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Warhammer Fantasy: Divided Loyalties - an Advisor's Quest

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For the record I still think it is a diplomatic nightmare to try to talk to the Dun dwarfs. Say they aren't fallen, say they can get some help, how do we sell this to the Karaz Ankor? They are already in a fragile mental state (See Mathilde the dwarf). How are they going to react to 'pet Morghur'? I think the best we can really do is give them what help Mathilde herself can offer, maybe do and exchange of information if they have access to anything that isn't runesmith secrets and then go back.
 
You know, if it's the Rune of Valaya's Vengeance, would that be enough to incidentally purify any Moghurs as well?
 
DragonParadox said:
I don't buy the notion that they converted the rune of Valaya. When we asked @BoneyM is Kragg could scale up the rune he said no, that would break the setting. If Kragg the Grim, greatest runelord of the Karaz Ankor can't do something than my bet is on the 'runemasters' not being able to do it either.
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Well, according to Borek, they retain some knowledge of the golden age that is lost to the rest of karaz ankor. And they are pretty deep in the kickflip zone... So, it might be possible
 
DragonParadox said:
For the record I still think it is a diplomatic nightmare to try to talk to the Dun dwarfs. Say they aren't fallen, say they can get some help, how do we sell this to the Karaz Ankor? They are already in a fragile mental state (See Mathilde the dwarf). How are they going to react to 'pet Morghur'? I think the best we can really do is give them what help Mathilde herself can offer, maybe do and exchange of information if they have access to anything that isn't runesmith secrets and then go back.
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Since we don't know what's up with them, it's hard to know how the Karaz Ankor would react to the thing we don't know yet
 
DragonParadox said:
For the record I still think it is a diplomatic nightmare to try to talk to the Dun dwarfs. Say they aren't fallen, say they can get some help, how do we sell this to the Karaz Ankor? They are already in a fragile mental state (See Mathilde the dwarf). How are they going to react to 'pet Morghur'? I think the best we can really do is give them what help Mathilde herself can offer, maybe do and exchange of information if they have access to anything that isn't runesmith secrets and then go back.
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They can hand over whatever treasures and information that isn't tainted and they have no use for, and more importantly they can tell us the truth of what happened here.

The Karaz Ankor is already going to be hearing about Morghur anyway, that cat is out of the bag. If we manage to find some other awful truths, we can just choose what we tell them.
 
Garlak said:
We don't know what exactly Morghur is. But his existence and presence is described in a way that makes it look almost like a spiritual force being incarnated upon the world and setting out to wreak havoc.

Furthermore, that "'just' reincarnates into some poor schmuck" and "has mondo chaos powers" is a very suspicious thing for a being to be doing or be described as. It's... I don't... hrm. Remember when BoneyM quoted people talking about Damsels and using multiple Winds of magic and said "In that case, put a lot of asterisks and question marks by the word 'human''? That, basically. Reincarnating like that? And having magical superpowers like that? That shit ain't normal.

Morghur's existence is partially spiritual in some way. Maybe he's like a Treeman, maybe he's like a Daemonhost, maybe he's like an Everchosen, maybe he's like a Daemon, maybe he's like a fucking ghost or solidified walking dhar or whatever the hell.

Regardless, I do think it's possible to bind him. If he's not a daemon, then he should be bindable the way Giants and Dragons are bindable with Kadon's skills.

If he is a Daemon, he should be bindable the way Dawi Zharr do daemon-binding. Or the way you get Daemonweapons.

Or he should be bindable as something in-between.


And then, throw in the Runes of Valaya to purify all the Dhar he wafts out, and you've got an explanation for why this place is not a writhing chunk of hell-space despite being host to Cor-Dum. And also why it's desertified, too. Things get transmuted by his aura, Dhar gets released, and then the Runemasters' art and workings burn away the Dhar.
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I really like your thoughts on the Runes of Valaya, but I feel like you're going about it backward. If you were planning on purging Cor-Dum of Chaos, pitting your power directly against his is exactly the wrong way to go about it. Sure, maybe it'd work; the mountain waystones are absurdly powerful. But, then, so is he. Maybe you could overpower him, but it seems like, if you were planning on doing it, that wouldn't be something you could possibly be sure of ahead of time. Even if you succeeded in burning away all the Chaos, who's even to say that Cor-Dum would realistically survive it? I'm not very well-read on WHF lore in general, but everyone is treating Cor-Dum as though he's effectively Chaos incarnate. If you were planning on burning away all the Chaos in him, could you be certain ahead of time that it wouldn't just kill him temporarily again?

Instead, the theory I prefer is that somehow the dwarves and elves cooperated to replace the source of Cor-Dum's power. Rather than burn away the corruption after he starts spewing it, they're burning it away before it even gets to him. Instead of him treating the mountain like a herdstone after he'd been purified, it's integral to his purification because his power is being sourced through it in the first place. After all, that's what the mountain waystones are doing in the first place: they aren't pushing magic away, they're pulling in ambient magic and turning it into pure, dwarf-y power. If it was changed to do that in a bigger way, and they included a massive Rune of Valaya as part of the filtering system, then locked that in as the source of his power, it resolves the weirdness you'd get if you'd just bound him in a more standard way, and it sounds like a plan with fewer points of failure after it's put in place.
Garlak said:
... One thing I'm less sure about is, does Morghur consciously or randomly warp everything in his vicinity?

We've been working on the assumption that his warping-field is indiscriminate and uncontrollable, from the wiki, but we have no idea if that's true or accurate in this quest. It could be that for the purposes of most observers in this quest's world, most people can't freaking tell if Morghur warps stuff on accident or on purpose or willingly or not, because all they see is the results. They don't see inside his head. Nor do they see him as what he's like when at a "home" so who knows.

Either way though... The fact that Borek didn't get warped and transmuted by Cor-Dum is...

I don't know.

Does it weigh things towards the "Probably bound somehow? Bound, and then Dwarfs are put on the FOF, so he physically can't Warp them" possibility? Or towards the "They somehow purged him of Dhar?" possibility?

Maybe Morghur reaching out and headpatting Borek was him trying to do the warping-and-changing on somebody, which he does with affection as he's essentially spreading a blessing. And then failing because the Dum Dwarfs naturally put Dwarfs on the whitelist to not ever be warped by him (or because Dum Dwarfs have other defenses against things or workings of Dum).

Or maybe he reached out and poked Borek because he's not an insane Dhar-tained monster anymore. Not sure.
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This is the sort of weirdness I feel my theory resolves. He normally warps things around him indiscriminately and uncontrollably because he's normally effectively a conduit for pure Chaos, but he's not doing it now because the source of his power has been replaced. He's still throwing around all that power unintentionally, and visibly affecting reality, but because it's a different sort of power, it isn't going to hurt Borek. He's headpatting Borek because he's mainlining pure, Valaya-filtered, dwarf power, so he just loves dwarves as much as a conduit for pure dwarf-y power can. FoF targeting wouldn't even have to come into it.
Garlak said:
"It is also hotter here than anywhere else in the Steppes."
+ "There is less ambient Dhar here than other parts of the Chaos Wastes Mathilde has seen, though still more than outside of it."
+ Mathilde's belt's rune: "Rune of Valaya's Vengeance: The third, the largest and most intricate of the three incorporates elements of both the Rune of the Furnace and the Rune that Valaya gave to the dwarves that allowed them to weather the coming of Chaos. It will grant you such resistance to flame that you could wade through lava, and burn off any taint of chaos before it could even touch you."
= "Maybe the Dwarfs did something with the Runes of Valaya to burn away all this Dhar? Possibly affecting Cor-Dum and the Beastmen in a positive fashion, possibly just making Morghur 'safer' to use or be around, not sure."
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Yeah, basically. Just, I think instead of "burning it away," they're purifying it at the source, then using that to push the dhar back with ambient heat as an effect.
 
Ericwinter said:
@Deathbybunnies the only problem with your theory on converting to Valaya's Vengeance instead of the original and losing the protection against normal Winds as a result... is that the normal Winds are draining too, if I remember correctly. Everything is less intense around Morghur and the mountain, not just Dhar.
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Personally, I think that's solid enough. Deactivating the Hold Rune to make a weapon seems like a reasonable tradeoff to get around BoneyM's "This breaks the setting" clause. Since setting breaking ability is rather more limited if doing so means you die even in a successful attempt.

My issue with the theory is the "and then they became beastmen," bit. Which is a bit of a logical leap in the reasoning.

That aside, "They willingly went to their deaths, or near as makes no difference, after turning their protection into a weapon" definitely makes a degree of sense and fits with the grimness going on.
 
[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]: Turn back.
 
[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] 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: Infiltrate Karag Dum to gather information.
[X] ACTION: Gain more information
[x] ACTION: Investigate further.
 
I'm not sure if anyone's brought this up yet, but that forest absolutely has to have been grown after the rune of (probably) Valaya's Vengeance turned the entire surrounding mountain range into a crater filled with desert. Or it'd be smithereens too. So it can't be all that old.
 
The Phoenixian said:
Personally, I think that's solid enough. Deactivating the Hold Rune to make a weapon seems like a reasonable tradeoff to get around BoneyM's "This breaks the setting" clause. Since setting breaking ability is rather more limited if doing so means you die even in a successful attempt.
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Sure, and I could buy it if that we're what was happening... but it's not.
BoneyM said:
Depends on the environment. Here where there's a constant drain on all ambient magics, probably not.
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All Magics are being lessened, not just Dhar.

Also, as I understand it the Runes of Valaya are all one big system that functions together to protect the whole Dwarven race? If they were indivually territory based the way this implies any Dwarves caught outside their hold at all would be turned to stone.
 
As for the reason Karag Dum survived the initial Valaya's Vengeance explosion, perhaps the Karak-scale Valaya's Vengeance Rune also gave Karag Dum immunity to mundane and magical fire much like the Belt version and that's why it's still around?
 
BoneyM said:
This seems circular. The definition of a well-crafted illusion here is one that Mathilde wouldn't be able to recognize. And there's no Daemonic warband lead by a Higher Daemon here, so there's nothing to distract her from an active illusion, which she was still able to spot and attempted to unravel before being distracted.
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Hang on, what? Unless it happened in one of your posts that don't Alert me, the most you've said previously about illusions in this situation is "Not that Mathilde can see."
Which is fine - 'maybe it is, maybe it isn't, decide for yourself if you want to look further'.

Now you seem to be saying "Definitely no illusions, Mathilde would always have 100% chance of seeing it as an illusion, if not seeing through it - because there's nothing here that would distract here from the colour/shape spell matrix of an illusion."

Except...
BoneyM said:
An utter kaleidoscope. Everything is saturated here.
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In the exact same post, you're saying that in literally every location here, there's every colour and every shape of magic, so confusingly mixed that Mathilde can't determine any information about anything she sees.

THAT is circular.
 
Ericwinter said:
Sure, and I could buy it if that we're what was happening... but it's not.

All Magics are being lessened, not just Dhar.

Also, as I understand it the Runes of Valaya are all one big system that functions together to protect the whole Dwarven race? If they were indivually territory based the way this implies any Dwarves caught outside their hold at all would be turned to stone.
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Thing is, IIRC, the usual rune of Valaya should be repelling magic. Not sucking it down.

So I'm just slotting that in and wondering how the non-dhar drain in the area compares to the amount of magic flowing through the waystone's ley line.
 
Like, okay. What got me started on this was that everyone treats Cor-Dum as something that's basically powered solely by Chaos straight from the warp, and I had the thought, "Well, what if the power it got from the warp wasn't Chaotic?" I mean, the Ancestor Gods did something similar with the Glittering Realm. They took a piece of the warp, shoved it into reality, and then took all of that Chaotic power from that piece of the warp, made it not-awful, and directed it into the runes. So, what if Karag Dum did something similar? They took a piece of the warp, shoved it into reality and then took all of that Chaotic power, shoved it into their giant waystone to purify it, and made Cor-Dum target that when he's drawing his power. Karak Vlag did something naturally similar when they were literally in the warp, creating a bubble of purified reality, so it's apparently something that's not too dissimilar from what Old Holds naturally do in how they were set up, and between Runemasters and elves it's not crazy that they'd be able to do something major with it.

It being an area with the warpiness removed means that it doesn't naturally have any ambient magic, so the magic there is seeping in from the surrounding area. Cool, that explains the lower ambient magic compared to everywhere else in the wastes. Cor-Dum's power being currently reliant on this setup would mean that if he left this area, he'd no longer be drawing his power from the section of the warp the dwarves have cleaned up. Awesome, he doesn't seem to ever leave, so that works. There are no mountains? Well, they're in the area they replaced with the warp. There's a primeval-looking forest that doesn't look super chaos-y? There has to be some sort of magical effect making that exist, and one that makes a beastman demi-god use a non-chaos-y super-waystone as a pseudo-herdstone seems like a good candidate for making a big forest.
 
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killfr3nzy said:
Hang on, what? Unless it happened in one of your posts that don't Alert me, the most you've said previously about illusions in this situation is "Not that Mathilde can see."
Which is fine - 'maybe it is, maybe it isn't, decide for yourself if you want to look further'.

Now you seem to be saying "Definitely no illusions, Mathilde would always have 100% chance of seeing it as an illusion, if not seeing through it - because there's nothing here that would distract here from the colour/shape spell matrix of an illusion."
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Read the context. It's in response to a query about Mathilde not recognizing the Slayer illusion, so couldn't a similar illusion be slipping past her here? And my reply is that if it was the same illusion as the Slayers, Mathilde would be better able to spot it here than she was previously, where she still noticed something was off before being distracted by her duties.

killfr3nzy said:
In the exact same post, you're saying that in literally every location here, there's every colour and every shape of magic, so confusingly mixed that Mathilde can't determine any information about anything she sees.

THAT is circular.
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A spell would still be visible because there is order to its structure that would contrast against the disordered background magic.
 
Ericwinter said:
All Magics are being lessened, not just Dhar.
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Re: the people saying this, the way that Waystones work is that they siphon in winds from the surrounding area; unlike elven waystones, dwarven waystones only collect power at the Old Holds and their other waystones are just conduits passing that power on, but the "origin point" still functions by drawing in ambient magic. But since Karag Dum is in fact an Old Hold, this would be where all the magic gets taken in. If Karag Dum is indeed continuously burning off the Dhar of literally the Chaos Wastes, that would be one hell of a draw to power that. So that could definitely explain why all the Winds are lessened in the area IMO.
 
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The Phoenixian said:
Thing is, IIRC, the usual rune of Valaya should be repelling magic. Not sucking it down.

So I'm just slotting that in and wondering how the non-dhar drain in the area compares to the amount of magic flowing through the waystone's ley line.
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Fayhem said:
Re: the people saying this, the way that Waystones work is that they siphon in winds from the surrounding area; unlike elven waystones, dwarven waystones only collect power at the Old Holds and their other waystones are just conduits passing that power on, but the "origin point" still functions by drawing in ambient magic. But since Karag Dum is in fact an Old Hold, this would be where all the magic gets taken in. If Karag Dum is indeed continuously burning off the Dhar of literally the Chaos Wastes, that would be one hell of a draw to power that. So that could definitely explain why all the Winds are lessened in the area IMO.
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Sure, but... wouldn't that still make it less likely that they all get turned to stone or mutated because they suddenly lose protection, because the magic is being funneled the anti-Dhar effect? Like if someone turned nuclear waste into a power source itself, rather than just a byproduct of said power source. Use up the waste, there's no more waste in the air, and you're not at risk of being irradiated.

Either way though, that still doesn't explain how losing one Rune of Valaya would undo the Dwarven magic resistance in this area when we know they're not territory based, or every dwarf that gets too far from a Karak would lose it. The only answer that I can think of is if each particular dwarf has their resistance slaved to a specific hold's Rune, but that doesn't jive with how imperial dwarves born outside the holds can still get their resistance.
 
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Sneaking into the hold seems extremely dangerous and unlikely to me. The tribes have been grinding away at this mountain for generations, their shadow shamans probably tried all those tricks within the first few years.

I guess she could figure out a way to drop past the forest from dragon back , but there's flying stuff all around here , so I'm sure they have sky covered too.
 
NexusEye said:
The Belt already extends its fire immunity to our clothing IIRC, we're being set on fire but it isn't doing damage.
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Actually it doesn't. There are probably better BoneyM statements then these though.
BoneyM said:
How much of Mathilde's clothing and equipment is fireproof?
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BoneyM said:
I'm assuming Mathilde doesn't want to be fighting wielding nothing but the pistols, wearing nothing but the Belt, and with no allies within several meters.
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BoneyM said:
A spell would still be visible because there is order to its structure that would contrast against the disordered background magic.
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That is new and useful information!
Thank you.

So what spell effects can Mathilde see?
Can't remember if she can see or decipher active dwarven Runes, but they should be structured, at least.
 
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