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Warhammer Fantasy: Divided Loyalties - an Advisor's Quest

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If you can come up with an immediate use for our vast, vast hoard of gold that's a better, wiser, more permanently and immediately useful for us, please state it; it's not doing anything in the king's treasury.
 
[X] [RUNE] 25 Favour Sword
[X] [ARMOUR] Make no recommendation.
[X] [ENCHANTMENT] No purchase
[X] [LIBRARY] No purchase.
[x] [UNDUMGI] Make no recommendation.
 
BoneyM said:
Your only complaint about what is to be your new home is the amount of stairs it's necessary to climb to reach it, but at least you don't have to worry about falling out of shape.
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Funny thought, once we get around to updating our robes to our Mastered version of the spell then Mathilde gets to make ascending the stairs look effortless while anyone seeing to meet her who isn't a dwarf is going to get there breathless and heart racing from the exertion.

BoneyM said:
The mural was judged beyond recovery so you had it sanded and then polished back, and the rug that was part of the greenskin hoard had been left behind so you had claimed it for your own. The design is intricate and suggests flowers or stars or both, and though you can't tell if it's from Ind or Cathay it sure protects your feet from the chill of the stone below.
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Nice rug.
The design of flowers/stars sounds more Arabyian though.
BoneyM said:
Your books from Wurtbad seem fairly lonely, but they'll soon have company - you went perhaps a touch overboard on your way through Barak Varr, and in the coming months the delivery of books for your nascent library will form a significant fraction of the imports. But it's not every day you run into a Dwarf with contacts in every publisher in the Empire, and you managed to route every purchase except those from the Colleges through Barak Varr.
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Said dwarf just sold a year's worth of business in one day.
Is a happy dwarf.
BoneyM said:
Though of course your own furniture took priority, next in line was that of your fellow wizards - at least those that were willing to sleep inside. Though their comfort, privacy, and good health was important, your main focus was the laboratory. Though you did donate some of the simpler equipment that your set of enchanting cantrips made redundant, your main concern was proper grounding, both in the hopes of lessening any miscast and also to prevent the accumulation of energies that could leak out into Karag Nar - you imagine that would very quickly wear out your accumulated goodwill. Plain old iron was the standard, bearing the triple attributes of conductivity, magnetism, and arguable folkloric significance - though debate on whether 'cold iron' was a poetic description or a specific type of iron flared up within the Colleges on a regular basis. During your Apprentice days you were content to nail a strip of pig iron to your workbench and call it a day, but the job being done properly requires careful observations of the natural ebb and flow of magic to determine where it would naturally gather, and then having a radiating network of metal branch out into the stone from there. For this, you prefer copper to iron - slightly less magically conductive, but significantly easier to melt and pour after drilling the sinkholes. Once the magic is in the metal it would radiate out into the stone instead of pooling in the air, and Karag Nar was big enough for its stone to soak up any number of Journeyman-level magical mishaps.
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I love magic science.
That is a solid piece of heat sink design, except the radiator fins radiate into rock.
BoneyM said:
If you were building for yourself, that would be enough. But if Karag Nar is going to host wizards of every College, then it's not just Ulgu you have to worry about. How to contain and dissipate small amounts of accidental Dhar was well documented and drilled into every Apprentice, so you just follow the established best practices. Ghyran and Ghur and Chamon were trivial - have the Journeymen come in, gather magic, and then unleash it without forming it into a spell. Two more were fairly straightforward - a small fire for Aqshy, a goat fated for that night's dinner for Shyish. Hysh was trickier, and you had to commandeer every mirror in the mountain and burnish up some borrowed brass shields to get sunlight and the Wind associated with it in the room. The final obstacle was Azyr, of weather and the sky and inspiration. It took days of leading a handful of deeply skeptical volunteers through suitable thought exercises to garner even a few tiny scraps of it, and though your magical senses owed nothing to your actual eyes, you still felt eyestrain coming on when you finally managed to track it's preferred pooling location in the laboratory. A final hurdle: the airier Winds gathered in the ceiling, rather than pooling like fog in a way you were used to. Long iron nails pounded into the ceiling will have to do.
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Windsage is paying its dividends, we can literally see for ourselves where the energy would go, and so we got a self-surveyed workshop suitable for wizards of any Wind.

Also I'm inordinately amused by how Hysh and Azyr were a massive pain in the ass for her. I suspect this is colored significantly by the Collegiate rivalries, because from the sound of it ALL the Winds moved differently and gathered in different ways. Hysh and Azyr just piss her off for being Hysh and Azyr so she cuts them no slack!
BoneyM said:
Johann wasn't feeling cooperative in the field of hint-taking, and you almost had to tip your hand by the end. The statement 'it would be a shame if the Dwarves thought less of us for a wizard like yourself to not hold their proper rank' earned you a long stare, but he never ended up asking the question on the tip of his tongue and instead muttered an agreement and left to pack, still not entirely sure whether you knew. Hopefully he spends his time in Altdorf constructively, since it would take a stay of at least a few months for his 'promotion' to be convincingly 'earned'.
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Still inordinately amusing. He'll never know!
So, after our application of stick, I'm inclined to give him some honey next turn when he comes back as Magister, by going on a Co-op raid on the Skaven. For loots.
BoneyM said:
Though the Skaven had yet to move openly against their new Dwarven neighbours, their presence almost always meant that mundane rats became bolder and more numerous. Dwarves were well aware of this, and of the dangers those rats could represent - the spread of disease, the spoiling of food, the ruination of crops and torment of livestock. So along with their defences of steel and stone, there was the distribution of cunning little devices that lured them in and either killed them outright or trapped them to be dealt with later, and the Dwarves had no compunction about handing over the captured rats for experimentation. You've had some experience with rats as test subjects, bred for hundreds of generations in the Colleges to be docile and cooperative, but those friendly and inquisitive creatures were nothing like these bold and vicious beasts. Only Aethyric Armour saves Max from more than a few nasty bites, and he's forced to put the study aside for a time to dig out the notes from his Apprenticeship and relearn Sleep.
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Max: "CR 0.5 they said. You can take them they said." *Digs out a simple spell he never needed before* "Freakin rats."
BoneyM said:
The initial results are alarmingly deadly, but Maximilian's studies of the fangs of the spider instead of just the venom allows him to gauge how much a typical dose would be, and found that when he scaled down the dose for the rats to simulate the effect on a human the result was paralytic, rather than fatal. The rats regained some mobility after about twelve hours, and were walking around after fourteen, though sluggishness lingered for another day or so. Re-envenomation of the same subject multiple times in succession showed a faster recovery, though this resistance proved temporary in nature and faded after a week without re-exposure. The injection sites showed a marked reduction in sensitivity that lasted long after the other effects had faded, suggesting a degree of permanent damage to the nervous system. Concerning, but a sword or an arrow was no less capable of causing permanent damage, and it would be a relief to know that anyone that fell to the spiders could make a full recovery if they were retrieved.

Unfortunately, Maximilian found no way of countering the venom apart from time. The books that were accumulating in what you would soon be able to call your library suggested a great many treatments, each proving as useless as the last. The books of Dwarven origin mostly suggested the application of alcohol, but this seemed to be as more of a consolation to the victim than any attempt at treatment. He borrows Panoramia from the Halflings, but though you applaud his initiative, her Cure Blight spell did nothing to help the subjects recover.

Glad to know you need not fear the spiders and their venom too much, you attend Esbern and Seija's attempt at establishing a dialogue with the spiders.
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Paralytic, of course, they need live prey.
That does mean the venom isn't going to be much use on weapons meant to kill. Not bad for capture, but thats more useful for getting live study subjects of gribblies than for war.

Could build on the Dragon Ogre paper if we assembled a large enough dose maybe?
BoneyM said:
The Talking Beast works at range, you're glad to hear. Your magical senses make it straightforward to spot a spider standing still in the shadows across from the fortifications, watching carefully as almost a counterpart to the Dwarves on guard. With triple the usual detail and hands clinging tightly to gun and crossbow, the Dwarves watch as the three of you approach slowly, trying to close within casting range of the beast. The eyes gift it with a panoramic view of the world and it needs not move to watch as you approach, so it's a shock when it finally does, as it scuttles backwards at speed, at least some of its eyes remaining locked on the three of you.

You return to the watchpost, and with the increased detail you move to the next. Just as before, a spider watches, and tiny strands of Ulgu and Chamon that the previous spider lacked grab your attention. Curiousity. Though if Esbern and Seija were right, the creature before you was no more curious than your arm could be - it was merely the conduit for a greater mind. Esbern and Seija approach once more, and the spider shifts slightly, ready to retreat (or attack?) if necessary but otherwise allowing them to close. Ghur swirls through Seija, takes shape, and dives from her outstretched hand to cling to the creature like a net, and it fails to react.
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This hive is kind of skittish, which is good I think.
It can into threat assessment.
BoneyM said:
"No longer approaching," says... the spider? You would have imagined all sorts of terrible voices for a spider, but this one sounds like Seija. A moment of thought forces you to conclude it makes sense that the voice she granted would be similar to her own, but it's extremely unnerving to hear her voice coming from the immobile spider. "Sounds. From..." The spider twitches, then turns in a rapid circle as the two Amber Wizards take a step back. "This-We is making noise," it says, and then it darts away at full speed, fleeing into the darkness.

You look to Seija, who shrugs. "It can take them like that, sometimes. Most creatures don't have the capacity to understand what's changed, but a human voice at close range can alarm them."

"Who was it talking to?" you ask.

"Different types of hive mind," says Esbern. "Some don't truly have a unifying mind, they just each act in such a way that contributes to the whole. Others have an actual collective intelligence, either distributed among them or focused in a single individual. They might communicate through sound too low or too high or too quiet to hear, or they could have a non-physical connection. More animals than most realize are capable of interacting with the Winds in a limited way."

"Like a familiar bond?"

"That," Seija says, "is a matter you could debate for days. Let's try the next one."
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This begs a fair number of questions regarding what the spell actually translates.
This sounds like its a bit like the individual spiders are very low level aware and self narrate to the hive to produce emergent thought?

Its cute at least.
BoneyM said:
The next one allows your approach, and when the spell hits it, it lets out a small chirp. Then again, and again, and then it pauses. "Sounds begun," it says. "Preceding: front-leg-gesture from not-green-four-leg."

"Hello," says Seija.

There is a long pause, as confusion swirls within the creature. "Sound-with-meaning from not-We. No other-We seen. No other-We smelled. No other-We chirp." Instead of a word, it let out that same chirp, birdlike and almost cute. "Sound-with-meaning from not-green-four-leg." It pauses. "Sound-with-meaning from not-green-four-leg," it repeats.
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Spooder Translation:
"Diagnostics started."
"Anomaly starts following gesture from front limb of quadruped"
"Information recieved from unknown source"
"No Spider observed on optics"
"No Spider observed on olfactory"
"No Spider observed on hyperwave transmission"
"Report: Non-Spider entity capable of communication"
"This is not an error. Non-Spider entity capable of communication encountered"
BoneyM said:
"We want to talk with you," says Seija.

"Sound-with-meaning message: not-green-four-leg seek sound-with-meaning with this-We." It pauses. "Relaying. Not-green-four-leg can sound-with-meaning?"

You exchange glances with Esbern. "Yes," says Seija.

"Sound-with-meaning message: agreement."

It continues in this vein for some time, as the creature relays messages from... the collective? A leader? Whatever form the central mind takes, it certainly takes some mangling to get it's concepts to fit into Reikspiel, and every now and then the spider lets out a chirp instead of a word as it reaches something that refuses to cooperate. Luckily it realizes when this happens and rephrases around it, and when it falls silent it waits for the spell to be recast and continues where it left off. It is walked through the concept of the possibility of communicating with a not-We, which it seems it only believed to be possible with We or other-We. After a moment of thought, you confirm that you are part of the not-We-other-We of the smaller-not-green-four-legs. You confirm its suspicion that the smaller-not-green-four-legs are not-food, and that the larger-not-green-four-legs are likewise not-food, then also agree that the green-four-legs are sometimes-food-sometimes-not-food. Diplomacy is a wonderful thing.
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Okay, my attempted interpretation of data points:
-Hives are definitively sapient if cognitively different from social humanoids(it has a mentality I'd generally associate with a solitary predator, which it technically is), individual spiders appear to be low level sapiences
-Theres more hives out there. This hive has a concept of communicating with other hives.
-It has a vocabulary appropriate for a solitary entity.
-Its sensory spectrum are Visual, Auditory, Scent and what seems to be some form of telepathy.
-It has three categories of entities:
--Food - Enemies
--Not Food - Allies. Goblins specifically have a prior diplomatic arrangement, though they can be opportunistically eaten.
--We - Spiders

It has already agreed to truce with dwarfs and humans, after having learned that the organized response is something it cannot beat.
BoneyM said:
[Esbern and Seija talking to We: Learning, 23+12=35.]
[Mathilde talking to We: Learning, 57+23+7(Library: Arthropods)=87.]

It turns out to have been very good you remained involved. Ghur is the wind of beasts, but though this being technically qualifies it doesn't think in terms the Amber Wizards are used to. You, however, find the challenge straightforward and intriguing. Ulgu requires and the Grey College prizes flexibility of mind, and this is not dissimilar to some of the thought exercises inflicted upon Apprentices. It is a long, slow process to ease the being into the idea of cooperation with a not-We, and part of the challenge is wrapping your mind around sentences where 'We' can be second-person and the line between singular and collective is blurred.
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...too smart for Ghur. Something we hadn't expected.
And I see the Grey College has apprentice exercises involving pretending to speak a language with alternate grammars. Its good practice for codebreaking, you need that sort of mental trick to be able to read coded messages like it was plaintext without deciphering it on paper.
BoneyM said:
Though the Ghur magics are capable to some extent of communicating concepts, it seems to help if you use the same grammar and phrasing instead of leaning entirely on the spell, and days pass as you learn of it and it of you. It confirms that it is less-We from lack of food, but that it is only slightly weakened and far from crisis, and since it seems to have no concept of lying whatsoever you cautiously believe it.
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Also makes sense. Deceit doesn't come naturally to non-social beings. Its only useful if you had other minds you want to communicate false data to AND still continue to exist. Doubly so for a being which constantly reaffirms its existence by narrating itself to itself. Bad data injection can fuck it up good.

Also its far from starving. Good to know.
BoneyM said:
Thankful you erred on the side of comprehensiveness, you put aside all your tomes on known spiders and instead take up Dzierzon's Ants, Termites and Bees, Lorraine's A New Relation With The Hives, the Anonymous Formicidaemon - Possible Parallels Between Insects And Warp Entities, and manage to be only temporarily sidetracked by jotting in corrections in the margins of Waaagh And Hive, which started with half an interesting idea and then flailed helplessly with it for the length of a tome.
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Oooo....so many paper ideas popping up.
Fark, no time to use on them!

Mathilde might want to save those notes for when she tries to rewrite the Waagh paper.
BoneyM said:
With Esbern and Seija only there to cast the spell and take fascinated notes, you have a breakthrough when you finally figure out what it means by Echo. It seems that the intelligence is distributed rather than centralized, which means that if something is to be remembered for longer than the lifetime of a single node, it needs to be told back and forth - hence, Echo, the period before the birth of the current eldest individual (or this-We).
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@BoneyM
...did you just make spiders which communicate on the Interweb and uses memes as communal memory?
BoneyM said:
With that you're able to get at least a vague account of its origins - for as far back as it knows, it lived around and preyed upon the furred-four-legs who are usually-food, and it would relocate regularly to prevent an organized retaliation. Then one day it must have passed from the Skaven-occupied Underway to the greenskin-occupied Karag Lhune, and found that while the green-four-legs were less reliably prey, they were also less prone to organizing, so it could build up a nest/web/nursery/home to its liking without being dislodged.
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The question is Moulder project gone rogue or native weird shit?
Either way they like eating Skaven, so thats good for us.

Noting that the spiders are smart enough to do long term logic, they recognize that while they can eat individual Skaven, if they stay too long in one place the organized response woudl wipe them.
BoneyM said:
A lexicon builds up and a hesitant understanding takes shape. The We is very logical and straightforward - the smaller-not-green-four-legs have taken over from the green-four-legs, and they were not-food, ergo, a no-food was required - a migration. If the Dwarves would allow it to pass, it seems, then it would happily skitter off into the dark to seek new prey. But you also discover the word for an alliance, or at least a non-aggression pact - 'many-food'. When there's plenty of food to go along, We and other-We - other hives of the creature - need not fight. Very straightforward, or at least you think so - Esbern and Seija seem utterly lost. You're quite pleased that you'll be able to present not only victory but a range of options to Belegar when next the Council convenes.
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Esbern and Seija probably are completely befuddled at the GREY Magister being better at talking to animals than they are lol.
That said, adding them to the community I think is DEFINITELY flawed on this reread in detail: the spiders don't HAVE a concept for joining another community, they have an idea for "we don't need to fight each other" and they have an idea for "you're too dangerous to prey on".

They are fundamentally solitary intellects without the gears to befriend another intelligence, and we've seen it mostly flicker between Chamon-logic and Ghur-instincts, with bits and pieces of Ulgu that looks like it might be the hive internal chatter.

We might be able to work it up to an exchange of services down the road, but as far as I can tell it has only one desired trade good, which is fulfilled by having it eat our enemies alive. It should be delighted at the idea of cattle though. Food for thought. Prey which are unable to fight back and contain large amounts of fat and protein are extremely desirable...just keep in mind that population management may be a bit of a bugbear.

Also papers. Oh good god, thats some sweet ass paper writing incoming next turn. We have a freaking Groundbreaking paper here!
BoneyM said:
[Undumgi Culture: 91]

Meanwhile, events closer to home are no less intricate and sometimes less understandable. As you watch from the shadows, a pecking order establishes itself with surprisingly little violence, with perhaps a little help from you being a little less stealthy and a little more intimidating in your observations when someone starts to gain traction for the wrong reasons. Most of the Undumgi seem to see recent events as the chance in a lifetime to catapult themselves to comfort and stability, and those who talked openly about the possible profits of a little light banditry on the side are very quickly given stern encouragement to hitch a ride on the caravans back to Barak Varr. To your surprise, they seem to be picking up Khazalid only slightly less quickly than you did, and a patois of Reikspiel, Tilean and Khazalid begins to take hold as the natural leaders of the Undumgi begin to show themselves.
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Awesome. The criminal underworld is further deferred, the ones with more greed than sense get yelled down and sent away.
BoneyM said:
With the strange new cultures developing in both Karag Lhune and Karag Nar, it's almost a relief to get back to the relative normality of underground infiltration. The Citadel is built atop seemingly limitless amounts of criss-crossing tunnels and hallways, and whoever lurks down there is in a prime position to make a nuisance of themselves. Instead of the hours of the Expedition, you've got whole days, even weeks set aside for this, and by the time you're done not a single secret will remain.

Most greenskin preferred enough light to see by, and they supplemented the natural fluorescence of mushrooms with burning torches. Skaven, however, are creatures of the darkness, needing only the slightest glimmer of light to see and being perfectly capable to navigate by nose and whisker even without it. An enormous advantage against any conventional infiltrator, but when one is capable of becoming one with the shadows it becomes almost unfair.
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Windsage pays off again!
We can see perfectly fine. And the darkness makes us capable of just passing through the whole warren like a ghost via Substance of Shadow.
BoneyM said:
The shallowest levels retain the symbols of the Broken Toof Tribe, former rulers of the Citadel, but underneath that you see the sigil of the Skaven scratched in stone. But a variation that you recognize from the Dwarven books on them: the downwards-pointing lines are extended, with three claw marks on each. Clan Mors, strongest of the Warlord Clans.

[Probing the approaches: Intrigue, 42+19+4(Library: Skaven)=65.]

Skaven territory is said to be more greys than black and white, but you frown to yourself as a picture starts to form. This isn't claimed territory. These are battle lines.
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Um...thats good for us I think?
And it explains why Moulder is making deals with GOBLINS. If Skaven are fighting each other again.
BoneyM said:
[Signs of Battle: Intrigue, Breakpoints 60/80: 26+19+4(Library: Skaven)+20(Ranald's Blessing)=69.]

It's by chance that you stumble across the next piece of the puzzle, and you touch the Coin hanging from your neck with a smile. An oncoming patrol had been heading right for you, and you stepped aside to let them pass and that's what let you see the narrow side-passage half-buried in rubble. An attempt at undermining or bypassing the defences by the look of it, which ended in an explosion that causes the collapsed dirt to glow with the malign taint of warpstone. You move from body to body, and disregard the Clanrats bearing the symbol of Mors scarred into their flesh in favour of their opposing force. They were too well fed to be Skavenslaves, but they were rife with mutation - bald patches and tumours, but also extra claws and tails and teeth. And overgrown rats the size of dogs, similar to the ones you saw being sold in Karag Lhune. Clan Moulder at war with Clan Mors? Judging from the battle lines, Moulder seems to be established somewhere under Karagril.
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That is too damned close without the Blessing. Sheesh.
Moulder in Karagril means they got pincered with Mors on one side and the Iron Crag Orcs on the other. If they didn't make an arrangement with the Lhune goblins they'd be cut off, but with the Lhune goblins they can resupply maybe.

BoneyM said:
[Anything else?: Intrigue, Breakpoints 60/80: 34+19+4(Library: Skaven)+20(Ranald's Blessing)=77.]

For a moment you're sure you see a cat's eyes staring back at you in the distance, but as you approach you realize it's a pair of bullet-holes, still faintly glowing with evil energy. You follow the trail to a battlefield that shows the more typical signs of Skaven warfare: gnawed skeletons and scavenged weapons, and everywhere the marks of malign weaponry - bullet holes, scorch marks, and spiderwebbing out from where it impacted a wall, the distinct pattern of warp lightning that missed its target and earthed against stone. Clan Skryre, too? Bad news for Mors. Bad news for you, too. Three Skaven clans? Then again, three fighting each other could be less dangerous than one united in purpose. Skryre seems to be established in Karag Zilfin, the former military center of the Karak.
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I reckon Johann is about to be very very excited.
And no bets that Skryre got into the Zilfin armories. They practically HAD to have gone after all those.

Also Skryre are a pretty big pain to pry out of a fortified position compared to basically any other Skaven. This is going to compare to the Citadel in pain if its a frontal assault.
BoneyM said:
[Mapping the Trench: Intrigue, 87+19+4(Library: Skaven)=106]

You slip through the Skaven defences easily enough and enter the heart of the Karak. The Cavern of Stars was once a crystal cave that the Dwarves laboured for generations to transform its natural beauty to one of the most beautiful places in the Old World - or so go the stories. It was also the place where the Skaven first emerged in Eight Peaks, the floor falling away to reveal a sea of rats that poured in every direction, for the Cavern of Stars was the intersection of the Underway from the Citadel and five of the Karags. Now every crystal is long gone, and there's no telling why. Did they see some industrial purpose for them? Did they decide they like them, and a thousand rats each stole a piece of beauty for themself? Or did they shatter it simply because they didn't make it?
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Skaven being the Industrialized state I'd bet they got looted to buy stuff with shinies. Its no warpstone but shiny is shiny...alternatively the crystals made it too bright for the Skaven so it all went smash.

Also got surprisingly mad at them ruining the cave.
Didn't expect that.
BoneyM said:
You shake the thought lose and climb down through the missing floor into the Trench. Your progress is slow as you avoid the teeming masses of Skaven going every which way, and there are some rooms and even entire segments you can't enter without breaking your Substance of Shadow on the sickly green light within, but over several days you're able to map the heart of Clan Mors' domain. And it's not just information you gather, as when you lurk for that long you learn where the most important parts are, and lingering in them allows, every so often, for opportunity to fall into your lap.
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MAP of Clan Mors territory ready.

Also those are fucking huge warpstone stockpiles, I don't think they should glow that bright unless you have a LOT of them.
BoneyM said:
[Rolling...]

That the Skaven had an entire internal economy was still bizarre to you, but the proof is right before your eyes as in their chittering language they haggle and bicker and exchange tiny shards of warpstone as currency, the tension in the air not stopping them for a moment. Most everything that changes hands seems to be powered or enhanced by warpstone, and just because you might be unharmed by Dhar doesn't mean you're going to start carrying it around. Two adjoining stalls draws your attention and you watch in sickened fascination as a cart of fresh corpses is unloaded from one battle or another, and the corpses are hauled over to a slab for a freshly-sharpened cleaver to be applied. On one side, fresh meat is delivered to bubbling soup bowls and skewers danging above a fire; on the other, the armour the rat was wearing is piled up to be sold to some new wearer, still sticky with the blood of the previous owner. Hideous, yet efficient.

A particularly large rat is currently on the slab, and the rat that pulled the cart is having a loud altercation with the one that wields the cleaver over it. You approach, keeping your distance from the cooking fires and trying to angle yourself for a clearer view. You thought so - though it's covered with leather bindings to keep it in place on a body it was never meant to protect, that's definitely Dwarven craftsmanship. 'World's Edge Armour', the Skaven call it. Dwarves have a variety of names, each more outraged than the last. Gromril plate from a fallen Ironbreaker, clumsily adapted to protect a Stormvermin or Chieftain of note. No wonder the two rats thought it worth fighting over.
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Cannibalism, of course.
I'm assuming ratmen rather than dire rats here, either could be happening though.

Also theres another paper material: Observations on Skaven Economics(Mors).
We got the Stewardship and once again, a perspective that few get a chance for.

BoneyM said:
As the cart-puller learns why he probably shouldn't have started a fight with a Skaven already holding a cleaver, you cut the straps and roll the corpse out of the armour. By the time the butcher looks up from his latest work, you're gone, and so is the armour he just killed for.
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Mathilde to the Bursar: "I don't really get why you even need to use bait on hooks, the fish just keep jumping on board."
BoneyM said:
Matters in Stirland soak up most of the remaining scraps of your free time. You shuttle documents back and forth until the right signatures are on the right contracts, and at a pace you're not sure how anyone can live with a party of merchants, shopkeepers and clerks set out from Wurtbad to make the long trip to Barak Varr and then to Eight Peaks.
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First mover advantage! Probably going to be badly needed. Remember we have a lot of people with coin in Karag Nar...people with nothing to spend on for a while except dwarf goods.

The EIC is going to make mad mad bank again.
BoneyM said:
Just as time-consuming but much more interesting and important to you is Anton, who remains just as besieged as when you left him.

[Result of your Pep Talk to Anton: Diplomacy, 95+12=107.]
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Mathilde: "Anton, if you don't believe in yourself, believe in me who believes in you!"
Anton: *FWOOSH*
BoneyM said:
Shockingly, your words seem to have installed a spine of steel in him, and the rumour mill is quite abuzz with how Countess Alexandria's eldest daughter put her hands where they weren't welcome and Anton had her escorted under guard all the way back to Sigmaringen with a very sternly-worded note to her mother.
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Damn, they gone so far as to grope our cinnamon roll here.
Guess they're getting impatient.
BoneyM said:
You lurk nearby for a while just to be certain, and sure enough, every time Cordula von Halstedt or Stefanie Krebs gets within line of sight of the town's walls, word is passed to the castle and he has the meeting room set up with EIC paperwork and he gets them one or two initialled codicils closer to a rather generous trade agreement. After von Halstedt discovers his daughter has delivered free passage to EIC wagons along the Moot Road, both he and Krebs recall their daughters before any more damage can be done.
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Anton got the benefit of marrying her without marrying her. The EIC has Moot access now.
They thought they hunting a fat rabbit.

But it was a badger in the den.
BoneyM said:
nton follows that up by paying a visit to Fort Redemption to speak to Gustav about a suitable firearm; now every ambush with Reinhild Gerber ends at the firing range. Anton's developing into quite the fine shot, and you're not sure Reinhild even has marriage on the mind, as she chatters away about guns the entire time and ends up wandering back to her workshop with fresh ideas before the conversation can move anywhere else, so you're fairly sure any danger from her has been defused.
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AND he made a friend our of Reinhild, which means having her assistance churning out ideas for his fun factory. Without marrying her again, just need to geek out over pistols.


BoneyM said:
There was, of course, one final matter to occupy your time.

The Liber Mortis.

There are many books on forbidden magics, and quite a few of them are famous enough to build a legend around. As far as you know, the original Liber Mortis is the only one that a malicious creator or a paranoid inheritor hasn't filled with malicious traps for the unwary. Some would argue that its contents are even more dangerous than any magical ambuscade - the full tale of how a faithful soul turned to Necromancy, with every spell and insight documented.

You are well aware of the weakpoints of the human mind, so even though there's no magical traps you take precautions against the more mundane kind. A roaring fire, a comfortable chair, Wolf curled up at your feet dreaming puppy dreams, a glass of brandy - insulation for the soul.
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Sometimes you don't need horrible corrupting knowledge. You don't need powerful curses.
You just need the promise of power.

Also incidentally the phenomenon has some basis, people who are feeling comfortable and satisfied are demonstrably less likely to take risks and temptations for a time.
BoneyM said:
It begins as a diary, and you frown down at it wondering if you might somehow have picked up the wrong book until you remember Frederick Van Hal's history. A devotee of Morr, until disease and warpstone and Skaven forced his hand. You suppress the desire to skim and read every word of the entries as the dead begin to outnumber the living and green shards fall from the sky.
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He was a priest of Morr?
You could see the parallels with Nagash here. Except Frederick Van Hal is not driven by pride or ambition.

Just think at the moment he decided to take the plunge. To realize that he has vast numbers of bodies, particularly the bodies of the heroes of Stirland, long dead or freshly deceased.

The force he raised would have been sickeningly powerful.
All it took is breaking his oaths to his god and desecrating the dead for the sake of the living with the secrets his god entrusted to him..
BoneyM said:
Of course. Of course. It was so obvious.

That's what one says at a time like this, right? That sort of protagonist was popular in a certain type of novel, and they inevitably end up turning away from darkness for love.

It's not actually obvious, you concede. It's actually entirely counter-intuitive and if it hadn't been broken down for you by the writings of a long-dead genius you'd never have believed it could work that way. Dhar is inherently unstable, of course. So you use as little as possible, as quickly as possible, right? So it has the least amount of power and the least amount of time to break free?

No. With the patience of a priest, you weave it atop itself again and again like the cords of a rope, with every strand of it straining with the desire to explode free but held in place by every other strand. And just like that you have all the power of Dhar and none of the drawbacks... at least, not unless your attention wavers while attempting it and you burn alive from your soul outwards.
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And that I suppose is Nagash's trick. How a human can approach the power of the Dark Elves wielding True Dhar without an Elf's multiplexed mind to crush the winds into a single perfect shape instantly. Take ONE thread and weave it with that one thread of singular focus.

Weave it with the patience and focus of a literal priest, which both Frederick and Nagash were.

The description actually sounds a little like making tempered glass.
BoneyM said:
Or, if you're so inclined, you twist it the other way, and Dhar disintegrates in such a way to cause more Dhar to disintegrate, and like a single spark striking gunpowder any Dhar construct nearby unleashes all its energy at once, a chain reaction of failing enchantment. No wonder the Grand Theogonist could tear Mannfred Von Carstein's army apart. It required only the faintest hint of power, delivered in just the right spot to start the dominoes falling.
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]
And like tempered glass...

Smash


Once you hit the right point the whole thing explodes in a chain reaction resembling supercritical nuclear fission(but which I do not have a nifty video for)

BoneyM said:
[Advanced Morrite Lore acquired]
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I have a bit of morbid curiosity about engaging in discussion on this topic with Gunnar.
The secret lore of the two gods should have a chunk of overlap on souls lore, I reckon.
I wonder how THAT would work.

Not that I want to actually put it to the test!
BoneyM said:
Mathilde is practically bouncing up and down in anticipation of drawing the full MAP for the Council.

Oh, wait, I see what you mean, and I actually made a mental note to include it in the update and then didn't. Skryre are coming from within Zilfin and Moulder from under Karagril.
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Anyone got an updated MAP with peak owners?
 
Honestly, I do not see why spending a small portion of the funds that we gained through loaning out trashy romance novels on more trashy romance novels is wasteful? they are literally worth several times their weight in silver in our experience.
 
Quest said:
Entomology - We are studying and communicating with spiders. Entomology covers that. Hell, GM advised us to get it.
Ulric: We live next door to a colony of Ulricans.
Toxins: We were studying spider toxins and also use toxins when sneaking into enemy bases.
Trade: We live on the Sil Road and run a trading company.
Wolves: We have a freaking wolf familiar.

Like are we even reading the same quest?
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Just for reference, entomology is for insects, BoneyM changed that buy to Arthropods because he realised the thread fucked up with the choice and knew what the intent was.
 
Harried said:
you can come up with an immediate use for our vast
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I do not believe we need an immediate use for it. No point throwing the fish back overboard.

That was not at all the message from the Bursar, she specifically spoke about the method of acquisition, and to not go looking for ways to acquire more.

Going hard on burning cash for transitory bonuses bothers me. Any single given purchase might seem justifiable, but taken as a whole I think it's showing Mathilde to have poor judgement.

I'm going to have to withdraw. I'm sure I've made my thoughts and feelings on the matter clear by now.
 
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Alliterate said:
Maybe 100 gold on Trade, or Wolves, or even Problem Of The Week- sure.
Any individual splurge might be justified. But it's part of a pattern.
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If you think of it as of a foundation for a future college chapterhouse, it's all good. "I've got an Elector's count worth library on select topics here in K8P" is a nice job perk for a Journeyman.
 
Lets face it, very few of the purchaces in the last big library purchase got any scrutiny, we were too busy panicing about favors. This time, we were too busy arguing over romance to, say, justify why we need a book on warpstone.

This suggests that perhaps we should limit the number of books purchased.


Also, can someone PLEASE give evidence for us needing to dump our wealth right now?
 
racnor said:
Lets face it, very few of the purchaces in the last big library purchase got any scrutiny, we were too busy panicing about favors. This time, we were too busy arguing over romance to, say, justify why we need a book on warpstone.

This suggests that perhaps we should limit the number of books purchased.


Also, can someone PLEASE give evidence for us needing to dump our wealth right now?
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we don't need to dump our wealth now.
 
Inserted tally
Adhoc vote count started by Arbit on Oct 7, 2019 at 12:32 PM, finished with 1784 posts and 232 votes.
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racnor said:
Lets face it, very few of the purchaces in the last big library purchase got any scrutiny, we were too busy panicing about favors. This time, we were too busy arguing over romance to, say, justify why we need a book on warpstone.
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There's a huge load of warpstone in one of the mountains and we are having a magister under us take a look at Skaven technology which operates on warpstone. Having books on warpstone will have a narrative function when we are dealing with those two things and should have a mechanical function when dealing with at least those two things.

Also, given that warpstone is solidified dhar, there might be some interesting synergies to having books on warpstone on hand while we read the Liber Mortis which is teaching us how to manipulate dhar.
 
racnor said:
why we need a book on warpstone
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We are fighting skaven, including clan Skryre. What's more, there was a lot of talk about letting Johan play with rat-toys this turn, rat-toys working on warpstone.

Having references on warpstone can mean the difference between victory and accidentally kabooming lab.
 
SuperSonicSound said:
we don't need to dump our wealth now.
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In that case, perhaps this is a silly expense.


[X] [LIBRARY] No purchase.
[X] [LIBRARY] Imperial Texts: Extensive/Esoteric Skaven, Extensive Skaven Magic, Extensive Greenskin Magic, Antiquarian Grey Magic (2 College Favor), Extensive Amber Magic, Extensive/Esoteric Romance Novels, Extensive/Esoteric Linguistics, Extensive Warpstone, Extensive Morr, Extensive Karaz Ankor. Dwarf Texts: Extensive Greenskin Magic, Extensive Skaven Magic, Extensive Romance Novels, Extensive Linguistics, Extensive Daemons. Brettonian Texts: Extensive Romance Novels. Tilean Texts: Extensive Romance Novels.

The romance is to make up for the vote trading with @picklepikkl
 
Alliterate said:
We already spent what, roughly 5,000 gold crowns on books.
That's a hundred good farms. We could buy our birth village with a fraction.
It's a vast amount of money in-setting.
We bought a 250gc Extensive Esoteric library on entomology for the first threat we came across. Now with the next round of splurging, this really feels to me like we, and thus Mathilde, do not know how to manage her sudden wealth.
I'd not be surprised at a second chat with the Bursar being in our near future.
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Unless we do something like grant notable members of the Karak access, thereby spreading out the bonuses to our experts. Or we trade books with other experts, when maybe we need a book on war yodeling but they're doing an architecture project. It can serve as a source of tourism, even, drawing learned scholars to the vastest collection of books along the silk road.

The reason I voted for romance novels is because books are traded around as a fungible good, even when giving someone 50gc is gauche. Books don't depreciate in value: if we need to sell part of our collection, we have an 'in' with a natural 100 dwarven purveyor of Imperial texts. Foreign books can be an 'in' with those cultures. It helps our language skills, it helps us know how they think.

What would you rather spend your gold on? More moneymaking schemes to get more gold? There's a point where enough is enough on that, and its when we own half of Western Stirland, but we can fund taverns and temples and whatever too, if you feel like it. More weapons? We're spendimg the lion's share of our Favour, a far more precious resource, on that already. More architecture added to Karag Nar? How many labs and rooms can you possibly add? (Don't say 'charity', I shan't believe you.) We can afford all that, and books too.
 
Hmmm... I do admit that the expense for romance novels is a bit too much for my taste. Mathilde can probably buy a couple of books that interest her as time goes on or just engage even further in the book trading organization.

However, I can justify pretty much every single other purchase on the book list, and so will vote for the library without the romance novels. I'll just go and edit my original vote though.
 
[X] [SPIDER] The We can be a powerful military ally against the greenskins.
[X] [SPIDER] The We can be a powerful military ally against the Skaven.
[X] [UNDUMGI] Francesco Caravello, Tilean ex-merchant
[X] [ARMOUR] It should be reforged into a worthy commemoration of the Karak's rebirth.
[X] [LIBRARY] Imperial Texts: Extensive/Esoteric Skaven, Extensive Skaven Magic, Extensive Greenskin Magic, Antiquarian Grey Magic (2 College Favor), Extensive Amber Magic, Extensive/Esoteric Linguistics, Extensive Warpstone, Extensive Morr, Extensive Karaz Ankor. Dwarf Texts: Extensive Greenskin Magic, Extensive Skaven Magic, Extensive Linguistics, Extensive Daemons
 
Thor's Twin said:
Hmmm... I do admit that the expense for romance novels is a bit too much for my taste. Mathilde can probably buy a couple of books that interest her as time goes on or just engage even further in the book trading organization.

However, I can justify pretty much every single other purchase on the book list, and so will vote for the library without the romance novels. I'll just go and edit my original vote though.
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okay, but we only got all this silver because we used the power of trashy romance novels to get people to help us, that alone more than justifies the purchase for me.
 
SuperSonicSound said:
Just for reference, entomology is for insects, BoneyM changed that buy to Arthropods because he realised the thread fucked up with the choice and knew what the intent was.
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While it's true that in modern english 'insect' refers specifically to six-legged arthropods, history is generally signficantly less clear cut than that. And even in modern times I was able to find two Entomology departments which talk about studying spiders. And a number of other fairly reputable looking sources where entomologists talk about spiders. So, I don't actually think it was a fuck up.
 
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