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Warhammer Fantasy: Divided Loyalties - an Advisor's Quest

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Codex said:
I found a list, and wow @Mopman43 wasn't kidding. Gotrek, Tyrion, Teclis, Sigmar, Archaon, Malekith, Morathi, Grungni, Grimnir, Nagash, Arkhan, Mannfred, Neferata, Alarielle, Gork and Mork, the Skaven and Lizardmen and Kroak...

Lots of people "survived" the "End Times".
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Pretty sure I've heard that Ikit Claw made it. And Bugmans, of course.
 
Redshirt Army said:
We know that Khazalid writing, Khazalid speech, and Runecraft are able to interact with each other, using Runes that are not lost (as it was possible for Mathilde to acquire an autotranscriber for Khazalid), and we know that Runecraft is able to interact with enchantments.

A baked in Order system might have something like a bunch of Khazalid keywords set up in a nesting pattern, such that each book within the Library can be given a unique identifier, with runecraft able to be used by visitors to search through the libraries collection for all relevant texts for their research and then near-instantly locate the precise books that they need, complete with a MAPP interface that directs them where they need to go.

This is the sort of thing that can only be done by building the entire libraries around an Order system from the very beginning, and is far more powerful and flexible than "merely" a decent organizational system that can be implemented afterwards.
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This reads like runic QR code to me.

The idea sounds great, but I wonder how you can finagle a database system out of the current level of dwarven rune raft.
 
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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Have to admit, this section from when Mathilde walked into the Book of Grudges room makes a pretty compelling case for Preservation from a narrative perspective. Mathilde is absolutely salivating at how good the Dwarves have been about maintaining a record of their history, while humankind sheds their history almost as fast as they can make it.
 
DragonParadox said:
That is End Times lore which is very much non-canon for this quest. Personally I would rather take the Dark Gods at their word when they say that they will unmake the world forever into their twisted playground, since that makes more sense that Sigmar pulling a new world from his ass.
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Sigmar can fit what in his ass?!? :o Damn!
 
Angelform said:
Security feels redundant. The thing is already a Dwarf vault in one of the most secure Holds on the planet.
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Security is more about classification levels. This library is hopefully going to have lots of dangerous knowledge in it. Also if we have good security there is a much better chance of people entrusting somewhat secret knowledge to it.
 
[X] Capacity

Building the Library of Alexandria but in a dwarfhold is a fun vibe, and this currently has literally only one voter according to the tally I checked. I don't want them to be lonely!

[X] Order

The biggest hurdle to actually making use of libraries in this era. On the flip side, this is also something that everybody is already used to and expects, so we wouldn't be disappointing expectations by taking it.

[X] Preservation

The original seed of this idea (in the narrative anyway) was Mathilde observing the archives of KaK and wishing humanity had something like that. Leaning into that would be cool. It also has a practical aspect; while KaK has never fallen, K8P has. While we saw off the last overland invasion quite handily, the Eye of Gazul wouldn't help against an enemy striking from underground. Even with the defensive work done by the Okrul I'd honestly be nervous over how a really major push through the Underway would go for K8P.
 
Fun fact: many early libraries used the busts of classical writers and philosophers to mark the sections, so for example if you were looking for the S section you had to be able to recognize Socrates' face.
 
OK, thinking about the people who want preservation for when eight peaks falls. This seems to ignore that preservation only helps against time and nature, not actual people. If the karak falls and the invaders decide that paper makes nice sounds when burning preservation will not help, security would.

[X] Order

I think order is the most important.
@Boney did say that all of them would be included in reasonable ways (for a dwarf) but that our choice will give us the unreasonable ways. It would be the best preserved or the most organized, the most comfiest, or the securest, or the holiest. But only one of those...
 
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