I'm somewhat interested in checking out the Black Crag, but it's not really our responsibility at the end of the day so it's probably not worth it. I still think training Wolf is a good investment, there's been numerous times it would've been very helpful, plus it's possible if he becomes more intelligent it might grant another tic of learning from the bond.
Warhammer Fantasy: Divided Loyalties - an Advisor's Quest
- Thread starter Boney
- Start date
- Fantasy Users' Choice!
Voted best in category in the Users' Choice awards.
I'm somewhat interested in checking out the Black Crag, but it's not really our responsibility at the end of the day so it's probably not worth it. I still think training Wolf is a good investment, there's been numerous times it would've been very helpful, plus it's possible if he becomes more intelligent it might grant another tic of learning from the bond.
I am sorry, Pickle, but you missed the third "we don't need spoken queekish, and the dictionaries don't have to be done in a single turn" school of thought.
Edit: At least one action on AV is a priority for me. It's a complete deal-breaker for any plans that lack it.
Karak Drazh scout is nice but may prove to be non-essential, depending on Dreng/Gotri report and Belegar's take on the strategic situation.
Waystones, Diplomacy, Powerstones - All sound like a good option for studying.
Studying the We communication sounds interesting, as well.
Ps. Dammit, I knew I forgot something. We should have bought a powerstone this turn.
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- Location
- New Brunswick, NJ
- Pronouns
- He/Him/His
ok but i did ask that we not right now discuss the merits of delaying vs. finishing up
RIGHT, SCOUTING BLACK CRAG! Redshirt even mentioned that as a possibility! I'll throw it in the list.
I... don't understand what you mean, given that my whole question is based around "if we spread the dictionaries out over two turns, we get a personal action in exchange for a Serenity action" and asking what to do with it. Not doing the dictionaries in a single turn is the premise of my post.
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kfrar
Aspiring Encyclopedia
Personally, I'd want to knock out the Ranald's Coin study soon-ish. Not to go all-in on Divine Energy manipulation, since I do want to actually get results out of AV before we go poke at something else, but just to increase our understanding of the sorts of forms that Warp energy can take. A basic understanding of the nature of divine magic seems like it could be useful as we get involved with Warp Deep Lore stuff like AV.
For example, if AV is raw Warp energy in liquid form, distinct from, but readily convertible into, the Winds of Magic, could it be converted into divine energy as well? If not, why not? How would AV react to divine magic? Usefully? Not at all? What about divine relics like the Coin, then? Could we "recharge" the Coin by feeding it Snake Juice? Or use the Coin to convert the Snake Juice into Ranald Juice? Why or why not?
The fact that we're working with pure Warp stuff without really understanding one of the main two flavors Warp stuff can take seems like something we should rectify at some point, even if it's not something we need to get done now.
- Location
- Greece
I wonder what will happen if:
-A dwarf grandmaster presents a masterwork
-He gets everyone to agree it is an amazing, proper masterwork
-He then, for some reason (maybe because he has a firebrand buried inside of him from long ago, there are always different indivinduals in all races) improves the masterwork in a way no one can disagree is even better.
Would that spark a dwarf renaissance because dwarf revolutionaries will now learn that one can improve stuff? Get scolded because, despite everyone accepting it as proper, it was not truly proper the first time? (seeing how conservative dwarfs tend to be... its may be the most proable result) Or maybe he'd Spark an academic war between the two sides? Or a real civil war? Maybe he would achieve absolutely nothing, not even being scolded? Perhaps he could also achieve something different from all the above options?...
-A dwarf grandmaster presents a masterwork
-He gets everyone to agree it is an amazing, proper masterwork
-He then, for some reason (maybe because he has a firebrand buried inside of him from long ago, there are always different indivinduals in all races) improves the masterwork in a way no one can disagree is even better.
Would that spark a dwarf renaissance because dwarf revolutionaries will now learn that one can improve stuff? Get scolded because, despite everyone accepting it as proper, it was not truly proper the first time? (seeing how conservative dwarfs tend to be... its may be the most proable result) Or maybe he'd Spark an academic war between the two sides? Or a real civil war? Maybe he would achieve absolutely nothing, not even being scolded? Perhaps he could also achieve something different from all the above options?...
chocolote12
A Penguin Flailing Against The Keyboard Of Life.
They know stuff can be improved. They would disapprove of him using his old masterwork instead of creating a new, better masterwork from scratch, but it won't overturn their culture or anything.
Boney told us the exact reaction not long ago, everyone will agree he should've just made a new even better item instead of improving the first one.
- Location
- Before the Ninth Gate
I am very much in favor of spending the time upgrading Wolf's intelligence. I think this could be a huge boon. At a minimum, this gives us a radio, which is all kinds of useful. With our specialty of going out alone, a radio is even more vital. And in addition, a smart Wolf might be able to contribute in other ways that we can't foresee.
Your words:
"We should plan to finish it up this turn and write our Queekish reference books with what we currently have, then take a new project to start T27."
My post was, the above, but a new project to start T28.
- Location
- New Brunswick, NJ
- Pronouns
- He/Him/His
So it's your contention that we should spend T26 building rapport + writing one reference book, T27 writing the other reference book, and then start a new project officially on T28? That's... a possibility, I guess, but feels to me like deliberately dragging out the process so we can accomplish a lot of personal stuff, since T27 wouldn't involve very much actual job work. Maybe I am misunderstanding you and there is other job-related stuff you want to accomplish? Could you outline what you imagine the turns might look like?
That's exactly what I am saying.
We need to start pacing ourselves.
We invested several actions on Queekish prior to it becoming an official project, this is our opportunity to "get back" some of the spent time.
- Location
- Outside the Box
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Sorry? I don't think it's worth delaying and that spoken queekish isn't nearly as useful as written queekish. That's pretty much my entire opinion.
Is that really better than just finishing it in one turn? The turn after we can slack on our official project if we want more personal actions; now that the Karak is secure we don't have as many pressures on our time.
Let's not kid ourselves. No matter the official project, it will always feel a bit urgent.
There will always be an argument to keep up the tempo.
Now, right now, when K8P is triumphant, when the next several turns will be spent by Karak on building up, when we have a very important official project which is expected by Belegar to take at least a couple of turns, when we have some breathing room for that same project due to actions previously spent on it on our time and dime, when thankfully the next possible mega-project is waiting for the neccesary dwarf diplomatic leg-work to be done before it becomes feasible, NOW is the time to slow down, and reduce at least a bit the mountain pile that is our research pile.
Before it's discovered that the Emperor Dragon has grudges against it after all, before some new antagonistic race crawls out from the sealed shaft into the abyss, before Belegar decides that he would like to go two for two on reconquered Karaks, or whatever else likely or unlikely explodes and demands our urgent attention.
That's not really what's happening though? This whole vote is basically the We going "this is a no-food, but We would prefer to remain at the Karak rather than go somewhere else. There must be a Way To Get Food that we are unaware of - we should ask our good friend Mathilde what that Way is, she'll definitely know what to do." We are explicitly being asked what the best way for the We to get food while remaining at K8P is.
^This.^ Additionally, IIRC the interaction between AV and Divine energy has not yet been tested due to a lack of priests willing to cast miracles on suspicious substances for the sake of science - and we may be able to use the coin as a source of Divine energy should we study it.
- Location
- New Brunswick, NJ
- Pronouns
- He/Him/His
That is a valid opinion! But I am trying to get an answer to the question "assuming that we have one more action for the finish-up-dictionaries turn than we thought we did, what should we use that on?"
I feel I would much rather work at the standard pace on our assigned tasks and then, now that the Karak has been reconquered and is not facing imminent military threats, propose a "basic research" project to Belegar where our assigned task is "explore various projects and develop your skills" -- not quite a sabbatical, since the idea is that we come back going "okay Belebro, I had a few ideas for superweapons, here are the ones that actually might work."
Why would the colleges have that? And, if it were a possibility, wouldn't it have also been a possibility last turn? If so, why wasn't it an option?
You'd think that if we had a "raid a skaven stronghold and try to rescue slaves" option and a "go hire some linguists" option, we would have had a "go check the Colleges for any written Queekish they have" if Mathilde thought that was a reasonable thing to do.
That sounds as a stretch to me. It's basically counting our hens before they are hatched.
We are not only supposed to hope for a peaceful/unexciting turn, so that we can freely propose the not quite sabbatical dedicated to our skills/backlog to Belegar, which is unlikely at the best of times, let alone with AV/Waystone/Seviroscope/Magical sentry projects looming, but we should justify that sabbatical by learning some hypothetical insights fit for weaponization?
I am sorry, but slowing down right now for a turn, when there's already likely to be a lull with nothing on fire and even any postponements expected and tolerated, sounds like a far more certain bet.
Ps. Oh how I hate typing on this damn phone.
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kfrar
Aspiring Encyclopedia
As for what the vote is, here's what's happening, according to the update:
So we are talking over the different possibilities with the We. Since they don't have strong feelings on the matter and trust us, they'll go along with what we ultimately recommend, but we are still having a conversation, not giving them a unilateral declaration that they should eat greenskins now.
As for what I was talking about, I was referring to this:
Note that it doesn't say that Mathilde will shanghai the We into giving the Dwarves undeserved credit for their food by abusing their trust, it says that the We will credit most of their meals to the Dwarves. Given how wildly out of character it would be for Mathilde to manipulate the We into this, we can conclude that if the We follow Mathilde's recommendation to hunt the Greenskins, they will then credit their meals to the Dwarves of their own free will.
Put another way, if the We scavenge the area where the Dwarves are stemming the tide of Greenskins, they will ascribe enough value to the actions of the Dwarves in terms of drawing the greenskins' attention, thinning the heard, and defending the Karak that they will effectively pay the Dwarves for the privilege of hunting there by giving the Dwarves credit for meals that the We personally hunted and compensating them with silk accordingly.
This, in my opinion, makes the claim that recommending that the We Scavenge the Gauntlet is somehow "cheeping them out" of their silk paternalistic. The We's education in economics is advanced enough that if they decide to pay for an easily understandable service with well-understood goods, I'm not about to tell them that they're wrong and should demand an alternative economic arrangement. They can decide how highly they value the Dwarves' actions and their own silk themself.
- Location
- Spain
Another thing to take into account with the is that we are probably going to refresh some of our Ork papers so it may be interesting taking that into account...
And I really think that we should try to get spoken Quekish, or at least try it before starting with the Lexicons...
Trying would only take one single AP, and with the Deciever and the Write-in we should be able to Convince Qrech to teach us without any problem, since Mathilde already knows grammar, vocabulary, and characters, if it is possible to for humans to learn it, Mathilde she will probably do it very soon.
Plus fully learning Queekish is FUCKING HUGE, taking into account that it has been thousands of years and no one from the "good factions" has managed to do it, to fully decipher Queekish could be easily worthy of another Great Deed...
- Location
- New Brunswick, NJ
- Pronouns
- He/Him/His
Yeah, like I said in the post, this plan would mean no free papers on the turns we write the textbooks, but if we take an action on turn X that we otherwise would have had to take on X+1, then we can use the "saved" action on X+1 to dictate papers to Max:
The Grey Order being what it is, it probably has Skaven documents stored waiting for the day that Queekish is obtained. Also, Mathilde mentions in her thoughts that members of the Grey order have tried to translate Queekish before but have failed.
This is the translate supplied Skaven documents option, we only have to acquire them somehow. The lack of an option to head to the colleges to obtain Skaven writings was probably an oversight, and well there was this action,
the writings had to have gone somewhere since then.
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The problem isn't that the We would consider most of the credit to have gone to the Dwarfs for their own reasons. The problem is that if Mathilde (knowing the We will take her word that a particular option is best for the We) recommends a particular course of action because it would be particularly useful for the dwarfs/Karak rather than because it would be the best choice for the We she would then be abusing the trust the We have placed in her.
That point of view has nothing to do with paternalism, and everything to do with the dual assumption that Mathilde has a fiduciary duty to the We as a result of the trust that they have placed in her and that recommending the Gauntlet for certain specific reasons would be a breach of that fiduciary duty.
kfrar
Aspiring Encyclopedia
Which might be an issue if the Gauntlet weren't also an easy food source for the We, a way for the We to keep their hunting skills sharp so they have more options in the future, a way to build rapport between the We and the dwarves, or any of the other advantages to the option that people have discussed over the last few dozen pages.
If this were clearly the worst option for the We I would understand that argument, but we're not morally obligated to pick something else just because this option benefits us. We're not playing a zero-sum game - both the We and Dwarves can prosper in good faith. And the claim that we are "cheeping the We out" because this option benefits us, when the option benefits us because of informed decisions the We will independently make, shows disrespect for the We's own agency.
If the arrangement we settle on involves providing the We with a service (hunting ground maintenance + Karak defense) that they then decide to pay us for, that's not us abusing their trust, that's just the We using the education we gave them so that they could make their own informed decisions in order to make their own informed decisions.
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- Location
- MS, USA
Well, see, the problem with THIS argument is that while there is value to be had for the Dwarves, most people seem to be (correct me if I'm wrong) voting for the Gauntlet because it's good for the We, not the Dwarves. It keeps their current life style so we and We don't need to be concerned with the repercussions of the hunter caste going obsolete, it supplies them with easy pickings thus ensuring they get plenty to eat, and it keeps them in view of the Dwarves visibly killing things, helping their image. True, there's the issue of us knowing that they'll likely credit the Dwarves and that being inconsistent with the way we value things, but it's not inconsistent with the way the We value things, so I find it hard to buy the argument that it's a betrayal of trust. A real betrayal of trust would be making them dependant on a good source we don't even control, like with the bounty system.