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Warhammer Fantasy: Divided Loyalties - an Advisor's Quest

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Thought: Heidi has already been planning to take Marienburg back for quite a while, IIRC. That probably includes dealing with how the elves would react, and other such sundries. All we really need to do is give her a chance in my opinion.
 
ninjafish said:
Let marienburg get grudged, we can burn it and build a new city on the ashes.

A city of Human-Dwarf Bromance.
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This goes about 1000% too far into "kicking off the War of the Beard Mk2" territory. Marienburg has High Elf people in it, and part of Marienburg is High Elf land. Burning it down to put a Dwarf city in it's place would....uh, be incredibly bad.

I'm concerned about Elftown being hit as collateral from people wanting to burn the docks as well as break the blockade, let alone whatever the hell this "burn it all to the ground" take is.

edit: I know this thread as a pretty strong dawi bias, but an act like this would be completely villainous and if, afterwards, Ulthuan managed to stomp us all into the ground it'd be completely deserved.
 
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DragonParadox said:
Because breaking the blockade takes weeks not five years. The scale of the vulnerability as well as the depth of it (boats out of place versus economic hemorrhage) is very different
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In opposition to threatening war with friggin' Ulthuan? War or 5 lean years, there's one winner in the War option and it won't be The Empire.
 
Could someone do a huge favor for a dummy like me and mark down where exactly the canal is being built on a map?
 
BoneyM said:
Barak Varr and Zhufbar are already connected by the Skull River. Black Water to Aver is the entire project.
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Huh. That simplifies that massively. Same question, different direction.

How viable is it for dwarves to dig a tunnel, not a channel? One that is underground, not visible from above ground, but that can rapidly be converted into a channel when the top of the tunnel is removed. A "Build what you can in secret and underground" kind of option. They can probably build most of the locks without removing the topsoil. Before the whole thing is revealed for those constructions that need surface access? I've been looking at the maps, and Zulfbar is an endpoint, not on the road of silk. So most trade going by there is with dwarves, and probably, by dwarves or EIC as well. Keeping eyes and spies on anyone passing by the build site should be difficult, but manageable.

Basically, use a different kind of subterfuge to hide the digging? Maybe even boost it with Ulgu Illusions for known Marienburg spies, if needed.

You'd still need to convince the dwarves for the need for secrecy, successfully bluff Marineburgh and deceive their spies, as well as paying higher build costs and causing a lot of grumbling, but is it possible/viable? Because that is one nasty Gordian Knot.
 
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[X] They can make up for the loss in trade

I don't really see Marienburg backing down just from Barak Varr threatening to break the blockade, and them doing so is just as much of an existential threat to Marienburg as the new canal is.
 
primemountain said:
Huh. That simplifies that massively. Same question, different direction.

How viable is it for dwarves to dig a tunnel, not a channel? One that is underground, not visible from above ground, but that can rapidly be converted into a channel when the top of the tunnel is removed. A "Build what you can in secret and underground" kind of option. They can probably build most of the locks without removing the topsoil. Before the whole thing is revealed for those constructions that need surface access? I've been looking at the maps, and Zulfbar is an endpoint, not on the road of silk. So most trade going by there is with dwarves, and probably, by dwarves or EIC as well.

Basically, use a different kind of subterfuge to hide the digging? Maybe even boost it with Ulgu Illusions for known Marienburg spies, if needed.

You'd still need to convince the dwarves for the need for secrecy, succesfully bluff Marineburgh and deceive their spies, as well as paying higher build costs and causing a lot of grumbling, but is it possible/viable?
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They'd likely be capable of the engineering side of things, but definitely wouldn't be okay with acting in secrecy because of threats from what they'd see as Elven catspaws.
 
Jyn Ryvia said:
the blockage action isn't attacking Marienburg, it is attacking the blockage if Marienburg tries
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You are literally forcing your way through the heart of their city and intent to station warships there. I am not sure what to call that but an attack. Probably also dismantle signicant portions of their defences since the forts could easily threaten any river bound trade no matter the status of their fleet.


Indeed I am not exactly sure where the difference between breaking the embargo and an actual attack is supposed to be since to me it seems like you need to do the later to accomplish the former since if you reach the point of open warfare the city fortifications (or indeed any sort of artillery placed along the riverbanks) could do the job just as well as any ships and to dismantle those you have little choice but land marines by which point you have captured the city if successful.

And that seems a rather difficult task in my eyes, ironclads or not.
 
chocolote12 said:
There is literally Ulthuan sovereign territory within Marienburg. You think they wouldn't go to war over the Karaz Ankor threatening it with cannonballs?
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Barak Varr breaking up infrastructure such as bridges and docks/marinas is a very different matter than randomly bombarding Marienburg neighborhoods - wanton destruction serves exactly zero purpose for Barak Varr, so that's not what they're going to do.
 
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BoneyM said:
He's not asking you to tell him what to do, he's asking for your opinion on how the Dwarves would react in a single specific scenario. You can use your answer to have an impact on the future, or you can decide not to.
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To build on this, remember that when we were picking our initial target for the K8P expedition, we gave our opinion, but Belegar ended up picking a different one.

Our word is neither worthless nor the law.
 
BurnNote said:
Yeah, somehow this was both better and worse than what I expected.
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Honestly, for me it was better than expected, he had a valid reason for asking us more about the Dawi, and now its Marienburg that is the villain, and both winning options have Empire and Dawi fighting it as allies rather than forcing Mathilde to choose who to betray (even if said betrayal is light/ never discovered).

Moreover, OOC it actually makes thing interesting and dangerous again after many turnsof pretty much doing nothing but building ourselves up with no threats, plus if this doesn't escalate, we get clout and if it does, we may get feats and clout if we play our cards right. Yeah, Mathilde won't see it that way and that doesn't factor in my decisions as a quester, but it certainly increases my OOC enjoyment as one.
 
DragonParadox said:
It's not threatening war with Ulthuan they are explicitly ambivalent. Let's not pretend the burghers are Dragon Princes please.
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We don't know that they aren't. Fact is that they've got an entire Ulthuan enclave there, and since they have refused any questions about it, it's possible that it's a political issue.
I'm willing to bet an internet cookie that there's some princeling up there that has taken a personal interest in it.
 
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Erandil said:
You are literally forcing your way through the heart of their city and intent to station warships there. I am not sure what to call that but an attack. Probably also dismantle signicant portions of their defences since the forts could easily threaten any river bound trade no matter the status of their fleet.
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They don't have to keep the ships there afterwards - just a few out in the ocean at a distance would be enough. It would immediately be obvious if a ship wanted to head onto the Empire but was blocked from doing so, at which point they'd go back in and remove the problem again.
 
Friggin' heck this thread is moving too damn fast. I can't seem to reach the end of the thread. :confused:

What [] They can make up for the loss in trade is doing is telling the Dwarves that the up-front cost of building the canals is going to be larger than they thought. And it's frankly a cost they'll gladly pay! The long-term benefit of the canals will absolutely make up for the short-term cost, even if it involves economically proping up the Empire during Marienburg's blocade. A short-term cost for a way-larger long-term benefit is how Dwarves do business. They'll agree to it because it's just the proper dwarfy way to do things. And as another benefit, they get to stick one to the Elves by economically T-posing over their little fiefdom. Frame it like this: The Elves have an economic stranglehold over the Empires, and they're threatening to blockade our trade using their little pimple of a city! Won't the strong, smart, and overwhemingly wealthy Karaz Ankor help us break free of those filthy Elgi's influence?

If this is framed right, and we're sitting next to a Diplo-hero, the Dwarves won't just be willing to pay extra. They'd love to! They can get one over the Ulthuan puppet-state while tying the Empire closer to them. It's a win-win all around, without spending blood and gunpowder.
Redshirt Army said:
So, what I'm saying is... take the gamble, and have faith. Tell Marienburg that the Empire has the backing of Barak Varr, and dare them to call our bluff, because the game was rigged from the start.
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At this scale, we're dealing with influences that make Ranald look like small-fry. We just recently were warned about Tezenchina influence, and there are other dark powers that would have great interest in escalating a de facto naval war into a explicit all-our war.
 
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BoneyM said:
They'd likely be capable of the engineering side of things, but definitely wouldn't be okay with acting in secrecy because of threats from what they'd see as Elven catspaws.
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Sure. But we don't have to tell them that. You could truthfully tell the dwarves that the Emperor would prefer if the tunnel was done in secrecy until it was ready due to internal and external diplomatic considerations as well as possible Vampire/bandits interference in the project. Hell, you could even point at the fracas between the Slayer Keep and their channel and one of the Electors(was it Ostermark?) as the kind of thing the Emperor would like to avoid as a deflection.

Unless the threat Marienburgh is making is a public one (unlikely), the dwarves would just grumble about umgi political stupidity and ask for some minor concessions for making their new project in secret due to stupid umgi sensibilities. As long as we don't mention Marienburg, some of them might catch on, but those are excaly the kind of things that dwarves don't talk about.

Couch it as the Empire being ashamed of not being ready to fight that fight right now for those that catch on and ask about it(The internal nobility greed/competition/bandits and external/Ulthuan Marineburg issues), and the dwarves will pretend no shame is happening at the speed of Formula One drivers. They might be somewhat disgusted by the Empire leadership who allowed such a shoddy state of affairs to develop, but they're umgi, what can you expect?
 
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