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Warhammer Fantasy: Divided Loyalties - an Advisor's Quest

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would prefer dissassembly, as even if grafting the arm onto somebody gives us some insight into how it works, it seems unlikely that this insight would be more useful than what we could figure out by taking the thing apart.
 
Hydroplatypus said:
would prefer dissassembly, as even if grafting the arm onto somebody gives us some insight into how it works, it seems unlikely that this insight would be more useful than what we could figure out by taking the thing apart.
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You assume we would learn anything useful from taking it apart.
Mathilde took those barrow swords apart and didn't learn anything useful. Same with the various Skaven stuff. Even if the arm isn't an Old One artefact pre-dating the explosion of the Polar Gates and creation of modern magic I would not expect her to get much out of it.
 
Wow. This has got to be one of the most unanimous votes I've seen in a while. Poor Thorek, thinking he's asking some great burden, and Mathilde just Grins and says sure.
 
I suspect that recruiting all of our allies - with the possible exception of the elf factions if we pick one that's enthusiastic for the project - will be kinda similar to this. And while getting thorek onboard is probably worth a bit of politicing, I don't think any other individual faction will be nearly as valuable. Thorek may be the only real source of dwarf aid available - at least of the quality he can provide - but there's a lot of elf and empire factions we could potentially recruit, so we'll have to be more careful who who support and who we deny. Especially as some demands may be mutually exclusive with other factions, which might lock out some allies.

What sort of demands does everyone think the other factions might ask? Because I have no idea what political demands the jade, light, and amber orders might request (though given Dragomas is apparently in support of the project the ambers might be a relativly low-effort pick), much less the various cults, elf factions, and other human nations.

Edit: actually something I just thought about. Will the cult of ulric be annoyed that we are supporting Thorek against the Imperial Dwarves that - depending on the story - may have helped them carve/inhabit their sacred mountain? Just came to me as I was thinking about factions with conflicting objectives.
 
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Ericwinter said:
Wow. This has got to be one of the most unanimous votes I've seen in a while. Poor Thorek, thinking he's asking some great burden, and Mathilde just Grins and says sure.
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Mathilde: "Yeah, sure, I'll handle both those things."

Thorek: "Wait, both? These are extremely fraught matters. Surely you wish to proceed cautiously and not risk too much at once?"

Mathilde, slinging an arm over Thorek's shoulders: "Utonki, let me tell you about Ranald the Gambler."
 
Belegar's already used to Mathilde's antics, and while we haven't endeared ourselves to Kragg in nearly the same amount, he's learned to get used to Mathilde. Let's savor his reactions before he inevitably grows numb to Mathilde's antics.
 
Nerdasaurus Rex said:
It's either Lustrain, Cathyian, or Nehekharan, and Egrimm confirmed it wasn't Tomb Kings. He's actually the one who suggested it's from the New World in the first place as well.
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Technically they probably can't rule out Ind definitively either! I feel that'd be significantly less likely, but it'd still be a distant possibility.

065tdsa said:
Honestly it makes you wonder, who the hell even invented gilding and came up with how to do it to your vital organs? Because I don't see an elf ever doing this, but on the other hand how would a human invent it, performing all the tests on themselves?
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Honestly my guess would be it was something the alchemists that became the gold order were already doing a worse version of, but teclis's wind teachings allowed them to greatly refine the process.
 
Ok! So I was rereading the bits at the start of the waystone project, especially now in the context of needing to have something for our direct recruits to do, and there were a few things that stuck out to me:

Boney said:
"A big part of the mystery is that the network isn't just an Elven creation. The heart of it was supposedly an adaptation of an already-existing network built by precursors to the Elves, which we know basically nothing of.
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This is, I think, the key to approaching the creation of waystones in theory from the same perspective as those who did it the first time. I think finding information on this pre-waystone network might be a good first ask from the elven library.

Boney said:
started building entirely Elven Waystones throughout the world, but that didn't last long until they entered into their Golden Age partnership with the Dwarves and started incorporating Runecraft into the Waystones, and as far as I've been able to uncover, the details of those Runes are no longer known to modern Runesmiths."
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Ok, so we have an explicit ask of any runesmiths we actually recruit to come out to stay with us in Laurelorn: take a look at the runes and see what conclusions can be drawn from a thorough analysis.

Fortunately, the historical record suggests that the creation of waystones is possible with just mages, so we are looking to understand runecraft as applied to a pre-existing design, like runes applied to an elven bolt thrower. And this means that the runecraft research portion can be started later, since we have the buy-in of a runelord.

Boney said:
But a third problem is that there's a lot more to the network than Ulthuan's Waystones, even when you account for the differences between purely Elven and Elven-Dwarven hybrid designs. From the runes found on them, they're believed by most to have been made by early human tribes - Belthani in the west, Scythians in the east."
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And this is fascinating, because it gives us two things. First, the clue that once theory had been worked out, manufacture was possible through a few different magical grammers. Second, evidence that humans on their own also contributed to the build out. Which gives us some focus as to which inheritors we want to get buy-in from.

Boney said:
They have a variety of plant they cultivate that acts as a tributary to the Waystone network, though I'm not sure if that was an original part of the network, or if it postdates or even predates it."
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And this is where I really want a jade side project.

In fact, this might be a great way to get buy-in from the jade order. In exchange for their secrets, get them access to a few cuttings or saplings or seeds, put up the coinage needed to see how much it takes in terms of precious metals to get them to grow. I think the usefulness and novelty of a plant that can manipulate magic would be something they would jump at. (ideally we don't write the book on waaaghsoak mushrooms until after this...)

Boney said:
Max looks up from the notes he's been taking. "So by my count, you've got four nations, three tribes, four Cults, and two Orders that could all have pieces of the puzzle, and most of them aren't inclined to share, and some of them might not even still exist."

"At least." You hadn't mentioned the Hedgewise, after all.
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So about fourteen leads to chase down and cross off. I think we have one solidly handled with Thorek, which leaves us with thirteen.

I think we might have done luck with the hedgewise if we approached the closest ones through the ranaldites? Jades for the obvious pre-empire human traditions too, but I think we aren't going to know how much they inherited until we get them to commit.


So I think I want to try and pursue the pre-waystone network as our foundation, and I think that sounds like a colab with Egrimm and Mathilde. I think diplomancing the jades could be a Mathilde/Johann colab.

It's Max I'm unsure of at the moment. I'm actually toying with the idea of using his efforts to get better at smithing to get us some more elven connections- Max's sole condition when he joined was that he have a forge to hand. And here we are now, in the middle of a very large house that represents a TON of money in a space constrained city like this... So: assuming most smiths have to rent space to work, we can offer space to work in exchange for tutoring. Max gets to learn from elven smiths, we get a perspective into the city elf working class, and we perhaps start to turn the property we've been granted into an income source as well as income sink, especially since we have the stewardship to do it.
 
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Great post Glau!

Glau said:
Ok, so we have an explicit ask of any runesmiths we actually recruit to come out to stay with us in Laurelorn: take a look at the runes and see what conclusions can be drawn from a thorough analysis.
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This does remind me, if we don't want to bring them straight into the depths of the forest, we can use this as a starting point.

Boney said:
Close examination of the mountain itself reveals nothing; it's not until you move away and examine it from afar that the natural-seeming crags, cracks and gullies combine to form a massive Rune you don't recognize.
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Mountain sized runes!
 
Glau said:
Ok! So I was rereading the bits at the start of the waystone project, especially now in the context of needing to have something for our direct recruits to do, and there were a few things that stuck out to me:



This is, I think, the key to approaching the creation of waystones in theory from the same perspective as those who did it the first time. I think finding information on this pre-waystone network might be a good first ask from the elven library.



Ok, so we have an explicit ask of any runesmiths we actually recruit to come out to stay with us in Laurelorn: take a look at the runes and see what conclusions can be drawn from a thorough analysis.

Fortunately, the historical record suggests that the creation of waystones is possible with just mages, so we are looking to understand runecraft as applied to a pre-existing design, like runes applied to an elven bolt thrower. And this means that the runecraft research portion can be started later, since we have the buy-in of a runelord.



And this is fascinating, because it gives us two things. First, the clue that once theory had been worked out, manufacture was possible through a few different magical grammers. Second, evidence that humans on their own also contributed to the build out. Which gives us some focus as to which inheritors we want to get buy-in from.



And this is where I really want a jade side project.

In fact, this might be a great way to get buy-in from the jade order. In exchange for their secrets, get them access to a few cuttings or saplings or seeds, put up the coinage needed to see how much it takes in terms of precious metals to get them to grow. I think the usefulness and novelty of a plant that can manipulate magic would be something they would jump at. (ideally we don't write the book on waaaghsoak mushrooms until after this...)



So about fourteen leads to chase down and cross off. I think we have one solidly handled with Thorek, which leaves us with thirteen.

I think we might have done luck with the hedgewise if we approached the closest ones through the ranaldites? Jades for the obvious pre-empire human traditions too, but I think we aren't going to know how much they inherited until we get them to commit.


So I think I want to try and pursue the pre-waystone network as our foundation, and I think that sounds like a colab with Egrimm and Mathilde. I think diplomancing the jades could be a Mathilde/Johann colab.

It's Max I'm unsure of at the moment. I'm actually toying with the idea of using his efforts to get better at smithing to get us some more elven connections- Max's sole condition when he joined was that he have a forge to hand. And here we are now, in the middle of a very large house that represents a TON of money in a space constrained city like this... So: assuming most smiths have to rent space to work, we can offer space to work in exchange for tutoring. Max gets to learn from elven smiths, we get a perspective into the city elf working class, and we perhaps start to turn the property we've been granted into an income source as well as income sink, especially since we have the stewardship to do it.
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I like this post, but I would like to add a few info points for your consideration:

First, while IC we don't know what the "pre-elf" waystones are from, we know what they are OOC I'm pretty sure. When the Old Ones first came to the world, they used devices (that Deathfang calls "cunning devices") to harness the energy of the Warp from the Polar Gates to terraform the planet and make the appropriate changes they needed. It was how they harnessed the magical energy of the warp before the collapse of the Polar Gates. This network is known as the "Geomantic Web".

The Old Ones are gone, but their first creation and most loyal servants, the Lizardmen are still here, albeit the first generation are entirely dead. That hasn't exactly stopped some of them since some of them are so stubborn they will themselves back to life temporarily (like Lord Kroak). The first generation of Slann were the ones who directly interfaced with the Old Ones, but the Second Generation up to Fifth Generation all have some degree of knowledge of the Web and its uses even now. The Elves have records talking about the Old Ones, and there are stories of Slann teaching Elves how to use magic. Unfortunately Elves like to make things complicated, so even the texts talking about the Old Ones, which are available for human scholars to peruse btw, are coated in metaphor and vagueness/contradiction that human scholars can't even untangle it. Boney talked about this briefly, but the Elves say the Old Ones created them but they also say that Asuryan and Isha created them, and they say that neither of these are incorrect and that the Old Ones aren't their gods. This is probably why Mathilde would view the "Old Ones" as a dubious thing.

Actually getting Lizardmen to cooperate would be unbelievably difficult too. First we would have to learn about the Slann, which might be possible with an Elven library, but then we would have to convince one to help out, which is a monumental task. The Slann are largely concentrated in Lustria in the New World so we can't even contact them unless we somehow learn that's where they are, and all Mathilde knows is that "magical frogs" exist there so it's not like she can accurately tell that those are the Slann. There is one Temple City in the Southlands, but that requires going through the Land of the Dead, Nehekharan territory.

After that you have to somehow get an audience with a Slann when the Skink and Saurus want you dead and the Slann is asleep most of the time. Getting them to wake up is inordinately difficult, and if the Slann believes that you don't play a part in the Old Ones "Great Plan" they either ignore or destroy you.

Needless to say, I don't hold high hopes about the pre-Elf waystone network and getting workable knowledge from it. There's hints here and there that the Belthani hold certain knowledge about the Old Ones though, as in Tome of Salvation there are very ancient stone tablets in the Empire that say that "we the Belthani are the inheritors...... Old Ones in their Silver Ships" or something like that. The tablet is fragmented because it couldn't be fully translated.

To be fully accurate, here is the exact excerpt. It's hard to interpret tbh:
"... the Moist Earth, the Mother of all life [two obscure symbols] Dryad, Naiad, Nymph [list of unknown symbols] Gods [two lines obscured] devastation [crack in stone] came from beyond the [half a line worn away] silver ships [seven unknown symbols] deep waters, fertile, and [three lines worn away] Worship Her [two unknown symbols] nurture Her land [one line worn away] we are Her children, we are the Belthani ..." —Extract translated from the Talastein Carvings, now held in the Royal Academy of Talabecland, translated by Teclis of Ulthuan
 
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[X] [THOREK] Both
[X] [ARM] Amputee

Should be easy enough to find a sentenced-for-death human we're confident of being guilty.
Safety concerns could be mollified by mind bending, restraints for body and magic, and lethal failsafes.

The same can be used on a loyal and worthy mundane, and honestly wouldn't be too huge a loss if removing the armifact (arm + artifact, hohoho) again required their death, as opposed to losing the shoulder.

Either is infinitely more bearable a loss to the Empire than a magister.
 
killfr3nzy said:
[X] [THOREK] Both
[X] [ARM] Amputee

Should be easy enough to find a sentenced-for-death human we're confident of being guilty.
Safety concerns could be mollified by mind bending, restraints for body and magic, and lethal failsafes.

The same can be used on a loyal and worthy mundane, and honestly wouldn't be too huge a loss if removing the armifact (arm + artifact, hohoho) again required their death, as opposed to losing the shoulder.

Either is infinitely more bearable a loss to the Empire than a magister.
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Well, time to change my vote away from this because Jesus is that a bad argument.
 
Boney said:
They aren't literal keys. He wants to know how to undo everything they did to seal it, runically and otherwise.
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Boney said:
Even if Thorek would be okay with torturing innocent citizens of the Empire and then giving them calcification lobotomies to cover it up - and he wouldn't be, for the record - ask yourself if that's the sort of thing you really want the quest to explore. Mathilde delves into some pretty dark shades of grey at times, but doing that sort of thing in the name of political expedience rather than actual necessity would be several levels beyond that.



Those Dwarves have been living safely within Middenheim ever since they left Karaz Ghumzul, so to a Dwarven perspective there's no reason they would have lost any of that information.
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I'm not sure what sort of Con you would use to get the access to a dwarf hold/their rune passwords/bypass methods out of some dwarves, but I theorize that it might be possible.

You know how old people fall for internet scams wanting their passwords and credit card info all the time. The people living in this era will have even less exposure to common forms of Con.
 
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I'm reading the Dwarf 8th Edition Army book with a smile on my face. Two things I just want to comment on:

Belegar in canon begins his expedition at 2473 IC, which is 3 years after DL starts, and the expedition is much smaller. He takes over the Citadel and begins a 50 year long battle of attrition where he slowly grinds down the areas and fortifies against endless enemies. The only breaks are when a resupply/reinforcement force comes into relieve the burden of Clan Angrund's warriors. In DL, Belegar leaves 5 years later, asks humans for help, gets a huge number of New Holds to assist, and the targets/goals for the expediton become markedly different. Belegar, younger and less jaded than his canon version, is at a crossroads, and through likely some good background rolls in character creation, he demonstrates an exceptional level of cunning in regards to logistics.

He uses this cunning to turn what should be a downside; the large army is great for projecting force but can be equally devastating economically/logistically due to needing to supply them all in a far off hold past the badlands; into an upside. He found a way to bypass hostile territory, made negotiations, and handwaved all logistical concerns, turning the campaign into a straight up military venture instead of a logistical one. Combined with Mathilde pushing his "Crossroads" trait when he was still maleable into "Goraki", and he managed to adequately take advantage of the precarious and unstable nature of the "forces of destruction" and have Mathilde push the forces to fight against each other without the knowledge that they were being pushed down that path with a third party. This turned a possible bloodbath with Belegar having to fight for every single step with Dwarf blood into a straightforward defensive maneuver with Dwarf forces, and Grey Wizard/Ranger sabotage. It helps that Boney had a custom "Third Skaven Civil War" thing going on that we could take advantage of, and that Mathilde managed to interrupt the Only-Gork ritual from creating Skarsnik.

The second thing that makes me grin is that in 2519 IC, Dwarfs and humans cooperate against each other to defeat an Ogre tribe that was about to raze the Moot in what is called the "Battle of a Hundred Cannons", which is described as the "Greatest Concentration of Artilery in recorded history". This battle might never occur, but there is another "battle" that contained a hundred cannons in DL.

The Assault on Castle Drakenhof is described by Narfi as the greatest concentration of artilery in recorded history, and he is very correct. The exact number is 70 Human made Great Cannon, 20 Mortar, 40 Dwarf Cannon, 30 Grudge Throwers and 20 Organ Guns.
 
If the whole replacing Johann's arm doesn't work out how will we reattach his removed arm, the seed? But wouldn't using the seed on Johann cause dwar to form in his brainmeat from the excess Chamon in and around his eye area. Isn't that still a issue? Can the seed be directed to heal a single injury instead of all injuries?
 
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guyfromtheplace1 said:
I'm not sure what sort of Con you would use to get the access to a dwarf hold/their rune passwords/bypass methods out of some dwarves, but I theorize that it might be possible.

You know how old people fall for internet scams wanting their passwords and credit card info all the time. The people living in this era will have even less exposure to common forms of Con.
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General rule of thumb for cunning plans: if the potential fallout from doing something surreptitiously is orders of magnitude greater than the cost of doing it normally, just do it normally.
 
065tdsa said:
Honestly it makes you wonder, who the hell even invented gilding and came up with how to do it to your vital organs? Because I don't see an elf ever doing this, but on the other hand how would a human invent it, performing all the tests on themselves?
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Maybe some wizard gilded a part of himself by accident, via a miscast? Then he realized that it was rad as hell and try to replicate it. Because honestly I can't see a human wizard saying « lol, I'm gonna put liquid gold at 1064 degree C on my body to see what happens » without having already some idea of the potential benefits.
 
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