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Warhammer Fantasy: Divided Loyalties - an Advisor's Quest

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primemountain said:
@BoneyM On the Fief: Would something like: Keep saving for improvements/in case of disaster, but once you have 200/300/400 coins saved, start sending us the rest? So that if he doesn't have an idea for improving the keep, the rest is kept in a just in case fund, while the overflow gets to Mat?
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Simulating the fief every single turn is a disproportionate amount of effort compared to what it would add to the quest. Either add the taxes to Mathilde's income or leave it until the next time the fief is visited.
 
BoneyM said:
Without more advanced automation it takes a lot of time to make wire. Every Dwarf has a shovel or a pick to build ditches and banks that do largely the same job. Panoramia's thorn-plants don't last very long.
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Really? All it takes is pulling metal through a die, which was done in medieval times (or are you talking about barbed wire?). The benefit of the barbed wire is that you get to shoot through it, which isn't given by ditches or banks, but I could see Dwarves not wanting to change how their ancestors did it.

If Panoramia could do enchantment, would the thorn plants work?
 
vsh said:
There's Lore of Verena spell "The Past Revealed" that is better suited to the situation with the axe. If Kragg's considering outside help for the axe situation, Verena's cult is the best bet.
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This is a very good idea. Since it is done by a priest, we might be able to avoid learning how things are created. The only issue would be that Mathilde might not know this exists.
 
Ericwinter said:
Fair enough, although I could also point out that Qrech is basically in the same situation as the AV, in that if we want them to be useful we have to spend AP on them. The only difference is that we've had AV burning a hole in our pocket for almost a decade now, while Qrech is a--if only barely--flight risk. Personally it's my opinion that we've used up most of his immediately actionable intelligence, and we've taken about as many precautions as wizardly possible to keep him from disappearing or going insane from boredom. Letting him abide a turn or two wouldn't be any more dangerous than risking a Dragon rampage without easy access to Ancestor Runes for a turn or two, or any of the other possible messes that could jump on us which the AV might help with. I also doubt BoneyM would penalize us for not actively using him, at least not without at least one turn's worth of warning. We aren't required to do anything with him, just like we're not required to study AV. It's a choice of what people want, plain and simple.
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we've been told we literally can't leave Qrech alone for a turn, doing so will drive him insane as we'd be locking him up in isolation for six months with no contact, even with the pet we've given him that's not going to be viable. It's not about being a flight risk. Although I am coming around to making a power play on Qrech to get him to teach us directly but I want to do that with the spoken language rather than the written portion.
 
Abhorsen said:
Really? All it takes is pulling metal through a die, which was done in medieval times (or are you talking about barbed wire?). The benefit of the barbed wire is that you get to shoot through it, which isn't given by ditches or banks, but I could see Dwarves not wanting to change how their ancestors did it.
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That's a pretty big 'all it takes'. Pulling on steel so hard it stretches is an enormous pain in the ass to do by hand. It's worth it for chain mail, not so much for barbed wire.

Abhorsen said:
If Panoramia could do enchantment, would the thorn plants work?
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Not as a constant enchantment. The spell makes plants, plants need things like sunshine and water and soil to not die. It would be possible to make an enchantment that creates the plants on demand, so they only have to last for a single battle.
 
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BoneyM said:
That's a pretty big 'all it takes'. Pulling on steel so hard it stretches is an enormous pain in the ass to do by hand. It's worth it for chain mail, not so much for barbed wire.
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it's actually really easy because you just hook it up to something that gives mechanical advantage. You don't literally use your hands you turn a crank.
 
Harried said:
Well, in that case, better start tearing down all those manling towers... :V
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You're mostly joking I hope
But those two circumstances are not equivalent
That Kragg is ok with providing Dwarven runecraft at our request to enhance our wizard towers does not equate to Kragg being ok with handing off his own little project to us under the understanding that we're going to examine it only to then have us invasively pry into Dwarven secrets of runecraft and history, hand the axe back and then lie to his face about it
Assuming of course that he'd be ok with handing us the axe at all, which he might very well prefer to keep in house as it were

"But he'd never know, and what are the chances that this one axe will contain some sort of highly sensitive Dwarven information anyway, or the chances that the Colleges and Empire possessing said information would ever harm the Dwarves or their relationship to the Empire?"
We could quite possibly get away with it true, but the fact remains that we'd be taking advantage of his trust
There's no sugar coating that fact, we could try to justify it, say it's for his own good even (as patronizing as that is), but we would be taking advantage of the trust he'd be giving us by going behind his back and using methods we know for a fact he wouldn't be ok with and then proceeding to lie to his face about it
And some of us aren't comfortable with the idea of doing that
 
An amusing/silly thought, if we do end up having to fight the dragon, and Asarnil and Deathfang do show up... would Mathilde's belt be able to fit around Deathfang's wrist? And if so, would it conflict with other magic items?

[X] [TOWER] Complete
Stick a fork in it, it's done. Now, once they are ready, some organ gun/clattergun emplacements would not go amiss for anti-air, but that's not part of the tower complex itself.

[X] FIEF: Leave the current and future money be.
It's fine as it is.

[X] Plan Present Concerns
-[X] PROJECT: Queekish
-[X] PROJECT: Skaven Politics
-[X] PROJECT: Dragon
-[X] PROJECT: Karag Mhonar

I would like to mention AV to Belegar, but with the understanding that we need to clear out more time-critical issues (Queekish, Skaven Politics, at least) first, so that we can put more effort into preliminary research, and then bring in others.
@BoneyM - The Project plan is the list of projects Mathilde is presenting to Belegar as "Here's what I think needs to be done, and falls under my purview", right? So if we leave out Cartography this turn, it would be understood that it's because we think these projects are significantly more urgent?

Also, I did have a thought, regarding enchantment. It's not really based on any existing Ulgu spell, but would it be possible to enchant an item to attract Ulgu bound up in mist, fog, smoke, and the like to it (which would include aerosolized/gaseous poisons)? Probably wouldn't last long per activation, but even a few minutes would be quite useful. (Or, perhaps, a number of one-shot such items, which would have the benefit of not needing to go pick them up afterwards.)

[X][PURCHASE] Firkin of top-quality dwarf ale for LM Olenus (5gc)
Spreading the dwarven infection!

[x] [LIBRARY] Dragons and Skaven
I want to have a decent chance of providing a biography of this dragon on cue. Because Wizards, especially ones double-dipping as Loremasters, should be able to have more information than strictly necessary, with no apparent effort involved.

[X] [DWARF] No purchase.

Not sure about the whole "anti-poison item" debate, letting that sit for a bit.

Regarding Ubersreik, I wonder how much of that College Favor is the Patriarchs going "thanks for an excuse to play*". Also, cleverly done by the Emperor - Ubersreik is secure, Dwarves get to repay a debt with some quality work, Colleges both get to play and get another marker to call in with the Emperor, and the Skaven get a whole lot of pain. Also, makes sense that Dragomas would be able to transform into a Lung dragon, given his Journeying.

*read: get away from politics.

Mr Apollo said:
I say that Mathilde gets a map, a couple of darts, a few mugs of fine dwarven ale and says a prayer to Ranald before divining the origin of the axe the old fashioned way. Of course, we will need to get the temple up first.
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I suspect that, without a crit, the result would be a dart landing in a map of K8P, with the tip at the exact position where we found the axe. 😺
 
SuperSonicSound said:
it's actually really easy because you just hook it up to something that gives mechanical advantage. You don't literally use your hands you turn a crank.
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Ordinary wire is apparently about two millenia old, the barbed wire about century and half. That said, it doesn ´t strike me as something the Dawi would use for fortifications, because its not really solid :V
 
With the responses on how stuff works, I'd rather Mat do her own work on AV.

[X] Plan Present Concerns
[X] FIEF: Leave the current and future money be.
[X] [TOWER] Complete
[X][PURCHASE] Firkin of top-quality dwarf ale for LM Olenus (5gc)
[X][COLLEGE] Item of Boon of Hysh - 5 College Favor

@BoneyM How manageable would it be for Mat to ask for personal time? Like, personal Wizard time? It's normal for a Runelord to go into his own forge somethings, for months at a time, when he is working at something relevant to his craft.

Could Mat ask for something like that, if the current inner/outer situation ever allows for it?

A "Let me work on my backlog" kind of free task thingy?

With Belegar expecting that whatever she is working on will benefit K8P, but that it's her work, as a Wizard, not the Court Wizard, if that makes sense?
Like, if Mat asked :"If we have time, I'd like to pursue one of the those research options you were asking about." (For the "other apocalypse weapons)

The thing is, AV is Mat's. Her demon, and Ranalds near literal intervention through the fourth wall to make the coin land on it's edge.

The dwarves might be able to, and should benefit from it. But I feel like this is a journey she should finish on her own.
With help, paid in favors, but her own work. Her demon, her breakthrough.

Kind of like what might happen if she had needed to go back and take her Magister exams. To go from Runemaster, to Runelord.

Is that an understandable dwarven thing for dwarven masters, or are they expected to step down from public office while they do their "Advance my mastery" thing?

Also, we have yet to write the We book. That's is such a shame, even with Waargh and Peace.
 
SuperSonicSound said:
we've been told we literally can't leave Qrech alone for a turn, doing so will drive him insane as we'd be locking him up in isolation for six months with no contact, even with the pet we've given him that's not going to be viable. It's not about being a flight risk. Although I am coming around to making a power play on Qrech to get him to teach us directly but I want to do that with the spoken language rather than the written portion.
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Huh, I must have missed that. Seriously, there wouldn't be some sort of nominal interaction or something? It shouldn't take a full actions worth of time and effort to provide some measure of mental stimulation. But eh, what the Gm says goes. Maybe we could throw a duckling at him for conversation or soemthing if we were really interested in focusing somewhere else. It would help make it look like we're part of a large organization at least. Then again, there are other dangers inherent in such a plan. And I don't think we can learn spoken Queekish, since it relies on Skaven biology and senses. On the other hand, we could just let Qrech go by this point. We've got enough for the military lexicon, I think, and there's really not much use for a more thorough version of the language, and even if there was a military lexicon would probably be enough for other people to start puzzling out the rest.
 
primemountain said:
With the responses on how stuff works, I'd rather Mat do her own work on AV.

[X] Plan Present Concerns
[X] FIEF: Leave the current and future money be.
[X] [TOWER] Complete
[X][PURCHASE] Firkin of top-quality dwarf ale for LM Olenus (5gc)
[X][COLLEGE] Item of Boon of Hysh - 5 College Favor

@BoneyM How manageable would it be for Mat to ask for personal time? Like, personal Wizard time? It's normal for a Runelord to go into his own forge somethings, for months at a time, when he is working at something relevant to his craft.

Could Mat ask for something like that, if the current inner/outer situation ever allows for it?

A "Let me work on my backlog" kind of free task thingy?

With Belegar expecting that whatever she is working on will benefit K8P, but that it's her work, as a Wizard, not the Court Wizard, if that makes sense?
Like, if Mat asked :"If we have time, I'd like to pursue one of the those research options you were asking about." (For the "other apocalypse weapons)

The thing is, AV is Mat's. Her demon, and Ranalds near literal intervention through the fourth wall to make the coin land on it's edge.

The dwarves might be able to, and should benefit from it. But I feel like this is a journey she should finish on her own.
With help, paid in favors, but her own work. Her demon, her breakthrough.

Kind of like what might happen if she had needed to go back and take her Magister exams. To go from Runemaster, to Runelord.

Is that an understandable dwarven thing for dwarven masters, or are they expected to step down from public office while they do their "Advance my mastery" thing?

Also, we have yet to write the We book. That's is such a shame, even with Waargh and Peace.
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Pretty sure Boney already mentioned that getting a sabbatical would depend on the amount of fires that need putting out, so we are highly unlikely to get one now.
Also, we get a lot of leeway because of our general success in our taks, basically we are getting 2-3 AP of "advance your mastery" time.
 
SuperSonicSound said:
it's actually really easy because you just hook it up to something that gives mechanical advantage. You don't literally use your hands you turn a crank.
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That makes it physically easier but no faster or any less tedious. If it was straightforward it would have been a thing centuries earlier than it was in history.

primemountain said:
@BoneyM How manageable would it be for Mat to ask for personal time? Like, personal Wizard time? It's normal for a Runelord to go into his own forge somethings, for months at a time, when he is working at something relevant to his craft.

Could Mat ask for something like that, if the current inner/outer situation allows it?

A "Let me work on my backlog" kind of free task thingy?
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There's between six and nine hostile forces inside the Karak. This is not the time to ask for a holiday.
 
Abhorsen said:
This is a very good idea. Since it is done by a priest, we might be able to avoid learning how things are created. The only issue would be that Mathilde might not know this exists.
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Mathilde might not know this spell exists, but she knows well that Verena is a goddess of history among other things and miracles like that are in her domain.
 
Gul Damar said:
Seeing how well the wolf-rat puppies have worked out, any chance we could try the nature vs nurture experiment again with some actual Skaven? Like try find a Breeder, find out when they deliver litters and then snatch a few newborn before they hit the Skaven 'education' system.

Of course that's by far the easy and least time-consuming part, actually raising them in a controlled healthy environment would be a massive hassle with likely very few to none having the time, skill or willingness to raise Skaven with the same tolerance, patience and kindness as they would for their own young or pets and Mathilde waaay too important and busy to do it all on her own, let alone be even able to waste a year or two of her life on this project.

And then at the end if everything goes well, you only got a few docile Skaven out of all that effort(and some controversial papers), who'd be of no real use and wouldn't be accepted anywhere.
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It sounds like a really interesting joint project with the Amber College. They would probably have the easiest time around friendly skaven, and also the easiest time raising them. Plus they are far away from prying eyes usually. Given that we are on friendly terms with the Amber Patriarch, with a lot of Favor we might be able to convince him of at least allowing the experiment (doing it behind his back could get us in trouble for experimenting with Chaos related things, and breaking the Conspiracy of Silence).

Not catching the attention of the Horned Rat would be the biggest problem, because that way lie Eshin assassins with Skyre bombs.
 
BoneyM said:
That makes it physically easier but no faster or any less tedious. If it was straightforward it would have been a thing centuries earlier than it was in history.
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I don't intend to weight in on "how the dwarves see it in the quest" conversation but IRL details are interesting. I think barbed wire was not a thing historically mostly because it was super expensive just in cost of steel needed to make it, and very limited niche. Wooden palisade is a hundred times cheaper, can be sourced locally and is no less effective usually.
 
BoneyM said:
That makes it physically easier but no faster or any less tedious. If it was straightforward it would have been a thing centuries earlier than it was in history.
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In regards to history, modern wire drawing has been dated back to at least 800-900 AD by Vikings, with early examples for jewelry possibly from 2000 BCE. With regards to barbed wire, the demand for it only really started when cheap fencing was needed for cattle, so I could easily see it not being invented yet for lack of immediate use.
 
BoneyM said:
There's between six and nine hostile forces inside the Karak. This is not the time to ask for a holiday.
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I understand that in terms of the game you don't want to remove the challenge of time management but I don't think it was such an outrageous question when one of our options to put forward was literally:
BoneyM said:
[ ] PROJECT: Nagarythe
Dwarves don't really believe in things like 'vacations', but you're pretty sure they'll happily make an exception for a vacation dedicated to tormenting the Druchii.
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Mr Apollo said:
I understand that in terms of the game you don't want to remove the challenge of time management but I don't think it was such an outrageous question when one of our options to put forward was literally:
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That still has a stated purpose, and honestly Belegar might consider it mainly because he's willing to consider very unorthodox allies - but he'd probably say no.

Asking for "time to go and train in enchanting" might be plausible, asking for time off without a simple explicit purpose is not going to be.
 
Erandil said:
I said it earlier but K8P is one of the most isolated outposts in the Old World, deep in hostile territory with the nearest friendly town weeks away and even that town is located in the Border Princes, not exactly the safest neighbourhood either. The place is also less settlement and more permanent garrison, at least for the foreseeable future, with conflict and even large scale warfare being basically constant and enemies being not days or weeks travel away but located right there with you. And sure dwarves might be used to this eternal siege mentality/situation but the average human is used to considerable safer locations and honestly it is not where I would plan to raise a family or have kids if I had a choice...
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Exactly this, but it can be sold if we try, and honestly even. I think Francesco's ambition to match one of the large Tilean cities would make a good pitch.

But definitely not something that is going to change on its open in the next fifty years or so. (Thinking of San Francisco and the demographic hangover from mostly-male gold miners.)

Oshha said:
He already has.

Thorek is a Runelord in Karaz Ankor.
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I like the idea that messages Kragg send Thorek go all the way to Karak Azul and then back up to K8P for maximum pettiness.
 
Eh.


[X] Plan Present Concerns with Snek
-[X] PROJECT: Queekish
-[X] PROJECT: Skaven Politics
-[X] PROJECT: Dragon
-[X] PROJECT: Karag Mhonar
-[X] PROJECT: Aethyric Vitae
 
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