Putting Ulgu on a good Dawi made weapon? That's Grudge worthy.
More seriously, that's a lotta heat (More like a cutting torch) and noise to cover up, we'd have to apply it per shot, I think.
Won't need to cover the heat, just make it muffled.
Or I dunno Substance of Shadow on the bullet?
No doubt this has been discussed before, but is there any way of enchanting a belt or some such that it can be used to cast shadowsteed? I dunno if it would be worth the time, but it is a very useful item for others, if so.
It'd take an action and someone willing to put scary magic thing on their genitals.
And of course, anyone who takes the item can use it, and it'd need repair or replacement if used frequently.
...so the ex-adventurers probably have some willing to try.
Speaking of, when we finally get around to making new armour robes with our mastered Armour spell, and whatever magic we need for it to be most effective, I'm think that even partial failures won't be too bad, there's probably someone we can trade the weaker stuff to if we don't get it on the first go.
Naw, if we take the leadership job, we take the outdated versions and gift them to noob adventurers!
Oh, and finally, I have had an idea Dunno how well it if work, dunno how many we could get or if there would be problems, but I wanted to float this: Explain to dwarves about how often poor wizard children fall to chaos because they are not found in time, (as I understand it, that's a thing). Then ask the dwarves to make quite a few simple runed items that do nothing but glow or something when touched by a wizard. Then the appropriate empire origination can have them in cities and towns depending on how many we get.
Wouldn't actually add much unfortunately. Wizard children don't really need sensors or anything to identify, what you need is someone to see the kid doing freaky things and instead of lynching them, send them to the Colleges.
Magic kids aren't that subtle.
It's called 'River Ruin' because way up to the north it goes right through the Chaos Dwarf industrial hellscape of Zharr-Naggrund. It's unknown what it would do to a boat on any given day but the possibilities are universally bad.
Might be some interesting distillates for alchemical reagents...
If the Quest updated weekly rather than the current 24 hours to vote and then however long to write cycle, that'd be a way to do the write-in only system properly. But I don't see a way to make it work with the current update speed. 24 hours means that no matter what time I update, anyone checking the forum once a day can still contribute to every vote. Trying to subdivide that 24 hours would mean that the main contributors to any given voting cycle are largely dependent on the time of day.
I believe the idea is that for write-in only scenarios you make it 2 days, and in between have a low content update of fluff or whatever as the plans are hashed out between you and your advisors/relevant subordinate for the actual vote on the second day.
It'd probably be used sparingly even so though.
Write ins generate much more fatigue in the voters.
There are other non-noun roots, like 'dal' for old/good, 'guz' for eating/drinking, 'lok' for intricate/praiseworthy, 'stok' for hit/strike. It could be that this is part of the Dwarven 'if it's important enough it counts as an actual physical object' weirdness.
I'd not be at all surprised if a dwarf considers an oath an actual physical object.
But undumgi is more time sensitive. If we do this now, it'll be by acclimation- else they'll already have a commander. Come on, just a few turns before papers? We have the research locked in!
Thats fair enough and I know what to check in next.
That said the research papers will be harder the more time passes, memory fades.
So, to clarify... Before Karag Nar they had 7,300 and then lost 800. Before the Citadel, they had 6,700 and lost 1,300.
So, what does that look like in percentages?
800 losses out of 7,300 total is 10.96% losses. That's not great, but (and I am kinda pulling this memory and knowledge out of my butt) IIRC armies would outright route if they took... what was it? Was it 20% or 25% casualties? I think the magic number was "25% is where you go 'Holy shit'."
The Citadel: 1,300 losses out of 6,700. That's 19.4%. That's brutal. Taking 20% casualties in a single engagement is brutal.
... Of course, you know who's had it even worse this expedition? Karak Izor. They brought about 16,000 Dwarfs of their own Karak, and another 16,000 unaffiliated Dwarf adventurers. They lost about 3,850 of their Dwarfs, and 5,000 of their Adventurers.
Now, that combines 2 battles into one (East Gate and Karag Lhune) so it wasn't all at once, but...
3,300 dead in the East Gate + Karag Lhune assault; another 550 dead at Karag Nar. 5,000 Adventurers (and then another 500) dead at Karag Nar.
3,300 / 16,000 is 20.625%, going up to 24.06% after Karag Nar.
Their Adventurers took 31.25%, going up to 34.375% losses.
Oof. Those are some brutal losses for an army. Much less Dwarfs. ><
I'd note that 10% rout is supposed to be for losses in one engagement. The Karag assaults are room to room breaching, which allows for a 10% loss of the combatants in each room, and that lets them get really savage cumulative losses. They don't 'feel' the losses in other rooms because they can't sense those.
As long as we remember the old action economy. Every two underlings empowered to run a sub-organisation took ones of our six 'available actions' per six month turn.
(I.e. when we had delegated Julia/the intelligence network and the Watch we had five personal/other actions).
That said, I'd still likely want an military actual leader subordinate for the Undumgi, if it goes that way. Organising all the patrols and training and whatnot is a bit dull.
I'd note that the action economy was a problem because we insisted on micromanaging everything. Subordinates can be action free, if you give them a lot of free rein rather than hover over their shoulders making sure they're doing it right.
Its freedom to fuck up of course.
Ranald the Protector is not Ranald the Democracy Crusader. If Belegar starts being a tyrannical despot then by all means Ranald would be all for liberating the Undumgi from that. The Halflings negotiated for their political indepdence from the start and have a system of governance in place already. Deliberately eroding the feudal hierarchy is an entirely different matter.
Theoretically it's possible for a civil war to develop among Dwarves, but the Clan system is a good safety valve - a single bad King can only do so much damage before word reaches the High King, and when he puts pressure on, a King that won't back down is a King that will be removed by his own Clan because he's sullying the honour of them all. That there's not been a bad High King raises an eyebrow, and it's an open question whether it's an unbroken string of good luck or whether the Throne of Power is pulling some strings.
As I understand it Ranald is effectively agnostic(heh) about the government system. He's just the god of revolutionaries because they are usually triggered by abuse and oppression to begin with, and would be equally fine with whatever mode of government is installed as long as said government isn't abusive to the man on the street.
So for many revolutionaries he supports them RIGHT till they win, install their own dictator, and becomes the very thing they hated. Then their luck deserts them.
Personally where governing a mob of former adventurers is concerned, it pretty much has to be rule by fiat and appointment.
The top leadership must be someone they respect AND fear, they hadn't had a lot of experience with formal structures of leadership, so getting them to listen will be a minor nightmare, and attempting to micromanage them is likely to end badly.
They're good at tasks, but few who took up the adventuring lifestyle are likely to be big on long term planning or strategic goals.
So pretty much some variant on Lord and Council structure works, with the Council having largely free rein over their area except for some specific directives.
I've been thinking about a big post in this regard for quite some time. Thusly, here's a thing where I talk about the base and one of the projects we can all agree on doing the snake juice(with a lot of leakage from my quality assurance and safety job). Also might be helpful to
@BoneyM's contemplations on what to do.
The Proposal For A Tower
We need multiple things in my mind from a vacation home or actual home in Karak Eight Peaks so I'll break it up into categories:
Security
A decent opener in my mind what we need here is a place where Mathilde can do her black ops research projects like the Book, the Juice, Ranaldian Theurgy, the Coin. These are all things which we do not want scrutiny aimed at, so our first and best defense is secrecy. This is easy to attain from the dwarves with them taking oaths of secrecy as to its internal construction seriously, and also because we are not explicitly obligated to tell Belegar the nitty gritty details. As a friend we should tell him if something is going to have a much higher chance than usual with magic to take the top of his mountain off. And any dwarf builders will take their oaths seriously enough to take it to their graves in quite a literal fashion.
Secrecy prevents knowledge of the Book and from the Book and the Juice, which I'm sure as a source of lots of energy appeals to dark sorcerers, from spreading. Secrecy prevents evil forces from knowing precisely what is within that tower.
The second piece in my mind is sitting in a Dwarven Karak at the peak of a Karag. There are
few more defended places in the world and such physical security can also be augmented by defensive traps and or devices around the inner rooms and plausibly the outer rooms. A house whose door is locked by Dwarven Runecraft would be one simple though expensive example, but there are simpler options such as just mechanical traps leading into the sanctum.
Safety Measures
As it is I feel like it being a safe place to experiment with magic, as much as we can make it with our resources on hand is something that is
imperative. Magic is a dangerous activity liable to just blow our brains out the back of our head as it is to take the top of Belegar's mountain. BoneyM has at one point likened some complicated magic to being like juggling radioactive chainsaws.
So, I feel that we must go the extra mile in building a place that is specifically designed to ground miscasts and to have the means to protect delicate experiments and delicate Magister Grey Wizards from getting exploded or turned into protoplasm. So architechtural safety, magical safety and another quality which leads into the next thing.
One project we want to work on involves a liquid of mostly unknown properties beyond the knowledge that it is energetic and as a magical substance likely to be volatile and dangerous. We must have safe storage ability, the ability to store a large amount of Snake Juice and other dangerous Things if and when we so desire. Because I imagine its not going to be the only Thing we find that needs bulk storage.
This all leads into the bedrock for a good lab that can be decked out with sweet tools.
Effective Experimentation Tools
Here is much more simple than the above categories in my mind, in a very point and shoot manner of "We need bitchin good enchanting, ritual and precision working tools". So things like what one would find in a smithy, in our enchanting lab, in a biology lab like lots of colored lenses the whole works. Deck it out with everything of good use to a working wizard.
We also I believe need to work on ways to tie into the magical nexus as many have pointed out so that the magical power we actually have access to in the inner sanctums is great enough to do what we want. This is all extremely convenient to build in Karak Eight Peaks because the Dwarves are the best builders in the world, which leads into the next thing.
Vaults and Libraries
Many have brought up the idea of storing Things of Import in here and to take this idea to the Dwarves means we will get a
very good Vault. Nothing will be getting inside that anytime in Mathilde's life time, nor likely in the life time of any Belegar's grandchildren at the very least.
We are in a good place to make a very secure place to hold things we need out of sight for a time or forever, depending on what it is.
We're also a wizard with a smallish library of our own in Stirland, that can probably honestly stay there, but the rest of what we collect or write ourselves will need somewhere to go and it follows the same principles as the Vaults.
Guest Rooms and Living Spaces
And finally we have the point of a home of any kind, which is comfortable living. Its a bit of a duh to make it a nice place to live and also pretty simple with all the cash and favors we'll probably have on hand. Also probably the least expensive come to think of it. Regardless, if we request it such that the sanctum and vault and labs and such are hidden we can host guests in that home part and live very comfortably and the home provides a cover of its own because who would want to invade the privacy of a scary wizard without invitation?
The Proposal For The Juice
This bit is about what I think we should look into with the Juice. Less structured but I also have less to say.
To me the first move we need to make, which will honestly I expect be placed below our level of abstraction is finding out what will make it explode or turn into cats or make skunk stank radiate from our room for three years. Like that Skunkworks option we had for it before we went to Drakenhof. This is so we can safely handle it and understand what
Not to Do.
Then after that I think the next most important bits are how to dispose of it, through whatever means, though it would be somewhat convenient if we could just use it as fuel. And to create it separate from the Schrodinger Snek if that is possible or find out if its not and we need the Snek. At the moment if we loose the Box, this project is done and that would leave me very sad. If we can find a way to generate more then with disposal and safe handling we have a great foundation to approach it, and we will learn a lot about it as we try to learn of a way to generate it.
Personal thought on the tower:
Ulgu access
-Ulgu requires high variance in light levels for maximum effect. You don't want a dark place, you want a room where its incredibly easy to generate strong clear shadows using natural light(because firelight is tainted with Aqshy and magical light adds magical interference) in a manner which won't be interrupted by people walking past. Remember how much trouble we had setting up an expensive system to get light in our urban base?
-Ulgu prefers places near people. Places without intelligent minds, even if technically dark, don't have much ambient Ulgu. You want people imagining everything in the shadows.
Safety
-Any lab needs to be a decent distance away from meddling fools for safety reasons.
-Any lab wants access to open air for venting/grounding purposes. An enclosed lab means a much higher chance of any mishap spreading along the interior of the building.
Security
-To avoid issues like "Skaven burrowed into your basement" the lab should not be in the lower levels of the Karag or any entrances.
-The lab needs a small number of entrances, which can all be warded.
Utility
-The lab is where, if we had Battlemagic, it'd be the ideal place to cast from, with all the circles and ambient energy in our favor. A good angle of view also allows us to survey the nearby area from our lab using out magnifying glass spell(and hell, we could enchant our own super telescope for practice)
Overall it seems to me that the natural, ideal location should be the top room of Karag Nar.
Probably depends on the mercenary. It seems quite likely that mercenaries might group up and set each other as their beneficiaries if they grow close to one another. Alternatively they might just straight up have families and friends they wish to bequeath their assets to.
I expect that one of the reasons Dwarfs make for such desirable employers is that you can trust their word that even if you're not around to see it happen that they'll make sure the money gets to where it needs to go.
Note that our lot is packed full of vagabonds and adventurers. Fair chance that at least one in five is a fugitive of some sort. They probably don't WANT a connection back to their old life, and if they do it'd probably be more like collecting their loot haul and then paying to marry their waifu over here.
Could be interesting. Maybe we even discover that Snake Juice can substitute as a Warpstone-analogue in their tech!
Warpstone to be fair is used in Skaven technology almost exclusively as a super dense fuel.
I believe the intended metaphor is that Skaven are using warpstone like modern society uses diesel, while everyone ELSE is using wood and charcoal. It lets them leverage a lot more energy than they should be able to.
Snake Juice as liquid magical energy of some form could likely be adapted to the job, but scarcity problems means that we just plain aren't going to be using any of those the way the Skaven do.
#SmugMathilde #WindReaderMindReader
Knowing look at Belegar, small smile. "I believe that was a Great Shaman in there, you know."
...wait we killed the Warboss
again? Without even being near them?
@BoneyM, could we not have a tower and still be a spymaster?
Also, am very confused. Did we have 20 Dwarf Rep before the campaign or did we get there during it?
The only thing about not picking tower now is that someone else is likely going to call dibs on the cool rooms, like the bigass viewing chamber at the top.
What about Mathilde's lands can't she hire Panoramia to make them healthy?
And her friends, plus checking up on Stirland?
Mathilde's lands are perfectly fine, they're just karst hills, lots of porous limestone, covered with a couple of feet of rich loam. Too dry for grain, too shallow for trees. Too unstable for quarrying and theres nothing to mine.
We can invest, but its not something a Life wizard is good at. Better off paying for looms, smithies, scribes, etc, to increase productivity.
No! I don't support this. It's unnecessary, we can do better things with the money.
And, from many reasonable Randallian points of view, we've got an excellent claim on the loan money anyway.
We took the loan from Stirland to fund our share of the purchase the inital assests for the EIC.
What were those assets, you ask?
Why, the very same assets we road the length of Stirland in a night to seize from the old League. Contracts, cash, goods, wagons (and all those sheep).
Yes, Wilheimina and us were doing our job, but we were doing our job exceptionally well. Without us, Stirland wouldn't have had those assets to 'sell' us.
I've no intention of accelerating repayment of the EIC loan. Let our share of EIC profits take care of that gradually, it's fast enough- and that was the initial terms of the loan anyway!
I believe the original idea was that Stirland's treasury is badly in need of wealth, and repaying the debt gives them a cash infusion at a much needed time.
...HOWEVER, the Stirlanders going home are going to buy their farms from Roswita with their loot. Theres going to be a shitload of money flowing in, so we don't need to pay it any faster.
Unless we literally had more money than we can spend before the Bursar finally reaches our letter and the attached escorted wagon of tithe.
