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Warhammer Fantasy: Divided Loyalties - an Advisor's Quest

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Imrix said:
Again, hard evidence? This isn't 40k. We don't actually know how or why orks were created in fantasy - heck, it's not even certain they reproduce through spores, although clearly BoneyM is going with that. It's entirely possible that some orks do desire or even practice a peaceful existence, and we just don't hear about it because it's Warhammer, that kind of thing isn't in the narrative focus for a wargame, action RPG or heroic fantasy novels.
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I can't prove that, it can not be proven to your satisfaction. I can only comment on what we do hear about.
 
pucflek said:
As wizards age and grow in power with their training and straining of arcane might, their wind of power begins substituting part of their soul. IIRC this is one of the reasons why they might live longer., as they technically stop being properly human. Or i might be talking out of my ass, just repeating something i overheard on one discord somewhere.

As for Orcs, they were constructed as society of absolute warriors, with zero redeeming qualities that are not related to fighting some more, like being brave, or loyal (Da Immortulz and Grimgor come to mind). They have a society, a brutal one but it works, they can socialize, they even have rudimentary culture, they can form bonds that kind of resemble friendships (Gobbla and Skarshnik). But all they are is bent towards all-consuming war. Thats the beginning and the end of what they are. I personally don ´t think that any debate on what they happen to deserve or not will get us anywhere but to another threadlock.
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By such measure humans are nothing but automata for gene replication/propagation. Their society is a society which evolved to maximize chance of that, with zero qualities which do not stem from there in some way, shape or form. Loyalty, friendship, love, culture - it's all artifacts of humans trying to execute their biological impetus to preserve and propagate the gene material.
That's the begging and the end of what they are.

And yet treating humans like a devouring swarm of self-replicating von Neumann machines that they, technically, are is probably a bit reductive, don't you think? :V
 
ctulhuslp said:
By such measure humans are nothing but automata for gene replication/propagation. Their society is a society which evolved to maximize chance of that, with zero qualities which do not stem from there in some way, shape or form. Loyalty, friendship, love, culture - it's all artifacts of humans trying to execute their biological impetus to preserve and propagate the gene material.
That's the begging and the end of what they are.

And yet treating humans like a devouring swarm of self-replicating von Neumann machines that they, technically, are is probably a bit reductive, don't you think? :V
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I mean, humans have a ton of traits that are actually counter productive to that? Some of them relate to the actual goal of life: survival, not endless spreading that leads to resource scarcity and massive die offs. But others are just plain unproductive for our goal. And we have a ton more unproductive traits for this goal than the greenskin races do for their own in-built goal of war. It's why we see them as monolithic and over focused on war by comparison to humans.

The reason they have less traits counter productive to their goal than we do to ours is we're an accident of nature and they're a far more deliberate creation.
 
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I am more curious as to why we are even arguing this, this is Warhammer where the entire basis of the setting is to fight and kill each other.
 
ctulhuslp said:
By such measure humans are nothing but automata for gene replication/propagation. Their society is a society which evolved to maximize chance of that, with zero qualities which do not stem from there in some way, shape or form. Loyalty, friendship, love, culture - it's all artifacts of humans trying to execute their biological impetus to preserve and propagate the gene material.
That's the begging and the end of what they are.

And yet treating humans like a devouring swarm of self-replicating von Neumann machines that they, technically, are is probably a bit reductive, don't you think? :V
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Except humans are real complex species that can hardly be defined. Orcs are race spoken about in bunch of books and rulebooks made by company that define them as such. Which is kind of what Squishy was hinting at when he said that creating black and white caricature of beings for commiting violence upon is unacceptable, see. I have no wish to continue this argument further.
 
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Yeah, trying to explain 350 shares of loot is going to be... an issue. Hmmm. We could just tell the truth. It would set of another round of paranoia, but it is Ranald's honest truth.

"We found them abandoned, on the ground, after a celebration. They must have dropped it. It would seem it pays to be around thousands of drunk, gambling mercenaries."

I'm not really sure how the Grey Order can take that wrongly. It's true, after all. ;)

The real question is how in the name of god are we getting in anywhere? How are we splitting it, if we are splitting it? And what to use it on? I heard something about making a workshop, and that would pass muster, as would getting our hands on exotic ingredients, espetially as one of the things we mentioned was doing magic research and maybe some Enchanting.

EDIT: If Mat could reforge the Staves at some point, that would be a real boost to the Colledge, but it would also likely lead her to being grounded and all around treated as a Battle Wizard, IE a strategic asset not to be risked in the outside world without great need. So pros and cons there.
 
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Adhoc vote count started by Sinsystems on Sep 25, 2019 at 11:07 AM, finished with 459 posts and 49 votes.
  • [x] Plan Light Everything On Fire And Kill Things
    -[x] Propose lighting as much of Grobi Town on fire as possible, using whatever combination of your personal sneaking, magic to help others sneak, ranger sneaking, halfling sneaking, top-class dwarven incendiary technology, artillery-hurled incendiaries, and other means the war council can cook up.
    -[x] Ensure in particular that the portions closest to the Citadel entrance are lit up so that reinforcing the Citadel becomes difficult to impossible without charging into the flames.
    -[x] Combine with assassinations for additional confusion and to ensure lack of an organized response.
    [X] Plan Burning Shadows
    -[X] Spend a night before the assault hunting down and assassinating any surviving shamans. Make sure to sleep the day before.
    -[X] Mathilde infiltrates into position to be down sun of the Citadel and arranges for the dwarves to attack at the local dawn, when the sun becomes visible above the eastern peaks. She then times the conclusion of a casting of Burning Shadows to complete moments after the sun is visible and the Citadel's shadow is cast. Ritual cast if Mathilde is confident she can do so reliably.
    -[X] Scatter Black Lotus poisoned caltrops on the path to delay greenskins and get them stuck in the Burning Shadow longer.
    -[X] Organise to have indirect fire of dwarven catapults firing whatever the engineers think will cause the most havoc arcing over the Citadel into Grobi down timed to a few moment after the Burning Shadows is cast.
    [X] Plan Go Commando
    -[X] Survey and MAP the entrance from Grobitown to the Citadel, use this to generate a better set of charges to collapse it.
    -[X] sneak back up to gate, plant charges, blow it up. Rangers are infiltrating to Caldera rim to overlook passage, lotus poison bolts to provide a backup plan.
    --[X] if the explosion works, well, actually we're good to go. Roll up artillery to dominate the passage as the battle is underway, to further dissuade approach to the Citadel. If it's been less successful, adapt, but focus our subsequent efforts on dissuading entry to the Citadel.
    [X] Plan Combination
    - [X] Sow chaos in the night
    -- [X] Propose lighting as much of Grobi Town on fire as possible, using whatever combination of your personal sneaking, magic to help others sneak, ranger sneaking, halfling sneaking, top-class dwarven incendiary technology, artillery-hurled incendiaries, and other means the war council can cook up.
    -- [X] Ensure in particular that the portions closest to the Citadel entrance are lit up so that reinforcing the Citadel becomes difficult to impossible without charging into the flames.
    -- [X] Combine with assassinations for additional confusion and to ensure lack of an organized response. Prioritize murdering shamans if possible.
    -[X] If Mathilde has enough steam to do it after night in town, Mathilde infiltrates into position to be down sun of the Citadel and arranges for the dwarves to attack at the local dawn, when the sun becomes visible above the eastern peaks. She then times the conclusion of a casting of Burning Shadows to complete moments after the sun is visible and the Citadel's shadow is cast. Ritual cast if Mathilde is confident she can do so reliably.
    -[X] Scatter Black Lotus poisoned caltrops on the path to delay greenskins and get them stuck in the Burning Shadow longer.
    -[X] Organise to have indirect fire of dwarven catapults firing whatever the engineers think will cause the most havoc arcing over the Citadel into Grobi down timed to a few moment after the Burning Shadows is cast.
    [x] plan: It wuz Dem!
    -[x] infiltrate and plant delayed incendiaries
    -[x] widely scatter caltrops with black lotus poison.
    -[x] set off some explosions away from the citadel
    -[x] impersonate a big orc to scream out lies about who is attacking and from where. Slip away, repeat elsewhere.
    -[x] Panoramia ritual casts father of thorns to quietly seal the gate.
    [X] Sleep on the pile like a dragon
    - [X] Gather the Journeymanlings and have them take turns proposing strategies and then critiquing
    [X] Try to agitate infighting among the greenskins while the main force gets into position to attack.
    [x] Plan Hat Trick
    -[x] Mathilde sets the explosives in a Caldera-to-Citadel pass and then proceeds to the grobi town
    -[x] Mathilde sets the grobi town on fire and prevents all greenskin attempts to coordinate
    -[x] Rangers and/or catapults - whoever does this better - fill the path from caldera to citadel with black lotus poisoned caltrops
    -[x] Codrin's archers should claim the wall and repel greenskins right after the first assault is successful
    [X] Plan Burning Shadows
    -[X] Sell Belegar on the value of a day's preparation and rest time for the human mercenaries to get over their lack of sleep and hangovers.
    -[X] Spend a night before the assault hunting down and assassinating any surviving shamans. Make sure to sleep the day before.
    -[X] Mathilde infiltrates into position to be down sun of the Citadel and arranges for the dwarves to attack at the local dawn, when the sun becomes visible above the eastern peaks. She then times the conclusion of a casting of Burning Shadows to complete moments after the sun is visible and the Citadel's shadow is cast. Ritual cast if Mathilde is confident she can do so reliably.
    -[X] Scatter Black Lotus poisoned caltrops on the path to delay greenskins and get them stuck in the Burning Shadow longer.
    -[X] Organise to have indirect fire of dwarven catapults firing whatever the engineers think will cause the most havoc arcing over the Citadel into Grobi down timed to a few moment after the Burning Shadows is cast.
    [X] The Beast Awakens
    -[X] Have the bolt throwers and grudge throwers position to cover the path up from the Caldera
    -[X] Position ourselves at the lip of the Caldera and cast Sound to imitate the loud roaring of a large beast coming from a central location amongst the Greenskin Factions
    -[X] Repeat until the Greenskins investigate or flee the area. Once Greenskins investigate or flee, signal for the attack to begin
    -[X] Keep casting Sound when necessary to keep the focus of the Greenskins on the Caldera, tag team with Seija so repeat casting doesn't become too strenuous.
    [X] Plan: Hold the Open gates and start a Blaze.
    -[X] Make a pair of gates, or bars, or some kind of portable barrier to place into the open Gates once you take them. Make some smaller ones, but that would be able to block dwarven halls in the citadel, if you need strong points.
    -[X] Charge the open gate(since no hinges survived) with Knights, with Mat on shadowsteed and Dread Aspect. With dwarves running in behind them. Take and hold the open gates from the other side as fast as possible. Speed is life here, you want to be blocking the other side before anyone gets close.
    -[X] Give some Caltrops to the Knights. Both to scatter outside the Gates on the Inner Side, or drop behind them in retreat if this is some kind of trap.
    -[X] If time and space allowed, take some torches along. Some Knights can ride down the avenue, just a bit, and throw some torches around to help the blaze start, as well as spread the caltrops. But only within easy withdrawl distance.
    -[X] Have archers police the walls and bring in Grudge Throwers right behind the charge. Even before the Citadel falls, the Grudge throwers can throw over the walls and set fire to the caldera shanty town with dwarven incendiaries. That should give pause to any greenskins and flush out any surprises hidden in the buildings. Not even they like walking through literal fire.
    -[X] As possible, bring up a couple of bolt throwers and use them to police the approaching avenue and take targets of opportunity while the incendiaries do their job.
    -[X] Dial in a couple of cannon on our side of the gates. If something nasty shows up, a pre-set signal should allow them to shoot anything trying to boil out of them from the underways.
    --[X] Assuming all goes well, if you hold the gates with Knights and the shantytown is burning, once they dwarves arrive and plug the gate, all that will be left is fighting for the citadel and the underground approaches. And the dwarves know tunnel fighting far better than you do. We can bring archers up as we spread through the Citadel, to hold the walls from without.
    --[X] Really, if we manage to hold the Gate and start a blaze, the biggest issue will be smoke and the underways. As well as any reinforcements that might come along the walls themselves. We can help with that by having some cannon on our side, that can sweep the top for enemy reinforcements, but the tunnel fighting is going to hurt if they are ready. Ask if the top of the walls is wide and sturdy enough for a wolf charge, if needed.
    [X] Plan Slayer
    -[X] Stage 1: Mathilde infiltrates the Citadel, Rangers scout, Dwarfs set up artillery. If successful.
    -[X] Stage 2: Fire the artillery, set Grobi town on fire, prevent reinforcements getting to the Citadel. If successful.
    -[X] Stage 3: Escort Citadel attack force with monstrous cavalry. If successful.
    -[X] Stage 4: Conquer the citadel
    [X] Plan Shadow and Fire
    -[X] Mathilde infiltrates to a position where she can cast Burning Shadows on the Citadel's shadow.
    --[X] If Burning Shadows is dispelled, move to block the path physically with the Torc of Fire, Dread Aspect, or Burning Shadows (if the Crown of Fire casts Mathilde's shadow forward
    -[X] Have Grudge Throwers launch incendiaries over the Citadel into Grobi Town.
    -[X] Expedition forces assault the Citadel after the first volley.
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065tdsa said:
I mean, humans have a ton of traits that are actually counter productive to that? Some of them relate to the actual goal of life: survival, not endless spreading that leads to resource scarcity and massive die offs. But others are just plain unproductive for any goal. And we have a ton more unproductive traits than the greenskin races do for their own manufactured goal of war, it's why we see them as monolithic, with a single culture that is conducive to said goal.
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Which are unproductive? For example?
Well, for example, art. If we are comparing humans to orcs - which is context in which I invoked them - orcs have art too. Brutal, primitive, but they have art - religious, cultural, dependent on the clan and other circumstances. They have folk beliefs, cultural grudges, all the hallmarks of civilization. If we are willing to dismiss their art as not being enough to count as "culture", why should we treat humans differently?

It's not like we are talking about Tyranids here, you know.

That's part of broader issue with both FB and 40K, really. They create races with culture enough to produce art and have religion and folklore and so on - which would deffo count enough to call them sapient and likely civilized if they were humans - and then make them designated unredeemable hivemind/Chaotic Evil Race for Resident Space Marine(or medieval equivalent) To Murder Without Any Moral Quandary. (edit: probably a normal problem with dark fantasy)

Which got worse with time, really; older editions of 40K, for example, had travelling Ork Space Heavy Metal Band, which basically just arrived to places, played loud music with loads of trash lying around (think hyperbole of typical metalhead concert, just as orcs are a caricature of football hooligans) and went away. Which clearly is not a behaviour of some War Hivemind.
But that much of a nuance probably was too much to handle for abysmal writers of Black Library and majority of fanbase, so we have what we have.
 
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SuperSonicSound said:
The main problem with the light grobi town on fire is that it's easy for the orcs and goblins to not get killed, they can flee the fire and it doesn't stop them interfering the assault on the Citadel. The burning shadows plan on the other hand is vastly more difficult for them to flee from as they'll be a hell of a lot more confused as to what is happening and will occur much more rapidly. The fire plan if we couldn't cast burning shadows wouldn't be terrible but it's no where near as effective as the burning shadows plan nor will it be any where near as safe.

The combined plan is also a pretty bad idea because it means doing the Burning shadows thing when the Grobi have been effectively roused and warned that they're under attack it will mean doing it when they're looking for who ever attacked them. Also it's splitting the vote on top which means neither burning shadows or Plan combi will get through unless people vote for both.
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This is why I suggested putting taking the Citadel as tier three priority. Burning the town is going to happen anyway and if it happens now or later. If you burn it they lose a hard point. If it goes out of control you pick off the blobs of greenskins already outside the Citadel with a major reinforcement vector disabled. If you only slaughter the idiots outside your up for the day. If you can get the Citadel to the point its down enough troops to actually scout it bonus. A trap or fortification spotted is one easier to deal with.

Its leaving the greenskins alone to coordinate and reorganize the pecking order is the dumb idea. Destroying them in droves is a good thing. Taking the Citadel is a good thing (barring lack of staffing problems). Taking it on day three after killing the defenders outside is still plenty good.

This need and expectation to take it in one day is why I said symtoms of victory disease are showing.
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As for the giant pile of cash... it actually pretty easy to get rid of infinity of it by simply donating to infrastructure in the dwarf fortresses... or effectively commissioning that mapping table based on runes for the fortress and get your name on it. Have it in the room with the signed map carved into it and make it a thing for export. Bam! name in the dwarven history books as a good thing.

Vow of technical poverty and ego pumping up solved at once.
 
I doubt the money will be a real issue.

Pay off our debt to Stirland: Easily accepted by the Grey College, since their agent having less potential ways to be externally influenced is in their interests, and the money goes to an Imperial Province anyway.

Spend a ton of it on our fief: The money is used by Dame Weber for the good of her people, not really contestable - and this category includes re-investing a bunch of the money into expanding some of our business ventures.

Spend it on personal equipment for adventuring and experimentation: Having their agent be well equipped is in their interests, and we have their trust when it comes to sharing our discoveries with the college.

Keep a useful discretionary fund: Useful for playing any number of roles and reacting quickly to a crisis.

And if we end up with any money that we can't officially slot into any of the above categories, we'll probably just pass it to the College along with our 1/10th tithe, maybe even get some college favours from it.
 
I still say we should invest a chunk of money into shrine to Ranald, or maybe start a small church/cult of him after humans/halflings settle in K8P. After all, Belegar considers Ranald to be basically kind of god Rangers would pray to, so as long as people don't rob dwarfs with his help I think dwarfs would accept his worship.
 
I have a good explanation for the loot.

we were so helpful, (saving peobably hundreds of dwarf lives) that not only did they pay us incredibly well, we were also given an extraordinary protective talisman forged by kragg the grim himself.
 
We're a wizard who is a noblewoman with her own fief and also fighting in a warzone. Finding things to spend our money on immediately is never going to be a challenge, even if it's only getting a better sword.

The fief can be expected to be our long term money sink, for the rest of eternity. With it being a not particularly productive bit of Stirland, we can just put money in and it'll hardly ever spit out too much of a profit.
 
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As for what to do with the money, we should probably just pay off our debt for the eic first and foremost.

then, i want to build a proper research lab and spell training area.
 
Paying of the debt would be nice. It's technically a terrible investment but helping out Stirland would be a nice thing to do.

Commissioning some really nice equipment would also be good. With our level of dwarf rep we might be able to just straight up purchase a runic weapon. If not there are plenty of wizards in the empire.

Finally putting some money into our Gong Farmers and Niter factory and seeing if we can spread them a bit more would be good. It's the best investment we can make, cleans up the streets, provides jobs and makes for some really good gunpowder.
 
DarknessSmiles said:
As for what to do with the money, we should probably just pay off our debt for the eic first and foremost.

then, i want to build a proper research lab and spell training area.
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Oh I agree that is probably a great idea, although if we invest in our Estate and build the lab I think it probably would be a good idea to set up some security like some professional guards to make sure no one pokes around while we aren't there.
 
WorldSlayer said:
Paying of the debt would be nice. It's technically a terrible investment but helping out Stirland would be a nice thing to do.

Commissioning some really nice equipment would also be good. With our level of dwarf rep we might be able to just straight up purchase a runic weapon. If not there are plenty of wizards in the empire.

Finally putting some money into our Gong Farmers and Niter factory and seeing if we can spread them a bit more would be good. It's the best investment we can make, cleans up the streets, provides jobs and makes for some really good gunpowder.
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I, personally, am worried that we might start running into "too many magical items" issue; we have Torc, Belt, Seed, Coin and Robes already. Wasn't there something about plausible issues with too many enchanted items?
 
Besides paying back the loan we should see about spending some to make the lives of the people who live on our land better, maybe see about getting a church to Shallya.

I wonder how expensive that is?
 
I would also not be opposed to buying a marksman rifle from the dwarfs.

use our favor gained from this expedition for shooting lessons with the rifle and on a badass rune weapon.
 
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