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Warhammer Fantasy: Divided Loyalties - an Advisor's Quest

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Still amused by the 100-importance gobbo boss. Slight hints of early-career foolery-leading-to-amazed-onlookers Mathilde, there.

Lovely update full of finely crafted artisan slaughter and efficiently mass-produced death both.
BoneyM said:
Rangers, more than most dwarves, value efficiently mass-produced death over finely-crafted artisan slaughter.
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Gobbo deaths for every palate.

BoneyM said:
"You scout like a Ranger,"
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Angelform said:
A high complement from a Dwarf.
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I'm not so sure it is...

BoneyM said:
because they choose not to to drive home a crippling blow
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Is 'not to' above a remant of previous phrasing?
 
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[x] The Highways, where Karag Lhune joins the rest of the Karak.
[X] The Chiselwards below.
[X] Remain with Belegar.

The first two are the most valuable I think, but the third could be a nice chance to build a relationship with Belegar.
 
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Meanwhile, in Crooked Moon Quest
  • Apocrypha
    • So, excerpts from theCrooked Moon Quest update! (It features slightly less infighting than Skaven Quest, but also more tendency to jump on hilariously bad bandwagons.) Also, a certain level of omniscience, to make up for typical greenskin leadership issues. Viewpoint may change between characters at a moment's notice.

    So, the winning vote was to set up the bolt throwers and a Mob of goblins to defend the main gates from incoming Shorties, get the Doom Diver artillery ready for bombardment, and make a trade with Dem Ratboys, offering a bunch of orcs you have prisoner...

    The first hint you have that things are going wrong is when a fire starts and burns all the Doom Diver wings. Naturally, a riot starts among the Doom Divers, with arguments about who will be ammunition getting quite heated. Bombardment still commences, but is ineffective. And then the Shorty Rangers turn them all into pincushions, settling the arguments in a truly unfair way.
    ...
    The trading is going well. The Big Fat Ratboy has a bunch of dog-size ratz in cages, and the you seem to be getting a good deal... until your head explodes. A Ratboy with a pistol just shot The Big Boss in the face, and then one of the ratboy slaves opens the cage they're carrying, letting one of the Big Ratz loose... and that's when the riot starts. Aside from a bunch of gobbos chasing the Ratboy-with-pistol, it's pretty much every gobbo for themself, although the Ratboys are early casualties. The assassin eventually gets away after doing something with acid and shadows and then disappears in the darkness.
    ...
    Fortunately unaware of this chaos, the forces in the hall behind the gates are assembled, and prepared to fight, but also ready to open a path for the bolt-throwers to fire, or let a too-strong enemy charge right into the troll pit. But then something unseen riles up a troll, getting them to punch up through the planking. The trolls are almost brought back under control by means of torches, long spears, and a few gobbos sacrificed to trollish appetites, but then they start brawling amongst themselves, and it spills out of the pit. And they keep coming. Some gobbos try to flee out the gates, but are shot by Shorties. Only the ones that flee into the tunnels survive.
    ...
    So, the upper levels are lost, either to leadership struggles, trolls, or Shorty crossbows.
    Wat do?

    > [Gobbo1]Dafuq? Did the dwarves contract a bunch of Eshin assassins or something?
    > [Gobbo2]I told you that connecting the pit to the troll caves was going to backfire, but did anyone listen?
    >[Gobbo3]How many critfails did we roll here? This is insane. Okay, time to hope a leader emerges soon...

    And 15 more pages of backbiting, circular firing squad, and no useful suggestions.
     
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    • @BoneyM
    For a quick reminder and reference, what forces does the Expedition currently have going for the Chiselwards and the Highways (if anyone's going for them at all yet)?
     
    BoneyM said:
    Other forces will split off in every direction, hopefully to seize the entire mountain and set up a line of defences at the Grand Avenue, the vast underground highway network that apparently once linked all eight mountains. Failing that, they will fortify whatever choke-points they can reach and send runners to call for reinforcements. Failing that, more forces will need to be called from the East Gates, but if resistance is that stiff it would bode very poorly for the Expedition.
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    Given the highway seems to be the biggest unknown with the most scalable set of outcomes, it's also probably the highest-leverage point we can apply our unique, personal brand of Assymetric Wizardly Warfare:

    [X] The Highways, where Karag Lhune joins the rest of the Karak.
     
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    BoneyM said:
    This post discusses some pretty major details of how the quest works, don't read if you think seeing how the sausage is made will spoil it for you.

    Only the text in the updates are set in stone, if changing things that haven't taken place 'on screen' works better with later events I'll do it. I had a vague idea of the Crooked Moon hierarchy and it would have remained the case with a bit of tweaking if that dice-roll had been anything below a 70 or so. The natural 100 meant 1) he was a Warboss and 2) nobody was able to immediately fill his position.



    The former would have had Clan Angrund not being aggressive enough to take full advantage of the disarray and the goblins scattering into the side tunnels to be a possible future headache. The latter would have been the goblins putting aside the question of leadership in the face of a common foe, or possibly one seizing the opportunity by shouting orders loud enough to be heard that had the goblins sort themselves out in a hurry, and it would have been a brutal and bloody battle that ended up just barely favouring Clan Angrund, though it probably would have lead to additional rolls as the battle dragged on.

    A good example is the earlier roll between Slayers and Trolls. The Trolls got a crit so there were many more of them than expected, but the Slayers crit even higher so they had a glorious but costly victory. Because Mathilde had left the entrance hall before events with the Trolls had played out, the exact number of Trolls was unknown and as such open to tweaking. If Mathilde had watched events play out fully, or had seen the full extent of the pits underneath the false floor, I would have had to represent those results another way.


    All this is part of a larger GM philosophy split I've heard described as 'Cathedral vs Bazaar'. A Cathedral GM has every detail mapped out in advance, and it's huge and beautiful and static. A Bazaar GM only has what's in your immediate line of sight decided, but no matter what direction you want to go in, the GM just needs a minute or two to put up some scaffolding and fabric and extend the bazaar. But to some it feels less 'real', even if the in-game events never visibly reflect it.
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    Discussion of narrative meat industry continues.
    I personally prefer it when QMs use the Bazaar approach because I feel less guilty doing things like running out of the home province where we spent the game to kill skaven in the middle of nowhere.
     
    [X] Kragg and his Unsealing.

    We did our job, we can now kick back and watch a master class in magic.

    On another note... we might actually have to be careful about not stealing Belegar's thunder from here on out if we don't want any trouble going forward.

    Lets remember that he is a dwarf and this is his grudge and His mission and HIS glory.

    it would be an Irony if we get in trouble from doing too much of the work.
     
    [X] The Highways, where Karag Lhune joins the rest of the Karak.

    Also, healing dying Slayers is Not Done, but how would it be received if Mathilde used the Seed to restore maimed Slayers who clearly are going to survive, to get them back to full fighting shape for future battles?
     
    Well, my main issue was that we wouldn't be nearly as useful against capital M Monsters, who wouldn't be frightened and we couldn't kill easily, but if the Slayers are going there that makes it easier to decide.

    [X] The Highways, where Karag Lhune joins the rest of the Karak.
     
    [X] The Highways, where Karag Lhune joins the rest of the Karak.

    As long as we secure the main approach for any reinforcements/opportunistic attacks, any remaining resistance inside Karag Lhune can be taken care of, simply by concentrating dwarfpower on it.
     
    I think we should head towards the Chiselwards. The Highway will be more or less a big, clear path. But the Chiselwards are a tunnel fighting mess, and therefore both the place most suited to our talents and where we can make the most impact. The Highways may be more capital-I Important, but Mathilde personally can make a bigger difference in the Chiselwards.
     
    The problem with healing nameless rank-and-file individuals is that while it's the obvious and sensible thing to do, it inevitably leads to Mathilde's role in any given battle being 'here's a pile of wounded friendlies, here's a pile of captured enemies, this is what you do now'. Which doesn't really make for an interesting story.

    As such Mathilde will use her Seed to heal named characters if need be, but I'd much rather skim right past the morally upright but narratively tedious possibility of healing others.
     
    [X] Kragg and his Unsealing.

    I want more Magical doodads and lores, so I'm going for Kragg.
     
    BoneyM said:
    The problem with healing nameless rank-and-file individuals is that while it's the obvious and sensible thing to do, it inevitably leads to Mathilde's role in any given battle being 'here's a pile of wounded friendlies, here's a pile of captured enemies, this is what you do now'. Which doesn't really make for an interesting story.

    As such Mathilde will use her Seed to heal named characters if need be, but I'd much rather skim right past the morally upright but narratively tedious possibility of healing others.
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    Seeds are good, but if you use them in mass like that you will brake them from overuse.

    like the wheels on a car will last a year using them normally but will pop in a day if you keep doing doughnuts in a circle nonstop.
     
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