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Warhammer Fantasy: Divided Loyalties - an Advisor's Quest

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The purpose for this library is as a safe place to disseminate information, order is what aids that goal. Preservation is in case k8p falls again, which I don't think it will.
 
Ah, the hard choice of picking even just half when I like them all.

[X] Order
[X] Security
[X] Preservation

This is how I know it's Divided Loyalties. :V
 
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[X] Order

I've spent too much time in a library not take this option.
We also want this Library to be useful for research: this is how you do it. It doesn't matter if the library has less books than its competitors - if it's better indexed, researchers will throng here, distance be damned. A good index avoids so much frustration.
 
Boney said:
"Does House Fanpatar live in the Pass of Stone?" you ask, changing the subject.

He gives you a searching look. "Why do you ask?"

Sensing a touchy subject, you form your words carefully. "There seems to be a great deal of importance placed on whether one lives inside or outside the city, yet until recently two of the three most influential families had their powerbase outside of it."

He watches you for a moment longer before replying. "It is an observation that has been made a number of times through the years, often by those jealous of that influence. House Fanpatar are Cityborn, and as such we live in Tor Lithanel. The Pass of Stone has only very basic living facilities for when our defence of Laurelorn requires us to spend time away from our true home."

"And if it had more than very basic living facilities, it would undermine your claim of being Cityborn?"

"There are those that would make that argument. So the majority of the tower remains in ruins as a symbol of our dedication to Tor Lithanel."

"That seems like it would be quite a hardship."

He gives you another long look. "The contrast is good for the soul. Silk is all the smoother after weeks of bark and leather." He cocks his head, running his eyes along the terrain. "Do you hear that?"

You turn your focus to the constant background whine of insects, much of which is trying fruitlessly to find purchase on your Aethyric Armour. "The... sort of a rasping chirp?"

"A type of small, timid frog. If there was anything amiss, they would not be calling. The equivalent of a woodlands hunter knowing a predator is near if the birds stop calling, I suppose. You wanted to know about House Fanpatar? This is what we spend much of our time doing - making sure the balance of the swamp is as it should be, and finding out what has changed if it is not."

You flinch and jerk your head away as some sort of midge tries to find purchase on your eyeball. "And the insects? Is it some sort of family secret that keeps them from trying to feast on you?"

He laughs. "The Grey Lords make a potion that makes Elven blood poisonous to insects. Anything that sees Elves as a meal has long since gone extinct. And that's another sign of change for us to watch for - if we're getting bitten, it means that there's something new doing the biting, and that often indicates some greater source of imbalance. Swamp Goblins especially like to cultivate their own strains of pests."

"Ah," you say simply. There's a larger discussion there you're tempted to try to touch on about whether the natural state of the swamp is something to venerate in itself, or simply the raw material to be shaped, but you're worried it might be one of the points of contention between the Cityborn and the Forestborn, and decide not to chance it. If you're going to risk offending, it should be for answers with more meaning to you than mere curiousity. "Is that how you see an alliance with Middenland? One more type of frog to listen for the chirp of?"

He gives you an amused smile. "Words are cheap. If a frog had enough of a mind to ask me what I thought of it, I would flatter it for its contribution to the defence of the swamps. But I have no need to do so for your kind. We do not have an island paradise for us to sneer across the waves at the world from. The High Council has spent far too much time contemplating the results of a conflict with Nordland turning into all-out war between your peoples and mine to dismiss you so easily. One cannot spend a lifetime staring up the shaft of extinction at the hands of humanity and still dismiss them so easily. And by all indications, your kind will be easier to coexist with than the beings our erstwhile cousins of Loren Faen joined themselves to."

Smarter than a frog, easier to get along with than a tree daemon. Not the most glowing assessment of humanity you've ever heard, but you'll take it.
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This whole section is great. Even without being written in a language with the capacity of wordplay and double entendre of Eltharin, the contrast between Mathilde's almost Dwarf-like directness and Galenstra's circuitous evasions and metaphors still shines through. I'm not even sure if she noticed how delightfully droll and uncouth she must have appeared to Galenstra, asking obvious yet usually unspoken things out loud instead of relying on reading and writing between the lines like all the usual city folk. We're lucky he's into it.
Boney said:
[The Loathsome Chaos Dwarves and All Their Vile Kin]
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Qretch too is fun. And I like how the section was peppered with reminders that he has not in fact become a good person in any way. Just a smart and patient one with the wisdom to know what he can not change.

I am curious though, even if Qretch knows how to write in the ways that would be considered respectful and unthreatening to other Skaven, how does his writing style in both his correspondence and the book look? How often does the cultural divide slip through enough to seem more than just eccentric? And just how full of expletives and judging descriptions is the book he wrote? Has he even learned how all the things Empire scholars (pretend to) find wrong and evil differ from the stuff that gets condemned back home among Moulder? Even if his education included an extensive primer on the ethics he should pretend to have, such things can't be fully comprehensive without actually living among the society in question.
Boney said:
[ ] Capacity
You could focus on sheer size, making a library that can be conveniently scaled pretty much indefinitely. Your library is always going to be able to grow, but if you want to go completely off the rails and dedicate yourself to collecting literally every written work ever made, this library will be able to handle that without any problems.

[ ] Comfort
You could focus on a library that will be a delight to visit or even study at for prolonged periods, with a focus on easy accessibility, well-lit reading areas, plentiful study rooms, private quarters, and built-in taverns and restaurants.

[ ] Holy
Most libraries are dedicated to one God or another, so why not follow the trend? Carve dedications to Verena, Valaya, Quinsberry, and Hoeth into the very bedrock alongside subtle nods to Ranald, and make allowances for large public shrines to the more acceptable Gods.

[ ] Order
Despite the best efforts of librarians, practically every library eventually has to resort to The Stacks when the amount of books outstrips the ability to impose order on them. Every scholar has known the experience of delving deep into a maze of dimly-lit shelves many times their height in search of a volume that the library's records insist is in there somewhere. Seek from the outset to ensure that no visitor to your library ever suffers this fate.

[ ] Preservation
You could focus from the outset on the preservation of the gathered materials from both natural disaster and the march of time. The masons will use techniques meant for facilities built atop live volcanoes to create a library that could withstand being the epicentre of the beginning of a second Time of Woes, and a great deal of care paid to air shafts and ambient humidity will create separate sections of the library tailored for the different needs of paper, parchment, and papyrus, and a means of completely securing the entire facility such that it could last another few millennia of enemy inhabitation unbreached.

[ ] Security
Your personal library is split into three sections: general access, Collegiate access, and completely secret. A larger facility will need a commensurately more complex system. Build the library from the ground up so that there will be different sections dedicated to different levels of access, and in such a way that every visitor will be convinced that the highest level they have access to is the highest level that exists.
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I want all of those. Damn.

What are the "normal" standards for these? I assume that all but Comfort and Holy would already be much higher than usual, but how much higher? Could baseline Capacity still fit all published books of the Empire and Tilea? Could baseline Preservation still compare to the bank vault we found during the reconquest of K8P and keep paper preserved for millennia under non-calamitous circumstances? Does normal Security still allow for multiple levels of securely lockable halls for various guilds and organizations even if they are not incomprehensibly hidden from scrutiny?

Anyway, my preliminary choices are:

[X] Comfort
[X] Order
[X] Preservation

My dream scenario would be if you take the aggregate vote result and consider that the priority given to each option instead of having just one winner. But while that would make my inner immersive simulationist happy, I get how that would probably be much less exciting to write about.
 
Considering a big arguing point for this favour (potential research bonuses aside) was that this particular collection of books would be built solid and last millenia so that it wouldn't end up like any of the other big libraries that burned down over in the Empire when one of the cities got burned to so much ash. I think the chief concern should be Preservation. We want the records to last for untold ages. All else is secondary.
 
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Andres110 said:
WFRP 4 stats go here
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27 Toughness seems way too low. Unsure why belt gives wounds instead of +10 toughness.
Starting Int 31 with Savvy already included is certainly too low.
Sword probably should be +15 if we are talking about Zweihander with SB=10.
Fluff-wise Belt doubles the damage it returns, IIRC.
The way Mathilde took to swordsmanship like fish to water may merit Warrior Born.
Fortune 8 seems crazy high, but, well, Ranald...
Lore (Romance) at 95 is a nice one.
 
Rafin said:
I am curious though, even if Qretch knows how to write in the ways that would be considered respectful and unthreatening to other Skaven, how does his writing style in both his correspondence and the book look? How often does the cultural divide slip through enough to seem more than just eccentric? And just how full of expletives and judging descriptions is the book he wrote? Has he even learned how all the things Empire scholars (pretend to) find wrong and evil differ from the stuff that gets condemned back home among Moulder? Even if his education included an extensive primer on the ethics he should pretend to have, such things can't be fully comprehensive without actually living among the society in question.
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If he was writing in Queekish he might have trouble reeling it in, but he learned Reikspiel alongside learning the Empire's social norms. He'd still come across as odd by normal standards, but by academia standards he's barely eccentric.

Rafin said:
What are the "normal" standards for these? I assume that all but Comfort and Holy would already be much higher than usual, but how much higher? Could baseline Capacity still fit all published books of the Empire and Tilea? Could baseline Preservation still compare to the bank vault we found during the reconquest of K8P and keep paper preserved for millennia under non-calamitous circumstances? Does normal Security still allow for multiple levels of securely lockable halls for various guilds and organizations even if they are not incomprehensibly hidden from scrutiny?
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You're asking for details that don't exist yet. Picks have barely touched rock.
 
pucflek said:
Considering a big arguing point for this favour (potential research bonuses aside) was that this particular collection of books would be built solid and last millenia so that it wouldn't end up like any of the other big libraries that burned down over in the Empire when one of the cities got burned to so much ash. I think the chief concern should be Preservation. We want the records to last for untold ages. All else is secondary.
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Preservation seems to help if Karak Eight Peaks falls - which considering it is a major dwarf Karak will take a lot of doing.
 
There was something niggling at me about Qrech's mannerisms. It reminded me of something, Then I remembered what he reminded me of:
 
[X] Preservation

Because 'knowledge that will never be lost' was the primary goal from the beginning.

Boney said:
As the High King orders the retrieval of the books on the Siege and Fall of Karak Eight Peaks, your eyes widen as you run your eyes over perfectly-preserved tomes of recorded history.

The Light Order do their best, but the Colleges have only been around for a fraction of the Empire's length, and before that a hundred tragedies each shaved away a record of history. The Great Library of Mordheim died with the city, the Sieges of Altdorf each resulted in a freezing populace burning books for heat, the Imperial Library suffered attrition every time the capital moved and was stolen back and forth a dozen times during the Age of the Three Emperors, and Dieter IV sold a good deal of what little survived to reach him to anyone willing to pay. And if that wasn't enough of a reason for his soul to be damned, when he sold Marienburg its independence, it took the Great Library of Verena with it, and ever since the self-righteous custodians have delighted in denying entry to citizens of the Empire. The Vaults of the Great Cathedral of Sigmar are purged every time a more conservative Grand Theogonist takes office, and there's Witch Hunters out there who consider literacy to be compelling evidence of witchcraft, and even when some poor scholar escapes the pyre it's not always guaranteed their books will.

A hundred hundred roadblocks between the average human and their past, but since the first founding of Karaz-a-Karak, every single event to ever befall the Dwarves has been carefully recorded and remains right here, carefully preserved by rune and artifice. Three thousand years ago the ancestors of the Empire had barely migrated, but every wrong done to Karak Eight Peaks had been recorded in exhausting detail, as demonstrated by the series of mighty tomes hauled over by the Dwarven attendants.
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B O O K will be eternal.
 
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Zero Gravitas said:
Preservation seems to help if Karak Eight Peaks falls - which considering it is a major dwarf Karak will take a lot of doing.
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I mean, not really, that sort of stuff just happens sometimes. But its ultimately the one thing that makes the Library sure to stick around come hell or high water. Cython goes bonkers? That's gucci. Black Crag vomits out its entire content of Orks? Gonna be fine. Skaven make thunderous return with a Doomsphere through the unsecurable deeps? We got this. Tomb Kings got miffed about something? No worries.

Ultimately its like, a very Epilogue kind of improvement. It won't have much impact on what is going on in quest right now, except perhaps for being a Verenan's wet dream. But i personally view it as the most important one, because while the library might not have as many visitors if its not that comfy, or will be hard to look through if its not as ordered, the ultimate goal was to make a library that won't be easy to actually ruin, like what happens in the empire pretty much every other century. The tomes will actually be around for... pretty much ever, at least until the very Mallus cracks in its final conflagrations when the final Everchosen does get the best of the Order Factions.
 
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