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Warhammer Fantasy: Divided Loyalties - an Advisor's Quest

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So, when it comes to The Plan, here's where I think we're at:

• The expedition as a whole shifts a bit out of its way to follow the breadcrumb trail and get to the next Waystone along the way to Dum.
• Mathilde does magic stuff at the Waystone to turn off the tap and starve Vlag of magic. We assume this will make Vlag reappear.
• The expedition as a whole bunkers up for a few days around the Waystone to protect it, in case a shitload of Slanneshi demons come pouring out to try to regain their power supply.
• After a few days to a week have passed, Mathilde goes scouting inside Vlag to see if there are any cultist holdouts and to check on the state of any possible defenders.
• Regardless of who or what is still in Vlag, Mathilde undoes the "shunt this mountain into the Warp" enchantment/ritual so that the Karak won't vanish again when we turn the power back on.
• At this point, with the ritual/enchantment disrupted, Mathilde can go turn the power back on at the Waystone.

Does that seem about right to everyone?
 
chocolote12 said:
Running out of wounds on the tabletop is noted to not necessarily indicate death, but a dragon prince catching a hail of arrows is certainly not going to be fit to participate in any further high fantasy warrior shenanigans. He'd be too busy rattling like a pincushion while his fancy doctors insult the craftsmanship of the arrows.
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just pointing out that lore beats TT.
 
chocolote12 said:
Decently trained humans with good equipment can take on a lot of threats in the setting. That's part of Fantasy's charm.
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You're forgetting the "outnumber" part of the equation. A squad of pikemen can kill daemonettes (if their morale holds), but IIRC a unit of daemonettes starts out smaller than a human one. Point-for-point, I think daemonettes are more expensive than imperial infrantry, aren't they?
 
Redshirt Army said:
So, when it comes to The Plan, here's where I think we're at:

• The expedition as a whole shifts a bit out of its way to follow the breadcrumb trail and get to the next Waystone along the way to Dum.
• Mathilde does magic stuff at the Waystone to turn off the tap and starve Vlag of magic. We assume this will make Vlag reappear.
• The expedition as a whole bunkers up for a few days around the Waystone to protect it, in case a shitload of Slanneshi demons come pouring out to try to regain their power supply.
• After a few days to a week have passed, Mathilde goes scouting inside Vlag to see if there are any cultist holdouts and to check on the state of any possible defenders.
• Regardless of who or what is still in Vlag, Mathilde undoes the "shunt this mountain into the Warp" enchantment/ritual so that the Karak won't vanish again when we turn the power back on.
• At this point, with the ritual/enchantment disrupted, Mathilde can go turn the power back on at the Waystone.

Does that seem about right to everyone?
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That's certainly what I hope we achieve.
 
So it doesn't affect my vote one way or another, but it is pretty interesting that this is the Turn we have the Protector turned on.

The Protector: When you act in a way that defends an individual or group from a danger that you did not cause, they will become aware of what you have done and will believe you acted selflessly in doing so.
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If there are any dwarven survivors at all inside Karak Vlag, even if they're slaves being eternally tormented by daemons, they'll know exactly what Mathilde is doing. Or, well, they will if they're pulled out of the aethyr. (Not sure Ranald's power can reach inside.) They'll have hope. Who knows, slave uprising time?
 
Hydroplatypus said:
For the waystone clog plan, is the expedition going to fortify around the clogged waystone, or around the karak enterance (or valley entrance if more fortified), because I've seen people talking like either could happen.
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Or just leave, with a couple of days distance between them and the Karak there's time for Asarnil to make attacks and Daemons to disappear on their way over.
 
Hydroplatypus said:
For the waystone clog plan, is the expedition going to fortify around the clogged waystone, or around the karak enterance (or valley entrance if more fortified), because I've seen people talking like either could happen.
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Around the entrance to bottle them up, it seems:
chocolote12 said:
What I'm not sure is what happens after that. @BoneyM, assuming we don't explode, what would Mathilde anticipate everybody doing after we take this course of action? I think I remember you saying that the dwarves wouldn't just shrug and keep travelling if we said we had an idea for how to retake a hold, but would they be scouting to see when the daemonettes all Instability themselves out, or what?
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BoneyM said:
Hold the line until demons stop coming out, then check for survivors.
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"Hold the chokepoint" isn't a bad plan. Borek's not going to be happy, because, yeah, this does in fact make the plan harder with regard to Karag Dum. But "the daemons will fall apart within days because they can't sustain themselves in the real world" does do a lot to set a time limit on this enterprise, which probably will help?
 
BoneyM said:
If there's a chance of reclaiming a Dwarfhold here and now, what Borek wants means nothing, because he'll be outvoted by every single other Dwarf on the Expedition. Any answer but 'no' means staying until things here are concluded.
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Ok, thank you Boney.

DragonParadox said:
If we tell them there is a chance of clearing Vlag in days they will take it. It would be inconceivable for any dwarfs to say otherwise.
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Ok, now my question is, is that possible with what we have and what we can do?

Agh. Fine. I want to do something to ruin Chaos' day and clogging the waylines seems the easiest way to do that. And if it leads to hijacking the expedition to do that...we'll just have to deal with it.

[x] Waystone Clog
 
BoneyM said:
I don't think you're grasping the geography. Hochland is 1000 miles away. Altdorf is 1500. Using horse relays it would take at least two weeks to get a letter to Hochland, three to Altdorf - and that's me measuring as the crow flies instead of working out the road route. The chances of there being a Wizard who is currently idle that has the necessary skills to both a) mess with Waystones and b) travel at ridiculous speeds are essentially zero. So you're looking at twice as long for the trip back, which takes us well over the month mark.
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Wow... I thought I probably wasn't firmly grasping the geography but it I really am not grasping the geography at all. I thought Hochland was a lot closer and Kislev a lot smaller for no reason.

Besides that I also kind of forgot that most wizards are slackers when compared to Mathilde (or maybe just not omnicompetent prodigies).

Well, it seems like the safest thing to do is clog, scout, unclog and go towards Dum hoping Karak Vlag doesn't go back into the warp.

Jyn Ryvia said:
first name basis is not as big a deal with cultures that all last names are basically 'son of'. it gets confusing otherwise

but ya I get what your saying

Mathy is moving up from 'always a mess' Akko to 'always knows the answer' Yuko Ichihara
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Only if you're not really badass. If you are you get cognomen like Grudgebearer, Ironhammer, the Grim and (chronologically) last but definitely not least Azrildrekked.


Heh... Mathilde was already in the hero mentioned in the history books category. Now a few months after saving hundreds of Dawi from drowning she's rediscovered a lost hold. At this rate Sigmar spot as best dwarf friend ever is going to be in doubt.

[x] Waystone Clog
 
Glau said:
Sometimes, it is nice to see this sort of balance. Nobody should feel safe in a war.
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I can understand this perspective, but at the same time forces of destruction get a lot of mileage out of the whole "nigh endless reserves" thing, while most forces of order are said to have trouble replacing losses.

In that pardigrim, if even the highest tier stuff is in danger from small amounts of weak stuff, then one really feels that order stands no chance whatsoever. I much prefer the strongest stuff being very much comfortable in small scale fights, but still struggling under weight of numbers and over time.
 
[X] Waystone Clog

we came out this way to go big. and we definitely dont want to leave a threat like this in the middle of our path back after giving them a whole month+ to prepare for our return. and lets not risk exploding one of our new journeymanlings.
 
You know... something I don't get. (Unable to keep up with the thread, and 20 pages in under 3 hours is ridiculous speed anyway, so.)

If all it takes is a warpstone clog to disable this, then, why hasn't it happened already?

That is to say. You'd expect that to possibly happen naturally, right, given the Chaos Wastes having moved forward more and there not being available maintenance for all these decades. Or, perhaps even more likely... if this is a Slaanesh thing then, like, why hasn't some Tzeentchian or Khornate dude tried to ruin it? And the easiest way to do so would be to just despoil a waystone north of Karak Vlag. That way you can despoil a waystone and spite a rival god's ambition.

Hell, why hasn't some Random Chaos Warband just despoiled the vulnerable waystones north of Vlag? If the reason is due to Chaos coordinating, or Chaos Undivided, then... I guess that'd work. And would explain why temporarily stoppering it might be a thing they might not like.

On the other hand, I am just not liking this thought. What is all that energy really being used for? And what would happen if it were stoppered? ... Aaargh. And yet, if it did work, then... then it would mean Karak Vlag suddenly popping back into existence. (Unless it finally dooms Karak Vlag for good, that is. In fact, maybe Karag Dum sending energy south has been the only thing keeping Vlag semi-tethered to this reality at all, able to be pulled back in at times and thus needing to be hidden and stealthily camouflaged with all-stone-everywhere. Double argh.)
 
If we manage to pull this off, can you imagine Thorgrim's reaction when he sees the readout that another Hold in the network is back online and it is the one which he thought basically disappeared without a trace?
 
Okay, so here's where I'm at:

Barring the magical Ranaldtag land scenario where the Chaos occupying force is entirely comprised of demons that suffer critical existence failure after a week, and where the Vlag dwarves have held out enough that they can garrison the Karak after we relieve them, I don't think we can feasibly reclaim Vlag right now.

What I do think we have an excellent chance of doing if we play our cards right is setting Vlag up for a reclamation some years down the line. Turn off the power to deactivate their defences, then infiltrate inside and utterly wreck whatever ritual and/or enchantment was being used to sustain the effect. Even if chaos forces regroup and regain control over the Karak, they won't be literally hidden in the Warp anymore and conventional forces will be able to flush them out.
 
I'm on team Waystone Clog but I'd like to note that its success is predicated on certain assumptions, namely that Slaanesh hasn't diverted some of the Waystone energy into a reserve just in case something blocks off its power supply, to be spent to either to keep Vlag in the Warp or to keep the Daemons from dissolving long enough to solve whatever's causing the problem. It doesn't have to be long, even a few months would be enough to outlast the Expedition or hunt it down and eliminate it. In addition there is a strong possibility that Slaanesh already knows of all the Waystone locations along the Karag Dum-Karak Vlag route and could search through the sites relatively quickly to find the blockage. I still think it's worth a shot but we should be ready to bug out fast if things don't go as planned and either try again at a Waystone closer to Karag Dum or wait until after the expedition entirely and do it with a full Throng and Kislevite army backing us up.
 
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