realms and the southern Empire would be significant. Because you have this prosperus culture far before most old world places formed proper cities. So strigoy traders could expand their cultural values unto other humans, found outpost and colonies etc.pp. Basicly the Empire, Bretinnia and Southern Realms as we know them wouldn't exist. Even if Strygos wouldn't conquer these lands

[@GlamdringandOrcrist]

What if Finubar entered Asuryan’s flame the same way Aenarion & Malekith did and came out successful? Is this me just trying to find a way for Andy & Sotek also talk about his lore in general? Yes. Side bar: Every day that passes, the setting is made even better by Cathay’s existence.

[@rellek4053]

I can't even imagine how my favorite race of Bretonnians could have a wild power fantasy of this magnitude. They just don't have the lore potential outside one really big errantry war to... win a few battles or something. Maybe a Grail Knight uses their incorruptibility to destroy a threat that no regular mortal could? Maybe they get the wood elves together to be actual allies or something?

[@tommyshanahan3689]

What a fantastic episode

[@kjones5052]

What if Vlad joined the Empire as an official Elector Count ruling over Sylvania as an official province?

[@Mortarion-xt9wp]

That is actually quite interesting! I didn't expect chat to kill Europe and let the Asians beat the human torch in to AoS (Shan Yang) Oh and the French are somehow still alive 😅

[@JuniorManwe]

Since all the slann would be awoken and united, would it be possible for them to yeet morrslieb outside of the stelar system ? That should weaken a lot of enemy factions (mainly beastmen, skaven and greenskin), dropping their moral and throwing them into chaos (not Chaos ^^) "This moon is not part of the Great Plan"

[@joelewis9349]

Excellent pod, guys! One of the greats imo!

[@DoYouDontYou89]

I miss the old "Who would win?" series and would love it's return.

[@coorenshima3912]

Truth to be told, who would win was a bit chaotic

[@adrienwarad]

@@coorenshima3912 arent we all there for chaos ? (or elven dwarf bar fight)

[@patrickmcginty3234]

That was what made it so fun though. The random scenarios that were thought up by everyone led to outcomes that were satisfying.

[@Erika_Redmark]

This was awesome. What if… this continued as a series? 😮

[@Rush21129]

mazdamundi giving off those sepertate but equal vibes for the uncorrupted races. something tells me he gets real sus about the amount of waterfountains. /s

[@TJBHorror]

What if Asuryan never forbade the gods from walking amongst, and interacting with, the world and its peoples?

[@paulbestwick2426]

Does the closing of the portals include Grimnir's portal ? If it didn't would that make Grimnir the god of magic, as he is the one keeping the only supply of magic open.

[@ryanwoodall6428]

What IF Eltharion the Grim took up the sword of Khaine and vowed to exterminate every last orc in the world!!!

[@HolyG.23]

This was amazing!

[@LordOfTheSolarCity]

What if Taal was the main god of the Empire instead of Sigmar? Much of the Empire and mankind as a whole live in or near the wilds. The rise of the King of the Gods!

[@SquirtleSquady]

This stream was so sick, please please do more of this. I love hearing your ideas of how one faction or character gaining prominence in the setting can end up affecting all of the other factions and characters and seeing the outcomes of that. Awesome stream

[@davidmckhazad]

Love the idea of the Lost City of the Old Ones being Warhammer Angkor Wat. That should have some crazy lore!

[@cheesecake6572]

Any suggestions about what happened to Morrslieb during all this? I thought a moon made of warpstone would be a potential source of magic after the gates closed. I feel like the Greenskins would probably overrun the world before the Slann finish the plan in the scenario we ended up with, they're rampant, they replenish incredibly quickly and they're the only species besides the Slann to still have magic once the gates close and the Slann must've run the geomantic web pretty dry by this point.

[@samhobbs9116]

Would love to see these have rudimentary maps and flow charts drawn as we go for future versions of these. Great concept though I enjoyed this a lot.

[@cheesecake6572]

I absolutely loved this stream but given the premise was Mazdamundi wants to put everyone back where they started and wipe out all sources of corruption, it feels hard to believe he just rolled over and accepted both the literal aliens, the Maw and the Moon Empress, remaining on the Warhammer world. I think the plan should've involved doing something about the Maw (eg sealing it, pacifying it, yeeting it back into space) and the Cathayan Empire ending up on Mannslieb. Edit: Come to think of it, can the Maw survive in a world with no magic? Unlike every other god, it's stuck in the physical realm. In which case, maybe the Maw problem solves itself.

[@SpiceCh]

If Warhammer *had* to end, I'd pick Mazdamundi rolling up his sleeves, going "fine, I'll do it myself" and kicking the world's ass over Chaos winning any day of the week. In fact, I'd say that would be my top pick for the setting as we know it coming to its end. A close second would be the dragon emperor of Cathay finally getting out of his rocking chair and kicking all of the upstarts, aliens and pretenders off his planet and enacting some great ritual to bring the planet back to where it was before the Old Ones messed with everything, restoring order and harmony to the world and putting the dragons back on top.

[@1701Emperor]

Chaos winning was literally always the projected end of the Warhammer World.... from the earliest editions where they started to care about the lore, it was always made extremely clear, that no matter what would happen, one thing was certain: Chaos would win eventually. Period. It was all just a question of time.

[@SpiceCh]

@1701Emperor a lot of things were prophetized, and much of it did not come to pass. If there's no uncertainty about how it all ends, there's no stakes and no drama to the story telling. If you're told, ahead of watching it, but that the entire cast of a horror movie dies except for John, then you're going to be averse to get attached to Anna, Brent or Caroline, and their struggle for survival will always be little more than pointless and futile. If it's not surprising that chaos wins, then none of the struggle of the other factions matter. A bad end is bad if there was never a chance of a good one, and hopeless stories like that are rarely written for the entertainment and interest of anyone other than the writer themselves and the morbidly inclined. So yeah, if chaos is prophetized and expected to win, I'd rather see the slann or the dragon emperor tug threads of fate and give us a different ending against all odds. It would be exciting and unexpected, which beats watching a narrative murderer slowly and deliberately cut your beloved into a hundred pieces, then morbidly play with those pieces before finally force feeding them to you, which is frankly what the end times felt like to many.

[@1701Emperor]

@ Your premise is extremely flawed. Just because you know how the world will end, does not invalidate or detract from any story told in that world. For instance, we know our world will eventually end. There is nothing we can do about it. Does that invalidate or detract from any stories we experience or tell? No, of course not. The Warhammer World was always destined to lose to Chaos, both in and out of world. That was the entire premise. That the fight was, at the end of all things futile. But the inhabitants could always get "just one more day". The story wasn't a "they may triumph in the end!" power fantasy of defeating the ultimate evil, rather the theme was "They may gain just one more year, month or even just day, if they fight": Your stance is that all that matters is how the story ends, which flies in the face of all formats of storytelling we as a species have created for ourselves. And kinda ignores the fact that 99% of the story is the journey towards the end of the story. We can all agree that the End Times was handled poorly, but that is an ENTIRELY diffferent subject matter and has absolutely nothing to do with the fact that Chaos victory was inevitable in the Warhammer World.

[@SpiceCh]

​@@1701Emperor You're strawmanning. We're not talking about smaller stories taking place in the world. Those are unaffected because they don't pertain to the world ending. The narrative of the non-chaos factions trying to prevent the world from ending lose all sense of tension and drama when their failure is a foregone conclusion. This isn't saying the story of Sigmar can't be good because the world he inhabits will eventually end. This is saying the battle of Blackfire Pass wouldn't be exciting if it was told from a greenskin perspective and we knew the outcome from the get-go. It reduces a story to a report of events. This is "Teclis tries to prevent the world from ending. He fails." vs. "Teclis tries to prevent the world from ending. Will he succeed?" One is exciting. The other is as exciting as reading a history textbook.

[@1701Emperor]

@@SpiceCh Teclis may well succeed. At buying some more time. Not preventing it. Chaos WILL eventually win. Period. That is the grimdark truth of the Warhammer World. It is the entire POINT of the setting. Your heroes can save the day, but not the world. The saving of the world was just simply never in the cards for Warhammer. They made it perfectly clear since the inception of the story. And no, not just in-world, but also out of world. So the question is never "can they save they world and finally defeat Chaos?", the question always is "can they win the day and buy the world a little more time?". I get that you don't like cosmic and existential horror, but Warhammer is built on a foundation of it.

[@Nemo-vq6bk]

What if Archaon chose order instead of chaos?

[@bojanpetrov4732]

I will call Elf bias! I think the Elves would be decimated without magic. I believe that they will lose their longevity, health, mastery and intensity, which the winds filled. without it their spirit would be emaciated, and they would rely on their gods a lot more than surviving humans. Great stream , very sad I missed the end because of work hours.

[@alfadasfire]

Hmm, the undercity under Altdorf is the biggest "known" undercity. Who's to say there aren't massive under cities under Cathayan cities, that would also have been wiped out, since they are everywhere apparently. Might not be a whole lot of Cathay left either. Some countryside stuff maybe but many major cities might not have fared much better than the empire or bretonnia?

[@thegreatbookofgrudges6953]

55:50 1:24:12 1:34:27 1:53:57 1:56:40 2:16:39 2:21:12 2:38:18 2:41:39 2:49:48 3:05:17 3:17:09 3:29:00 3:38:22 3:41:40 1:08:42 1:12:30 1:14:43 1:18:25 1:53:17 2:02:07 2:03:27 2:06:22 2:24:37 2:28:38 2:37:47 3:03:49 3:05:02 3:14:37 3:15:19 3:26:18 3:36:46 3:43:29 Age of Xen Yang 3:46:37 3:50:04 3:51:03

[@Gusseig]

Great stream, folks! Looking forward to the other "what ifs"!

[@boiledtoast1146]

Thats crazy! backed by the lizard men on an almost crusade! 1:25:02

[@nilsandrae]

Thank you! This was so much fun. Plz do more. 😊

[@TJBHorror]

Yesss - I made this request in a comment on a previous stream!!! Finally getting to catch up with it and totally buzzing 🐸

[@goatforcemcgoat8233]

What if only the Northern gate was closed? Would maintain the world's magic but kept Chaos at a more "managable" level as invasions across the Southern Sea would be more difficult, and would be running into a now unified LM empire that encompasses a large portion of the Southern Coast. Nagash would be a massive problem still I guess....

[@jamesr1371]

Nevermind Mazdamundi ignoring Nagash, he also ignored the true threat - fishmen!

[@JL-ti3us]

Maybe Mazdamundi and the Slann find the last Skytitan to attempt to find a method of healing the giant race.

[@npc5649]

What a great live show thank you for that one

[@AlexandreRodrigues-gs1yk]

saw the stream and got a what if that was always on my mind , what if chaos dwarfs didn´t suffer petrification by using magic

[@articthomas]

I loved this, do another one. It’s foretold in the Great Plan

[@PatrickOMulligan]

What if Malekith married Nagash?

[@rodrigosouza8471]

What if Morathi got a psychologist instead of going crazy and starting death and lewd cults

[@clockworkdeity]

What if Loremaster of Sotek was able to rizz up his favorite faction?

[@deekinscalesinger2806]

great job

[@stilloading5652]

This just sounds like better end times

[@albertdrevdal4233]

But surely athel Loren would be decimated to the point of being neutered. You discuss how there would be a lot of conflict within athel Loren due to the wood elves connection to it, but precisely because of that strong Connection and their isolationist views I can hardly see any wood elves going along with maz except for a select few, so there wouldn't really be any civil war. So maz would have to commit great forces to oust them. Additional I think you put too little weight on the pact between the elves and the forests which the spirits clearly see as important to them. I think that not only are the wood elves deeply connected to the forest, but the forest is deeply connected to them too, and the idea that durthu, the architect of the pact, would just let the slann take them is pretty ridiculous. Imo all this means that the lizard men would basically have to fight the entire forest to get the wood elves out, which would leave athel Loren very weak if standing at all if maz even wanted to use his forces on that. That being said I loved the stream, just want to share my own opinion on this specific subject

[@1701Emperor]

This what if wasn't really a detailed and critically thought through what if, but rather a "what if Mazdamundi could win". So the scenario played out as such. Chaos, for instance, wouldn't sit completely idle until the Lizardmen had already fixed the problems of both the Elves and the Dwarfs, nor would the Lizardmen be even remotely as powerful as they were during the Cataclysm. But it was still a fun thought experiment and made for some good storytelling.

[@RemusValeryain]

I don't think the Lizardmen would directly attack Skavenblight. I think they would just submerge the city in the Tilean Sea

[@taylordunford9268]

...kinda off topic, but it is videos like that that re-ignite my desperate need for a lizardmen rework in TW:WH3. imagine something like this as the big toadie boy's campaign mechanic. also, that seemingly off-handed comment about zoats confirming tyrannids in warhammer fantasy deserves it's own conversation.

[@Vintagegaston]

Now I’m wondering which god of death comes out on top in Shyish, since there is no Nagash

[@alfadasfire]

Ooh image beastmen from Ind or Kuresh, wild! Would they still have their horns (that give the old world beastmen their rank)? Tigermen with huge horns, yes please!

[@kjones5052]

What if sigmar never pissed off

[@andreyalekseev7093]

The idea is cool, but I don’t really think the realization was there. Basically whole stream lizardmen just did what they wanted without any problems. And I understand that it is lore accurate, but a little bit predictable. In this particular scenario it would be interesting to imagine how gw would handle this plot, without killing most of their races. Because if they changed purge to end times, they didn’t planned the original original scenario as world ending event. I think it would be even more interesting task for you especially to find the way for the plot to be engaging, world changing, but without any stupid excuses to scale down lizardmen power level a little bit. Maybe even introduce new races. It could be a cool campaign to go from 8th to 9th edition of WHFB, like arcs of omen for WH40K

[@davidmckhazad]

What if Bretonnia used black powder weapons?

[@akumaking1]

Why haven’t the Lizardmen ever bothered to explain the Great Plan to other species?

[@1701Emperor]

To put it bluntly, because they don't understand it themselves either.

[@davidmckhazad]

What if the chaos dwarfs went East and encountered Cathay? Or, what if the chaos dwarfs conquered the Karaz Ankor?

[@DominionSorcerer]

If they went East they'd fight Cathay, but they couldn't ever stand a chance at conquering it let alone the Karaz Ankor at its weakest currently.

[@DaglasVegas]

I'm only at thr fist step, the salnn megically awakening and raising their lost cities. Already i norice This discussion lacks addressing what Tzeentch does in every step the lizerdman to throw a wranch in their plan. There is no way the Slan take such extreme magical actions without him noticing it, he has plans within plans, no way they just reunite all the lizerdman and raise all the lost cities unimpeded.

[@grim9657]

So I love lorebeards but youtube constantly fails to notify me when it streams I find out the next day that it happened. You guys may need to get ahold of youtube and see what's going on

[@noavgg]

The "what if..." concept is fun, hope you do more of them. Don't think the story work very well. Don't think think the knowledge Maztamundi has on the other races would ware that wall sens most of them have change/corrupted to such a great extent that it would not work to that extent. The part that AOS is part of the grate plan still feels extremely forced from GW side.

[@GotrekGurnisson]

What if I killed grimnir

[@akumaking1]

“What if the End Crimes weren’t written by total morons?” “What if Gotrek fought Wulfrik?” “What if Felix was given the Sword of Khaine?”

[@luigisuper4143]

I think you could look at Malekith differently. He isn't the thread that could unite the elves, he's the thread that separated them. He was supposed to be Phoenix king but became so stupid that he killed Bel-Shanar, who is stated would have crowned him as his successor, and he is the reason the elves are in constant war to this day. If he and Morathi are killed by Mazdamundi, thr Dark Elf society collapses and they may become irrelevant, the less sadic of them even returning to Ulthuan as they have objectively been defeated and can no longer claim the Phoenix throne. This scnario also ends up with a "unification" of Dark Elves and High Elves, but without rewarding Malekith for his evil and without having untrustworthy murderhobos in Ulthuan that would inevitably come if Malekith becomes Phoenix king.

[@cangirayicel7639]

Thats how most of the warhammer writers look at it because its looks like good vs evil story from the outside but Asuryan isn't a benevolent god and high elves are pretty indifferent to lesser races. I think its a boring way to look at it.

[@luigisuper4143]

@cangirayicel7639 If Asuryan was so pro Malekith he wouldn't have empowered the other Phoenix kings (which is confirmed since in AOS they are said to still contain the power of Asuryan in their souls which Morathi uses to ascend). Also it's not that is just good vs evil, is that making Malekith the one that is correct diminishes the threat of Chaos, since it means that you can actually deal with Chaos to your benefit without becoming corrupt, as both Malekith and Morathi have made lots of deals with Chaos, specially Morathi. It goes against the Slann philosophy, as the Slann don't even want to touch the Earth in fear of becoming corrupt. I find it very difficult to actually believe that the Slann would want to put Malekith on the Phoenix throne, unless you take the route that the High Elves not accepting Malekith as the Phoenix king is a stronger deviation from the Great Plan than Malekith and Morathi dealing with Chaos and using dark magic to try to conquer Ulthuan. Unless you go with Andy's view of Malekith, which seems to think that he hasn't fundamentally changed as a person (as an elf?) since he tried to originally take the throne. Let's not forget that Malekith and Morathi are the objective responsibles of a great percentage of the deviations from the Great Plan: the Sundering, Nagash, Necromancy, the Vampires, the Tomb kings, collaborating with Chaos in the Great War to invade Ulthuan...

[@GoldenKaos]

@@luigisuper4143 Putting the AOS source to one side, there's nothing to say that Asuryan couldn't have empowered a line of surrogate Phoenix Kings while he was waiting for the "real one" to get his shit together and step up to the plate with the correct mentality. These two elements are not mutually exclusive at all. All species deal with Chaos to some degree without becoming "corrupt" - it's what magic is. Dark Elves are simply at the extreme end of this core Warhammer running theme of using chaos to defeat chaos. The closer you get to that edge, the riskier it is yes, but these are *Elves* - they were created by the Old Ones to manipulate magic and the aether, and that includes aethyric beings. Their infancy as a species was living alongside aethyric beings - their own very gods - and who were the first to do this in the first place. If anyone's using Chaos to fight Chaos, it's the Elves, and the Druchii doing that and making deals with Chaos is just Elves doing what they were designed to do. If they were Chaos Elves, then it would be a different matter and corrupt, but they're not. As Andy said, Mazda-man doesn't care about the internal politics involved, as long as they're on Ulthuan. As for an invasion - the Frog Chorus will use the Elven gods to show the way to the Elves. Yes, there will be outliers who won't go along and a resulting civil war, but there's going to be divinely ordained reintegration of the two peoples (plus the colonists) into an Elven kingdom that will look much closer to the pre-Sundering Elves which the Druchi *and* the Asur are both significant deviations from. Also, Andy's view of Malekith is absolutely that he has fundamentally changed as a person since he originally tried to take the throne - several times in fact. But come the End of the World, this will solidify into who he should have been when he tried to take the throne, but wasn't - and Snorri will help him along with that. I don't think the Slann care about blame. Dark Elves helped create some of these deviations from the plan? Who cares. Plan's back on, everyone to their positions. They're building a set of IKEA cupboards, and you don't blame some of the screws for falling off and making a mess of the other bits. You just clean up the mess and screw them in where they're meant to be. And using Chaos is not "collaborating" with Chaos ;)

[@luigisuper4143]

@@GoldenKaos Would all the Elf gods really agree with the Great Plan? I don't think so. The fact that they spoke with the Old Ones and that the Old Ones considered the Gods to be a part of the plan doesn't mean that all the Gods would agree. Dwarfs are also part of the Plan and there are Chaos Dwarfs. Andy and Sotek are assuming that the Elven Gods would deliver a consensual message to them to unify again. If the Elven gods truly wanted that they would have done so without the Slann intervening. I really doubt gods like Khaine or Atharti would support it, and they hold great influence over the Dark Elves. And Isha and Kurnous are basically canonically confirmed to not agree with the Great Plan, since they basically rule the Asrai which is very against the Great Plan. Would the High Elves really be that in favour of giving Malekith the throne just because SOME of the Cadai told them it was necessary? And I specially doubt that the majority of the Elven gods would be in favour of allowing the Slann to blow up the world with the power of the Vortex undone.

[@luigisuper4143]

​@@GoldenKaosAll of this really depends on if you believe that the Elven gods actually agree with the Slann. If they wanted they could have told the Elves to unify without Slann interference. Just because they are part of the Great Plan doesn't mean all gods agree with it, just like with any other species that are in the Great Plan. At least I really doubt Khaine would want unification, and he has a great influence over the Dark Elves. And Isha and Kurnous are basically confirmed to be against the Great Plan since they lead the Asrai, and having Elves in Athel Loren is against the Great Plan. So the Elven gods wouldn't deliver a unified message to the Elves. I specially doubt that all the Elven gods would be in favour of helping the Slann blow up the World. I don't even know how the Slann would figure out that the Old Ones wanted to blow up the World, since Andy and Sotek didn't explain how they are supposed to know. At the beginning of the stream they said that Mazdamundi's understanding of the Great Plan is not perfect, but suddenly he understands the true purpose of it.