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The sheer amount of panicking in this thread is as amusing as it is disturbing.

We finally have an great fight and challenge ahead of us, and people are balking from the get go.

This is the Chaos Fucking Wastes. Did everyone thing we would just stroll in and curb stomp it or something?
 
So I have a theory on the timeline here.

There are three points that I think are worth keeping in mind:
1: Borek, by all accounts, didn't think that Karak Dum had fallen when he started this expedition.
2: The very second he took a look at it now, he thinks they need forgiveness from the Ancestors.
3: Most crucially, Borek did not seem surprised to see Morghur

I really do like the "Morghur was born into a Karak Dum family, who managed to runically contain his nature" theory. It's a theory that's fully congruent with what we know is possible and it is fits with BoneyM's stated views that anyone can be redeemed. The problem is that it in at of itself doesn't explain why Borek only thinks Karak Dum is beyond saving now, when he clearly has to have known Morghur's existance from before he left it. Something has to have changed between the two points, and we do have to do some finagling -and indeed some blatant guessing and assumptions- to make it fit, but I think it can be done.

So what I think could've happened is this:

Before Karak Dum got swallowed up by the Chaos Wastes, Morghur got killed in Bretonnia and got "reborn" to a family in Karak Dum. Since Dawi are notoriously resistant to mutations, the actual "growth" of Morghur got slowed down enough for Karak Dum's runesmiths (renowned as among the greatest) to be able to develop a way for pre-Morghur to retain his sanity and literal grip on reality as he grew up. This is not inherently different from what the rune of Valaya does, so it is not an impossible feat to imagine. The dwarves of Karak Dum now had a fully sapient and very powerful Beastman living peacefully among them, a fact that they chose to keep secret because let's be honest, the vast majority of Order factions would not believe for a second that this could actually happen.

So now Borek leaves Karak Dum, which notably was still part of a mountain range at this point, to make sure help actually arrived for the oncoming Chaos Storm. Probably with a tearful goodbye from Morghur, because that's how fiction rolls. And the warning was not heeded, Dum got swallowed up, Vlag disappeared, Borek swore vengeance and the rest is history.

Karak Dum then spends somewhere between 20 and 200 years under siege from the Chaos forces, where Morghul naturally participates in defending his home. The scene seems dire and impossible (because it is), and so the Dawi decide to go radical. Using the genius of their runesmiths and bits of ancestral beastmen knowledge stuck in Morghul's mind, they manage to make their waystone appear and/or act like a non-corrupted herdstone. Which is what made the Beastman forest (that Mathilde described as disturbingly familiar, which means it is similar to Imperial forests in some way Mathilde can't explain) appear in the mountains, where a forest of that type wouldn't normally be able to flourish. But since that isn't enough to ward off Chaos forces, I think what they eventually did is rely on Morghur's metaphysical nature as a world-altering demigod to either attract beastmen to their cause or to turn themselves into something beastmen like. Which are obvious enough ideas as last-case solutions that they were probably discussed before Borek left, and that he then recognised on sight once he got here.
I'm mostly sold. My only additional thoughts are that I don't think they'd have turned themselves into Beastmen - otherwise we'd be seeing Beastmen decked out in Runic armor. An uptick in Beastmen births I could buy into. I think it's more likely that it's a combination of the Waystone acting as a beacon, drawing them in, and livestock being allowed to mutate intentionally, to bolster numbers.
The forest bit is insightful, and I think you're on the right track regarding a pseudo-herdstone.


I also think this pure herdstone is what caused the desert to appear, by rendering the surrounding landscape "unliveable", but I'll admit that that's the shakiest part of this already shaky theory.
Check this out.


Though Borek's pace is steady, his process across the sand is anything but, as the heat-shimmer embraces him and sends mirages of his image shimmering to and fro. Morghur simply watches, and you can begin to make out parts of the forest's edge that are the silhouettes of other Beastmen, rather than trees. You ignore the steady thock of crossbow-fired messages from behind, then hear an out-of-breath Snorri swearing as he barges through the crowd behind you. "Why have we-" he stops himself as he looks out into the crater. "Where'd the other mountains go?"
The desert could demarcate the boundary where some serious energies are clashing. My guess is that Dum is enforcing a bubble of (relative) normality around itself, and as that bubble comes into contact with the forces of the Wastes which cause time dilation, you end up with a waxing and waning no man's land in which time may have been severely affected - resulting in extreme weathering, stones reduced to dust, corpses to dust, etc.
If the hold hasn't fallen, as the Chaos Wastes moved south and enveloped it, presumably they'd have access to more magic via the Waystone which would have allowed them to take on bigger and more radical projects, or perhaps to allow their runes to bear the extreme strain they're presumably under right now, because the available power levels increased in proportion with the load.
 
*This thread- Clearly they used some dark magic and fell. Dabbling in bad juju is always terrible and completely indefensible and must be bad. Period.

*Also this thread- So ya we read the Von Carstein Necromancy book just in case we need it. Don't worry it's proscribed and possibly corrupted and if known is a death sentence. We're the good guys. Our dead Witchunter waifu would be proud!


I don't trust my eyes here. I'm too curious about whats going on to want to leabe without investigating. Also, didnt that shamen dude say Dum was CURRENTLY under seige by the Kul and the other's? Where are they?
 
The sheer amount of panicking in this thread is as amusing as it is disturbing.

We finally have an great fight and challenge ahead of us, and people are balking from the get go.

This is the Chaos Fucking Wastes. Did everyone thing we would just stroll in and curb stomp it or something?
Whatever this is, I am 98% sure we aren't supposed to fight it.

Which is a shame, because I had some great arguments lined up to convince the thread to use necromancy to tilt the odds. Even made a meme pictured to help illustrate my point...
 
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[x] [Action] wait nearby and observe. It shouldn't be nearly as dangerous as it seems, and that allows us to gather additional clues.
[x] ACTION: Expedition: Digs in; Mathilde: Investigates
[x] THEORY: Karag Dum seems to be magically connected to somewhere else. Somewhere similar to Athel Loren?
[x] THEORY: Morghur may be the result of forbidden experimentation involving living beings.
[x] THEORY: Magical signs and, less reliably, intuition about Borek, point to there being something uncorrupted in that mountain in the middle.
[x] THEORY: Less obvious conclusion: Morghur is aligned with Karag Dum because he was a dwarf. That is to say, the first incarnation of Morghur was born a dwarf, far longer ago than merely 300 years ago. And Dwarf souls that never have the rites to send them to the underearth are ejected from the aether, and reincarnated into new bodies to live another life, over and over again. Just like Morghur is supposed to be.
[x] ACTION: Dig up some of those bones to confirm how they died.
[x] THEORY: Plotter Demons came out of the rift at Karag Vlag and they found and burned our cashes in front of us. We've seen neither hide nor hair of them since. I think this might be them. I've reason to believe, from my investigations around Karag Vlag, that Karag Dum, at least at its core, is still standing, and uncorrupted. Or at least, not fully corrupted. This may not be Morghur, but rather a Lord of Change or other Greater Demon of the Plotter, pretending to be him to send us away. I think the Karag may still stand, in some form, either fighting on or as a trap/test for those who come here. The shimmer and shift as Borek went certainly seems to indicate some kind of magical effect, either rune, or more likely, Sorcery or Illusion.
[x] THEORY: Gor Dum is either a mutated dwarf or controlled by a dwarf, look at how he reacted to Borek.
 
*This thread- Clearly they used some dark magic and fell. Dabbling in bad juju is always terrible and completely indefensible and must be bad. Period.

*Also this thread- So ya we read the Von Carstein Necromancy book just in case we need it. Don't worry it's proscribed and possibly corrupted and if known is a death sentence. We're the good guys. Our dead Witchunter waifu would be proud!


I don't trust my eyes here. I'm too curious about whats going on to want to leabe without investigating. Also, didnt that shamen dude say Dum was CURRENTLY under seige by the Kul and the other's? Where are they?

Because the Karaz Ankor would not take them back so it's not worth the risk to life and limb. This is not a moral judgement but a practical consideration.
 
Magically fuckery, and for some reason the MC just stood by and did nothing as the expedition leader literally walked into magical beastmen fuckery.

It was more or less expected that finding Karag Dum fallen would lead to Borek going Slayer at the nearest enemy, and right up until he got a caress instead of a violent death it seemed like that was what was happening.
 
Whatever this is, it is most likely not chaos, and it can be seen by the fact that it is very non corrupting. More investigation is safe and warranted.
 
The sheer amount of panicking in this thread is as amusing as it is disturbing.

We finally have an great fight and challenge ahead of us, and people are balking from the get go.

This is the Chaos Fucking Wastes. Did everyone thing we would just stroll in and curb stomp it or something?
If this thing was somehow Morghur then the expedition would have no chance.

But again if it were Morghur then we'd be under attack not just calmly looking at each other with Mathilde on top of massive pieces of technolgy which the beast men hate more than anything.
 
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What's great is that this scenario is so nonsensical that any action we take would be "clearly stupid" when the theory behind it turns out to be wrong.
 
[X] [Action] wait nearby and observe. It shouldn't be nearly as dangerous as it seems, and that allows us to gather additional clues.
[X] [Action] Scout the other fronts, ask other expedition members for what they might have happened, check with the other wizards what their expertise tell them about the magical and natural environments.


The instant Mathilde runs into a problem she can't hit with her sword people crumble, it's pretty disappointing. How about, before we write off our expedition we at least try to figure out what's going on.
 
[X] THEORY: The Dwarves of Karag Dum did something to burn away the taint of Chaos, much as your Belt of the Unshackled Mountain does, but on a far grander scale. Perhaps it had an effect on the Beastmen here, Cor-Dum included.
[X] ACTION: Gain more information.
 
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*reads the update*
So the dwarves turned into beastmen? Borek somehow knew this was on the table because he isn't surprised. And the beastman likes him, not just tolerates his presence, so I don't think this is normal beastmen.

And this is bad enough that Borek doesn't think the firepower of the expedition can help, possibly because the hold is too corrupted. And he's more loyal to Karag Dum than to the Karaz Ankor, because he's joining them rather than trying to get rid of them?
 
You people do realize you are actively putting in effort in trying to find excuses for it "totally" being Morghur instead of just accepting that it's a silly idea formed by panic at this point?

It makes more sense for him to really be Morghur. After all, he was last seen about 200 years ago. Where was he all this time? We have the anwser in front of us, he's been there all along!
 
So, on a trip into the heart of the great enemy, the first time we come up against them, you want to turn around and run away?
Yes. People can want what they want without having to justify it.
And not all people wanted to come to karag dum in the first place.
Mission accomplished, we can retreat without shame and get as many people alive as possible back home.
There is no scenario where Karaz Ankor wins.
Borek left in shame. I'm fine with that outcome, and not becoming a Chaos spawn
 
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