OK, arguments have been persuasive, for the record I hate Johan for delaying the Snake Juice Research again.
[X] Plan Citadel Focus
[X] Plan Citadel Focus
We have Ranald's blessing active on the action, two experienced magisters, intelligence from our previous scouting and even more books on skaven. If anything, this is less risky than the previous scouting action. Even a relatively low roll would be fine as long as we are careful and Boney just confirmed we will be.If we're resorting to characterising each other's statements now, this is also hyperbolic. We're not claiming war is inevitable if you poke Mors, but I don't want to risk it.
I do expect that if we roll very well, we'll be ghosts.
Jeebus. I don't really appreciate the tone, but I'll assume you didn't see my edit where I acknowledge Boneys statementSo if thats your personal risk assessment then just say you agree to disagree. Don't act like we haven't thought our plan through by bringing up the worst possible outcome.
I didn't see your edit, sorry. I was editing mine at the same time.Jeebus. I don't really appreciate the tone, but I'll assume you didn't see my edit where I acknowledge Boneys statement
That's fair. I'm not too concerned about that part of the vote, so the disagreement is understandable.Edit: fair enough. I still prefer to give Johann an actual paid-for task.
AND for that matter, the leading Poke with Johann plan has the for-me deal-breaking 'Teach We to Write'
I believe a grounding rod is only 2 favours from the college.Re: Grounding Rod
Depending what the sword can do, I'd like to either get one of these from the college or see about burning some more favour by getting a magic-removing dwarven tool. Second would probably cost much much more, but could also probably do more stuff than a grounding rod. Anyone else have opinions on this?
Which coincidentally was the same role I had in my public school class.Hey! Omegahugger is an important and respected, if largely ignored part of this community. 😂
I see no bad consequences from spawning a Negaverse Mathilde, and it may in fact prove beneficial for my own goals.Cloning Mathilde is starting to sound like a better and better idea, even with the risk of one spontaneously sprouting a goatee and becoming Negaverse Mathilde or something.
I may have misread this initially as "Vampire novels (extensive)" and thought Mathilde had completed her transformation into a Twilight Mom...[ ][Library] Vampires (extensive), novels (basic). For 150 gold
Sure. Lemme get to it.@veekie
Perhaps change the wording to something less...openly aggressive? Like, "join Johann and theft and acquisitions"?
I'd want to be very very carefully probing about such matters before even mentioning anything of the like. Its a touchy human subject thats close to a touchy dwarf subject, and something that Kragg the old grump is the best authority to consult.This has interesting, and frightening, implications in regards to the craft of the Chaos Dwarfs.
Because "work it slowly, carefully, exactly and patiently" is something Dwarfs would be good at. And if good Dwarfs are able to manipulate magic so finely that they can take all the different winds of magic and turn it into something... tamed... achieving something interestingly comparable to elf Qhaysh... Then evil Dwarfs being able to apply that expertise to the manipulation of Dhar, well...
So. Yeah. Either the Chaos Dwarfs already know the First Secret of Dhar -- just by independently stumbling upon it, due to a Dwarf mindset being well disposed towards doing so -- or them learning it would be really damn bad.
Of course, on the other hand -- Dwarf Runesmiths learning of the Second Secret of Dhar... Well. You'd be able to trust Dwarfs with the first two secrets of it. Especially Runesmiths or Runelords, who already are secretive as hell.
Of course the issue would be figuring out how to communicate such knowledge to the Dwarfs. i.e. The fact that you somehow know all this. In a way that doesn't come back to bite you. (I mean, maybe it's easier because unlike other wizards who would know the issue with "How the fuck did you just do that??" the Dwarfs might not know it. So it's not necessary to come up with the same excuses that you would for a wizard.) But still. If it were managed, then... it could be quite useful. Dwarf Runesmiths would be able to shatter entire armies of Necromancers and constructs of Dark Magic.
Of course, it might not work. Maybe the Dwarfs already know this, and it's how they counterspell with their Anvils of Doom to begin with. Or maybe the Dwarfs, being unable to see magic, would not be able to see where to hit Dark Magic in that one spot that will make it unravel explosively. Or maybe there's no easy excuse to find for why you would know such magic.
Or, for that matter, maybe trying to teach something, or even just demonstrate and give information about, to a Runelord is an exercise in frustration/futility and ain't gonna get you shit. Still, there's probably more ways to be able to pass on information than just by trying to bluntly tell somebody about it.
But if it did work... The possibility and potential is interesting. Because I'm willing to bet that this situation -- of the Dwarfs having a friendly wizard and trusted, and said wizard having access to the Liber Mortis -- has never come up before. So the Dwarfs have never been in a position to receive such knowledge.
More that a fragile magical net inside any creature capable of channeling the Winds actively is going to break unpredictably when they channel the Winds.That sounds like a pretty useful property is we ever need to capture any hostile wizards. Does it work on Dhar casters as well or only single wind casters?
Bringing Johann along who's not covered and Night Prowler doesn't work unless we can fake a respectable Skaven Musk.@veekie I've got a question: Why use the Gambler here instead of Night Prowler?
Wouldn't it make more sense to go for guaranteed stealth sneaking about in skaven settlements rather than a pair of roll bonuses?
We were using Substance of Shadow. We were invisible, intangible and basically not there at all to anyone not using magic to look for us.... Why would smell matter? It didn't matter scouting Mors before, and we weren't even using the coin on Night Prowler.
I don't understand where else we'd be finding their technology. Broken parts lying around looted battlefields?
Uh, you know the Journeyman lab doesn't give any bonus beyond having Journeyman level grounding installed right? Its the same basic lab we learned the spells to replicate in the field. Its meant for our minions and visiting wizards to work in instead of grabbing a bench and applying inadvisable magic. It gives us no bonus because we already have all those tools beyond the grounding and we could just pick some remote mountainside to do it otherwise.Honestly, why is everyone so opposed to studying the snake juice? We've been waiting for that for ages, and IIRC correctly last turn people explicitedly argued for setting up the lab first. It seems bad to justify delaying an action with preparing for it, and then not doing it.
Now, I could understand if there were some new, hyper-urgent thing that needed to be done, but there just isn't.
So if we teach them then they will be able to remember things for longer and with more clarity thus allowing the alliance to go on for longer.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). 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.
@BoneyM
Apologies, but do any of the "allow him to spend all his time investigating clan whatever" count as work, or just letting him do what he wants? I believe it's the former, but...
So...smash and grab only if we find a Doomwheel and joyride away with it to use on the Dragon Ogres?'Help Johann' leads me to interpret 'poke' through the lens of Johann's objective, which is explicitly investigation and by his general goal getting warptech. They might go smash and grab for a particularly juicy target but they're not going to get anywhere near the bloodshed that Mors are receiving on three separate fronts.
Yes, I'm pretty sure it costs 2. It is also expected to break if you use it.
I just don't see the appeal of uplifting an amoral, questionably capable of empathy, hive-mind predator species of giant spiders.
They are simply a war asset, and should be treated accordingly, with actions taken to maximize their safe use.
I'm not sure they actually are amoral. They agreed with not eating us without any fuzz. They seem to genuinly intent to be nice.I just don't see the appeal of uplifting an amoral, questionably capable of empathy, hive-mind predator species of giant spiders.
They are simply a war asset, and should be treated accordingly, with actions taken to maximize their safe use.
Sounds like a great idea for a date.So...smash and grab only if we find a Doomwheel and joyride away with it to use on the Dragon Ogres?
Anyway more seriously, what I expect of the mission is:
-Mathilde sneaks in with Johann and directly leads him to the motherlodes. Known warpstone caches, armories, the Great Market, etc.
-They will generally speaking try to steal any unattended, man portable Skaven weapon.
--Substance of Shadow and low light environment means Mathilde has a very very loose definition of "man portable"
-If they see any gromril they'd repo it.
-Johann as a Gold Magister should have a number of subtle sabotage methods that could be applied to anything they can't steal.
-They go loud only if they find something ridiculously valuable and unattended and it cannot be obtained otherwise.
-If they run into leadership, a bit of decapitation is usually in order.