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Warhammer Fantasy: Divided Loyalties - an Advisor's Quest

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Redshirt Army said:
That leaves Morgur being created by Karag Dum (possibly as some form of elemental), being purified by Karag Dum and helping them in exchange, being raised by Karag Dum, or his body having the soul(s) kicked out and replaced with one of Borek's relatives - or some combination of these.

I think that purification has a stronger case than most of the others, since it explains the heat and desert quite readily in a way the others don't. It could be combined with several of the other options, though - kicking the soul out would probably also involve a lot of purification, for example.
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Is it canon or just fanon speculation that Incarnate Elementals require human sacrifice to get going? What was it that BoneyM had said about them in this thread, if he's said anything about them at all? (I think I remember him saying that the Colleges/Orders are a bit hush-hush about Elementals, if they say anything about them at all.)

I know that I speculated about a human's soul being transformed into pure Ghyran/Ghur/Aqshy/whatever; thus, the reason for why the Incarnate Elemental ritual requires sacrifice, is it because it has a human becoming the Elemental or at least providing his soul's human perspective and consciousness to an elemental force.

If so, "needing a Dwarf soul/life inserted in" sort of vaguely works too. Or perhaps not works per se but... Compatible ideas and similarities. Related to that "maybe you stick a Dwarf life or soul in there?" stuff.


Call it interrelated ideas, that all kick around the idea of sacrifice or souls and stuff.

EDIT:
BoneyM said:
It had mountains around it, with a lightly-wooded vale leading up to the entrance.
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Is it the same type of trees and forest, just aged up and enlargened? Or different type of forest/trees? Or, no real way to know this, because "It had some trees on the mountains, sure" is nowhere specific enough to anybody who now is available who knows anything about Karag Dum.

(Sorry if it's clear from the update description, I'm pretty tired.)

I'm... going to chalk this up as "Yes it had some trees, but it wasn't anything like this huge goddamn forest! And anything that turned the lightly-wooded vale into a primeval forest, would have obscured the tiny (in amount and size) trees present there."

For all I know, some of the original trees still remain, they were just supersized. Or maybe they were eventually outcompeted by other, larger, trees and eventually withered and died.

... Or maybe decades of combat with the Kurgans destroyed some of the original trees.

I guess there's no way this gets an easy answer, unless the answer was "Yes funnily enough, this primeval forest looks exactly the same as the original trees that were on Dum's mountains, just super-sized and more of them!" :V We don't even have anybody who could confirm anything like that. And not sure what, if anything, it'd mean even if confirmed.

Again, sorry, just kinda tired.


Some of today's ideas I've had were good. Like the Valaya's Runes and Incarnate Elemental one. Others are just sort of run-on stream of consciousness... thinking.
 
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[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] THEORY: I think I still owe Borek like 1800 gold.
[X] ACTION: I'm going to have to check this out.

[x] THEORY: The specifics are hazy, but this is a known contingency plan that Borek is entirely aware of, but hoped hadn't been enacted. The result breaks all Dawi notions of acceptability, but Karak Dum survives in some capacity and continues to inflict attrition on every local and visiting Chaos force that want to take a swing at them, so it is considered a lesser evil by the pragmatic Karak Dum.
[X] ACTION: Gain more information.
[x] ACTION: Investigate further.
[X] ACTION: Infiltrate Karag Dum to gather information.

[X] ACTION: Expedition: Digs in; Mathilde: Investigates

[X] THEORY: Omegahugger
 
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Garlak said:
I assumed that the primeval forest was just created by Morghur on-location, honestly. Or an already-present forest was turned into it.

i.e. Sure it looks like a normal ('normal') ancient-forest-that-man-has-never-touched, but is it really? Maybe the demigod-like figure just snapped his fingers and grew it.

Maybe forests just grow around Morghur. Or other terrain is transformed into trees, because he likes forests. Or there were some amount of trees, and he aged and empowered them.
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Our description of the scene from the first part of the update was this:
BoneyM said:
You'd seen pictures of Karag Dum, the tallest of a small cluster of mountains approached through an exposed vale. But now it stands alone, jutting out from a great crater that you find yourself on the lip of. Directly below you is bone-white sand, interrupted regularly by actual bones that grow thicker on the ground the closer it is to Karag Dum. And with shocking abruptness the desert gives way to disturbingly familiar forest that now rings the base of Karag Dum, burying the bottom third of it in apparently primeval forest that by all accounts was not there a mere two centuries ago.
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At some point during the Great Brainstorming, Boney also said that the edges of the crater are raised a little, but in a way that looks like the normal foothills that you'd expect to be there. Which I'd think is a very different look to "massive impact/explosion crater edge".
 
This a reminder that we can't stick around too long before we need to head back to get food and stuff.
 
Redshirt Army said:
- Mathilde would spot if this was an illusion.
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Remember when Mathilde actually spotted those Daemonettes were an illusion instead of just happening to dispel it? No? Me neither. And that illusion wasn't even well planned, it was a spur of the moment thing.

Not to mention Mathilde can't see rune magic at all so any visual illusion made with it would be impossible to spot.
 
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Garlak said:
Is it canon or just fanon speculation that Incarnate Elementals require human sacrifice to get going?
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Canon.

Garlak said:
Is it the same type of trees and forest, just aged up and enlargened? Or different type of forest/trees? Or, no real way to know this, because "It had some trees on the mountains, sure" is nowhere specific enough to anybody who now is available who knows anything about Karag Dum.
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Presumably the trees it had were native to the biome, not transplants from the Empire's deepest forests.
 
Ericwinter said:
Actually, question. Has anybody thought about the divine artifacts that may or may not be present in Dum and how they could have influenced all this? Seems like that might help push us over the edge.
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I'm not aware of many details related to the Axe of Runemasters or the Hammer of Fate. Maybe someone more knowledgeable than myself is aware of some lore on the subject from somewhere, but as far as I know we pretty much only have their names and a few hints that the Axe of Runemasters is one of Grimnir's weapons - and is the weapon that slayer Gotrek would have gone on to wield to great effect. It was described at some point as being identical to the twin which is wielded by the High King.

This is getting a little meta, but I vaguely remember that the axe was mechanically identical to the High King's axe, except it had a bonus against Daemons instead of Trolls or something, but I'd take my half remembered ramblings with a pound of salt.
 
BoneyM said:
If I say that, I'll wake up to find someone's built a massive venn diagram that somehow pinpoints the correct combination.
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So jumping off of this, there's a simple way to figure out what the truth is: exhaustively enumerate all of the possibilities! There were 1743 posts between the update and Boney's post noting that three particular guesses put us "within putting distance". Assuming that only a tenth of the posts in the thread are eligible as guesses, that narrows it down to a paltry 877,975 (175 choose 3) possibilities! Certainly, this would be a challenge for one individual, but it should be trivial for such a devoted thread. The only thing left to do is come up with a sane way to divide the work. Obviously, then, the first thing to do is to come up with a naming schema. I've chosen prime numbers and their products, because of the fact that any number can be uniquely factorized into its prime factors.

To illustrate, we'd take the first guess post after the update:
Ericwinter said:
Very very jokingly:

Maybe one of the AncestorGods came back to welcome Mathilde into the Karaz Ankor, and the Shadowgave came to stop it!:)
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and assign it the number '2.' We'd take the second and assign '3', the third would be '5' and so on and so forth. To get the theory incorporating '2', '3', and '5', we take their product and get '30' (which is unique, by the fundamental theory of arithmetic!). This theory is: The Shadowgave came to stop the Ancestors from congratulating us, also we time traveled, and Borek was simultaneously the Changeling.
The methodology is perfect.


Now all we need to do is divide the work.

@BoneyM this is what you wanted, right? :V
 
So one thing I really keep coming back to when thinking about Morghur (or a Morghur like entity) is the weird headpatting.

Only really a seeing a limited amount of reasons for that kinda behavior:
1. Morghur is still pretty much Chaos aligned (Even if the Dum dwarves are probably not corrupted in that manner yet) and, while he might be unable or unwilling to actively harm a Dum dwarf, he does this kinda thing to mess with them.
-- This seems kind of questionable an explanation, cause mockingly affectionate gestures very much aren't in Morghur's MO, even if they gel pretty well with Tzeentch and Slaanesh stuff.
2. Morghur is currently more automaton than Morghur and it's basically a form of ID check that just superficially looks like headpatting.
-- Kinda weird coincidence there, but I guess it's hard to rule out?
3. Morghur is in a really freaking weird headspace and genuinely feels weirdly affectionate towards Dum dwarves without any maliciousness at all.
-- Probably the option that lends itself best towards further speculation, so that plus not really being convinced by the others makes me lean towards this.

It fits most well with a variant of the "Purification" theory or at least something that very loosely fits beneath that header.
Personally, I'm still a bit hung up about the "The desert exists to cut off this place from other forests" idea, so I'm kinda wondering if it might be less outright purification of his corruption (after all he is still reality breaking and all) and more... Well, I'm not actually sure Morghur really cares about destroying Ariel and the Oak of Ages as such.
There's sort of an implication that he just senses their existence and can't help himself from doing everything he can to go and eat, destroy and defile them.
Sitting in a forest where he can't sense them anymore might be just as swell for him as actually succeeding. He might just be content to "live his life" without a constant, all-consuming urge to charge off and try to kill Ariel screaming at him from within his own head.
 
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HungryHamadryad said:
I'm not aware of many details related to the Axe of Runemasters or the Hammer of Fate. Maybe someone more knowledgeable than myself is aware of some lore on the subject from somewhere, but as far as I know we pretty much only have their names and a few hints that the Axe of Runemasters is one of Grimnir's weapons - and is the weapon that slayer Gotrek would have gone on to wield to great effect. It was described at some point as being identical to the twin which is wielded by the High King.

This is getting a little meta, but I vaguely remember that the axe was mechanically identical to the High King's axe, except it had a bonus against Daemons instead of Trolls or something, but I'd take my half remembered ramblings with a pound of salt.
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Doesn't Grombrindal also have "Grimnir's Axe?" how many Axes did the dude have?
 
Oh hey, you know what makes sense, if we think they're using Valaya's Rune to burn up the Dhar? The constant hot wind blowing away from it. Maybe the crater was caused by an initial activation, but there's still a bunch of Dhar pouring in from the rest of the Wastes, so the giant rune is still burning. The hot air is being pushed away.

I don't believe they could use Valaya's rune to just "burn the Chaos" out of beastmen, but the Dhar is eminently possible.
 
Deathbybunnies said:
Oh hey, you know what makes sense, if we think they're using Valaya's Rune to burn up the Dhar? The constant hot wind blowing away from it. Maybe the crater was caused by an initial activation, but there's still a bunch of Dhar pouring in from the rest of the Wastes, so the giant rune is still burning. The hot air is being pushed away.

I don't believe they could use Valaya's rune to just "burn the Chaos" out of beastmen, but the Dhar is eminently possible.
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That is how Garlak came up with the idea in the first place, yes.
 
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