- Pronouns
- He/Him
[X] A Picnic in the Fields
[X] A Scenic Hike
[X] A Scenic Hike
I guess it hinges on the magnitude you ascribe to the earlier date. Since it was all effectively off-screened, I have no memory of it to compare.She knows we worship Ranald, and the he got us a puppy.
Panoramia is fully aware that Mathilde is very deep into religion.
Unless you intend to demand Pan also get into religion, i don't see the dice and drinking option as necessary.
Pickle quoted it earlier.I guess it hinges on the magnitude you ascribe to the earlier date. Since it was all effectively off-screened, I have no memory of it to compare.
I fully expect him to show up if we recruit, because Boney likes trolling us.So a random aside, but it occurs to me that we're probably going to end up recruiting directly from the Light College for this expedition. And, if I recall correctly, there's a certain Light Wizard people have wondered about who might quite like to take a trip to the Chaos Wastes...
Also keep in mind that at some point in the not-so-distant future I'm going to have to roll a will check to keep van Horstmann from being entirely loyal to the Empire and an overall charming and helpful person just to fuck with the thread, and that's going to have a really high DC.
...I sometimes wonder if the persistent thickness of Ulgu around Mathilde has a tendency to cause weird states of uncertainty around places and people she spends a lot of time around.Belegar's personal quarters are in a state of uncertainty, as debate amongst Clan Angrund is focused on whether the Royal Clan should be housed in close proximity to the current de facto Throne Room in Karag Lhune, the original de jure Throne Room under the Citadel, or somewhere else to establish a completely new beginning for the reborn Karak.
Ranald: "Gotta roll the gacha sometimes, and I like rolling the gacha on beers."e takes a pull from the ale you'd offered him and grunts in surprise. "Sticking with the zinti brewers?"
"At least for now. Dourback's currently focused on recreating the old recipes, and while that's all well and good, I like a bit of a surprise when I broach a new barrel."
"They'll re-diversify after they settle in. They were doing quite well for themselves in the Empire, brewing ales for manling tastes. Once they've scaled up production enough to satisfy the thirsts here, they'd be foolish not to go back to supplying their old contacts - especially once the canal's done. Though I daresay it wasn't ales you wished to discuss, as rich a topic as that is."
Success breeds success in other words. By having an army, more armies are willing to entertain the possibility that he might be onto something."Ah. Yes." He mulls that over, taking a long drink from his tankard. "First of all, there's the usual matter of Old versus Young. Only had four thousand from Karak Kadrin, half of them Slayers, and Karaz-a-Karak and Barak Varr only gave materiel support. The rest were from Norn or Hirn or Izor, or were Clanless. And it was almost very different - if I had left Altdorf outright when the Elector's Meet turned out to be a waste of time, I would have returned to Karaz-a-Karak and would have eventually ventured forth with only a few thousand. But I gave the manlings a chance to rise above their leadership, and by Grimnir they did. There's two thousand manlings interred in the foundations of Karag Lhune now, and it's all the stronger for it and I'd declare a Grudge on anyone who said otherwise.
"But apart from the direct assistance of the citizens of the Empire, being based in Reikland and later in Averland meant I was close enough to exchange a lot of letters with the Young Holds, and I had the legitimacy of having armed forces accumulating. Not just a Beggar-King appearing in their halls once a generation to ask for troops, but a growing and imminent Expedition that they had the opportunity to negotiate with. Princess Edda is..." he hesitates. "...talented in her niche, but less flxible than perhaps she could be. But as the price for Karak Izor's assistance, it's a deal I don't regret. Similarly, Karak Hirn wanted... hmm..."
"To remove the least favoured son from the picture."
...thats some worrying shit to hear Belegar say openly, considering his views on those seeking a Doom being terribly wasted."Ah, you know about that."
You nod. "Got it straight from Ulthar."
"Least favoured, hah. And then what happens once there were only two Princes left... there's something rotten in the foundations of that Clan, and I pray the Ancestors give Ulthar strength enough to root it out, and that Alrik manages to rediscover his honour long enough to shave his head and let the Throne pass to Ulthar.
...Protector. Definitely Protector.But anyway, point is, this was all Young Holds. To them, Karak Eight Peaks wasn't an aching scar, it was a beautiful legend. They were bold where Karaz-a-Karak was weary. But when we're speaking of Old Holds, Karag Dum was definitely an Old Hold, and even Karaz-a-Karak considers them arrogant. Even in desperation, their envoy only treats with Karak Kadrin and Zhufbar and Karaz-a-Karak - he even snubbed Barak Varr, as Karag Dum considers them weakened by their dependence on trade."
Ah...such is the way of large empires."Aye. Part of that is regular Old Hold reticence - they're astonishingly rich, but their population is shrinking and they've no desire to accelerate that, so given the choice they'll supply steel instead of blood every time. But the other half of the story goes back to before my time. I was born shortly before Thorgrim's hundredth year on the Throne of Power, so I only know what my grandfather told me of the Great War Against Chaos, and the Council of Kings that followed it. It was..." Belegar sighs, and takes a moment to refill his flagon from the barrel. "It was a time that some call the Skedanbryn, the Stolen Hope. The forces of ruin were battering at our doors, but not one Hold succumbed to the temptation to seal itself away and diminish, and every Hold's banners flew on the walls of Kislev. Our ancient allies of the Empire had pulled themselves back together after centuries of division and civil war. And the greatest of all miracles, as we chased the shattered enemy from the borders of Kislev, we met our long-lost cousins in the Battle of Grovod Wood, who we had thought lost in the Coming of Chaos. It seemed like a turning point in our history, a time of resurgence. Even the news that High King Alriksson was dying could not damper our hope, and at the Council of Kings Thorgrim rode that hope onto the Throne with his promise of an Age of Vengeance.
"My grandfather was almost elected," King Belegar says, his voice strained. "That thought consumed him until his dying day, that he had come so close to getting his hands on the means to recover our ancestral home, but had been defeated when Thorgrim made his late entrance to the Council. But Thorgrim was High King, and then it came time to tally the costs. Every Dwarf Hold had contributed, and each had been so thoroughly weakened that all we could do was maintain our defences against the constant probing from the rats and the greenskins. But though the War was over, the aftershocks went on. Asavar Kul had drawn on Marauders and mutants and daemons from across the northern hemisphere, but when the Chaos Hordes broke against the walls of Kislev, every survivor went north into Norsca, and were rallied under some new champion to attack our northern kin. Last we heard from Kraka Drakk, they had collapsed the mountain itself to take as many of the hordes with them as possible. And Karag Dum had been founded right at the line between the steppes and the Chaos Wastes, but the Great War had pushed that line as far south as Praag and it still shows no sign of receding. As for Karak Vlag... we still don't know. It's as if it was never founded. Not even the watchtowers that used to line the pass remain, nor any sign they were ever built. So not only did we lose our newly rediscovered kin, but we lost major Holds for the first time since the fall of Karak Azgal, and we didn't have enough influence in the world to even know their final moments, or who to level the Grudge against. Thorgrim's Age of Vengeance stopped being about hope and started to be about..." He sighs. "Settling our affairs as best we can before we disappear forever, and have to answer to the Ancestors for what has become of the Empire that They left us."
Old Ironbeard was so very right."So the assumption is that Karag Dum is doomed," you say. "Zhufbar and Karak Kadrin will do their duty and invest expertise and resources, but not many Dwarves, because that is the one loss they can least afford."
"If all I had at my disposal were Dwarves, I'd do the same," Belegar says frankly. "But for all the bravery and artifice of the Dwarves, it was men that held the line at the Battle of Karag Nar and the Battle of the Citadel, it is men that hold Death Pass and keep us connected to the Karaz Ankor, and it was a joint project between the Runesmiths and the Colleges that shattered Waaagh Birdmuncha. If the Karaz Ankor has a future, it is alongside the men of the Empire, as High King Kurgan Ironbeard decreed so long ago. So I sent you."
Meanwhile for humans that'd be the SpymasterOne of the benefits of being the Loremaster of a major Karak is that showing up and saying 'I'm nosy, tell me what's going on here' is considered by Dwarves to be entirely within your job description.
So...remember that thing about being unable to get ironclads to Marienburg without sailing around half the continent?The Project is a much larger scale than you envisioned. The Dwarves are not content to dig another River of Echoes, where boats designed specifically for its narrow and shallow watercourse carry barely a wagonload of cargo each and every year a new diplomatic incident is caused because boaters meet in a particularly narrow area and neither wants to be the one that backs up so the other can pass. This is being dug to what the Dwarves call Monitor Standard, wide enough and deep enough that a fully-loaded River Monitor, or a freight vessel built to the same dimensions, can pass without trouble, and even that is causing grumbling because some say the job won't be properly done until Barak Varr's riverine Ironclad design can pass through. Work is being done on from both sides at once, though weekly map exchanges ensure that both are still on course to meet each other halfway.
I'm a dwarf and I'm diggin a hole!Starting from the Black Water is a tunnel being dug through the mountains in the same way it has always been, as for all their insight and technology, to Dwarves there is exactly one correct way to dig a tunnel, and that is the way that Grungni did it. Sure, there are vast ventilation pumps bringing fresh air in, and steam vehicles on rails taking away dirt and rubble, but at the very front of the tunnel is a series of wooden scaffolds to allow what looks like an entire Mining Clan at once to bring their picks to bear on the solid rock of the mountain. Occassional side-branches are being dug to pursue interesting veins and deposits that were uncovered by chance, carefully watched over by Lodewardens in case they break through into unexpected tunnels.
Huh, such a lucky coincidence.Far below, the work is far different. Ever since the Purge of the Haunted Hills, migrant workers have swarmed into Southern Stirland in huge numbers to be a part of the logging of the Ghoul Woods, funded by the Counties of Hornau, Sigmaringen and Leicheberg. Even as timber prices crashed the logging continued to free Southern Stirland of their worst neighbour and unlock some prime farmland and pastures, with Schramleben being piled high with logs yet to find a buyer. But even though prices are recovering as shipyards and boatyards throughout the Empire begin to ramp up production, the amount of work available to these migrant workers fell as the Woods shrank, and when the Dwarves arrived to start surveying for their canals and locks, they found a veritable bounty of cheap labour and cheaper timber. Mining through rock is one thing, but digging through soil is quite another, and few grumble about letting manlings do the shovelwork. The manlings are equally happy with the arrangement, as being paid in good Dwarven silver is worth a third again as much in shillings if you find the right moneychanger.
Well the obvious solution should be something that can handle the...There's still a lot of distance to cover vertically and horizontally, especially since the route carefully skirts the ruins of Karak Varn. But so far everything is going exactly as planned. The tricky part will come when it comes time to design the mechanisms to allow boats to make the trip between the Aver Reach below and the Black Water high above, especially since every supervisor seems to have his own answer for how to accomplish that. Lock flights or staircase locks are the most obvious solutions, but others are championing inclined plane canals, boat lifts, caisson locks, and shaft locks, and each champion is able to come up with a long list of drawbacks to every solution but theirs.
The ultimate problem seems to be that this is a joint project between Barak Varr and Zhufbar, and both consider themselves to be the ones best suited to overcoming the technical problems: Barak Varr as champion of the rivers, and Zhufbar as the foremost technologists of the Karaz Ankor. You hope that something is able to be worked out soon.
That settles that alright.If there's one problem that you don't think you have to worry about, it's Marienburg. The upper excavation is prepared for all-out assault from greenskins or Skaven or even fouler things from the depths of the Black Water, so any mere bandits that Marienburg pays off to interfere with them will have a very rude awakening indeed. And of the itinerant workers in Southern Stirland you feel equally confident. An outsider might peg them as an easy target for bribery to sabotage the project, but these are Stirlanders and they, at least for now, are full of patriotic fervour for their province and gratitude for their Dwarven neighbours. Thanks in no small part to Dwarven firepower, the Hunter Count and his successor have been avenging four hundred years of terror and violence that have poured out of Sylvania, and everyone present knows that even if their morals could stretch far enough to accept Marienburg gold, they'd be far more likely to be beaten to death under the shovels of their fellow workers than to manage any substantial damage to the project. When you finish your tour of the dig sites, you feel confident that Marienburg is far more likely to land themselves in trouble than to cause any for this project.
Huh, the most curious part of this business is that the vampires didn't succeed at followup efforts, you'd think they have enough military power to force the matter, if they wanted to try."The town of Bylorhof," Kasmir says with a wave of his hand, walking the streets and nodding to those he passes. "Technically, it's part of County of Leicheberg. If you look at the roads, it's closer to being part of the County of Hornau. But realistically, it's Sylvanian - the people are Sylvanian and the Stirlandian Counts haven't drawn taxes or levies from here in centuries. But it's never been ruled by Vampires, either. Vlad von Carstein never tried, and though Mannfred von Carstein did, the Vampire he sent - Count Ranelf von Feuerfliege - was staked and thrown into Bylorhof Marsh."
Huh..."Have you ever heard of Manhavok?" Without thinking you make a gesture to placate the God of Floods, and you frown as you try to remember where you learned it. "Yes, that's the one. God of Floods, only worshipped in Stirland, which always struck me as odd. Everyone knows the gesture and most people know the prayer, even if they grew up in the hills far from the gentlest tributary. But I think I know why. The ancient Fennones would worship the bogs, which isn't as strange as it first sounds. Bogs gave them bog-iron and peat and bog-wood and all sorts of berries, and in return the Fennone would give them their worship and the bodies of their dead, which the Vampires later took advantage of. Bylorhof never forgot the old ways, and they still worshipped the God of Bylorhof Marsh, Bylorak, even after the Vampires came. In secret at first, and openly after they struck down Count Ranelf. I think there was once a 'family' of Gods that were worshipped, one for each bog and marsh and swamp, and one for Manhavok for when waters encroached on dry land unexpectedly."
...that sounds like something that'd inspire such a widely spread, yet regionalized faith.The Great Pumps of Morgrim, lost, and now most believe Zhufbar was named for the miniscule waterfall it now hosts, rather than the torrential flash-draining of the Black Water for the mining of its bed, which destroyed the dark and terrible forests that once dominated what was now known as Averland and the Moot long before the arrival of humanity.
Ranald: "And then I stole from the one who failed to steal."You frown to yourself as you remember the shrine to Stromfels under Wurtbad. It seemed strange to you at the time that there'd be a God of Shipwrecking so far inland, but for an ambitious acolyte, Manhavok might have represented some substantial Godly real estate that Stromfels might have been able to subsume, and considering the entire household got buried under flood-silt, perhaps Manhavok objected. "It makes sense," is all you say.
The fen becoming a swarp makes sense, if the vampire trapped inside is generating Dhar from starvation and unable to generate enough to free themselves before its dispersed."The first clincher for me is Mannfred," Kasmir says. "After the Battle of Hel Fenn, the Imperial forces searched for Mannfred von Carstein's body. Martin of Stirland sent search parties on a regular basis for the rest of his life. Even today our forces keep finding necromancers dredging Hel Fenn. Some people take this as a sign that Mannfred escaped and is licking his wounds somewhere, but everything about him in the history books tells me he's not the type to lay low. If he was out there, we'd know about it. So I think that nobody can find him because Hel Fenn is holding him, just as Bylorak is holding Count Ranelf."
You nod to yourself. It doesn't take much to bring a Vampire back. If it hasn't happened yet despite all the foolish Necromancer acolytes doing their best to make it happen, it's reasonable to assume it's because something is stopping them. "You said the first clincher. What's the second?"
"Ever been to Hel Fenn?"
You think for a moment. "Visited Mikalsdorf once, but didn't pay much attention to the surrounds. Why?"
"It's not a fen, it's a swamp."
You shrug. "Cartographers mistake? Can't imagine many would be willing to double-check."
"That's the thing, I went digging through all the archives I could. Even the earliest maps record it as Hel Fenn, and so does every one since. Always one L, always two Ns. Something's making that name stick. Nobody's ever tried to 'correct' it to two-L one-N Hell Fen. Nobody's ever relabelled it to a swamp. Which makes me wonder where the Fennones got their name. Their foremost God, perhaps?"
You think through the rest of your knowledge of the Vampire Wars. "And Grim Moor?"
"Is a bog," he says with a smile. "Is it too holding tight onto Konrad?"
"Another God hidden in a name?"
"Morr, perhaps? Or something like 'Gremmer' that was transliterated into words by outsiders."
So first thing to win the battle of hearts and minds - you need to prove you're different and won't ditch them when the going gets tough."All very interesting, but what's it in service of?"
He waves a hand. "Sylvanians have no patience for outsiders coming in with outsider Gods. They'll accept our help, and they'll definitely accept our gold, but at the first sign of trouble the priests flee and the Sylvanians will have no choice but to go back to their old habits. What do they care for Sigmar, who overlooked their tribe? What do they care for Taal when their forests are so hostile, or Rhya when their crops so often rot, or Shallya when there's no mercy to be found? But Bylorak succeeded where all others failed. Bylorhof never paid a drop of blood to the Vampire Counts. So if we can re-establish their Old Gods, perhaps they can succeed where ours have failed."
It's hard to be an object of worship when you're also buying beer at the market, or people are having to contemplate the pro's and con's of going into business against somebody worshiped as a servant of the divine.
He might, but I'm betting he's going to try and stay as far away from any and all Greys as he can till he's ready to make his play for power.So a random aside, but it occurs to me that we're probably going to end up recruiting directly from the Light College for this expedition. And, if I recall correctly, there's a certain Light Wizard people have wondered about who might quite like to take a trip to the Chaos Wastes...
Not according to the Imperium of Man's podcast censorship software, it's not.
Aren't we already, like, halfway there? We have statues of Mathilde being used as amulets against evil and whatnot.I wonder if we could sneak in the Dammerlichtreiter into the whole minor gods worship thing. 🤔
There haven't been any major indications of how the Dwarven infection has been progressing recently, but I'm certain that by this point we have to be at least 40% Dwarf.Proper dwarves courting right there!
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What do you mean that we're not a dwarf?
His personal loyalties are to Sigmar, but if another god is able to do something that Sigmar promotes much more effectively than Sigmar, I don't see that as dividing his loyalties. And Sigmarites do seem to very much approve of smacking down vampires.Yes, he currently has the job. It's definitely within his remit to promote the worship of benign gods, it's just not one usually emphasized by Priests who are usually more interested in promoting their own. Title drop and all that.
His personal loyalties are to Sigmar, but if another god is able to do something that Sigmar promotes much more effectively than Sigmar, I don't see that as dividing his loyalties.
Well, all the Dhar from their corpses has to be going somewhere, since the place isn't a horrorshow of Undead by Sylvanian standards...Also, I have to wonder if the swamp-gods are getting sustenance from nomming on the vampires in their territory. Om nom nom...
Not unless Boney made his save:He might, but I'm betting he's going to try and stay as far away from any and all Greys as he can till he's ready to make his play for power.
I would fully expect Boney, if he does go this route, to actually have him dedicated to fucking up Chaos in every way possible, and this is a prime opportunity. That or the guy who was capable of corrupting a large portion of the entire Light College feels confident he can fool one of the least subtle Grey Wizards around. It would be a hilariously ironic friendship too, whichever happens to be the case.Also keep in mind that at some point in the not-so-distant future I'm going to have to roll a will check to keep van Horstmann from being entirely loyal to the Empire and an overall charming and helpful person just to fuck with the thread, and that's going to have a really high DC.
We have gravel in our soil/soul definitely.There haven't been any major indications of how the Dwarven infection has been progressing recently, but I'm certain that by this point we have to be at least 40% Dwarf.