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Warhammer Fantasy: Divided Loyalties - an Advisor's Quest

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I was looking for the citation for greenskins coming from the eastern Dark Lands. I've not found it yet, but I did find evidence to suggest that there is evidence beyond the novels that the dwarves attacked the elven colonies first in the War of the Beard/Vengeance. The 8th edition dwarf army book says:

The first acts of the war were brutal raids attacking Dwarf trade caravans. All evidence pointed to the Elves, many of whom were subsequently slain by vengeful Dwarfs. When word reached the Dwarf High King, Gotrek Starbreaker, a prudent and wise lord (as evidenced by his long beard), he halted his thanes from war-making. Instead, he sent envoys to far Ulthuan to lay their claims before the Phoenix King, Caledor II. In this way, Gotrek hoped to resolve the dispute peacefully by demanding wergild. A Dwarf will never forgive a grudge, yet in cases of misunderstanding, an exorbitant tribute of gold and gems, called wergild, coupled with sincere contrition, could possibly prevent the Dwarfs from settling the score in their more traditional fashion.​
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The Elves received the Dwarf envoys with open scorn, mocking what they called baseless accusations. Such was their contempt for the Dwarfs' claims that the Elves deliberately conceived of an insult so grievous that no amount of gold could ever serve as recompense: the Dwarf ambassador had his beard shaved and was compelled to return home shorn of pride and bearing the message that the only way King Gotrek might gain a single gold coin was if he came to Ulthuan personally and begged before the Phoenix Throne. There could be but one response: war!​

This tells us the sequence of events were:

1) Raids on dwarven caravans with evidence that it's the elves' fault
2) Vengeful dwarven thanes start local wars (presumably against the elven colonies), slaying many elves
3) Gotrek Starbreaker stops the local wars and sends ambassadors to Ulthuan
4) Caledor II is a massive dick, possibly partially because he's coming from the context of thinking the dwarves have launched unprovoked attacks on his subjects and massacring them, and then turning up and asking for weregild to add insult to injury.

So, this isn't just a novel thing.
 
Again going back to baby dragons bedtime story:

Boney said:
Those who are true to who we are live beneath the land that was created for us, growing in strength and waiting for the day when even the least of our number is able to depart. But many lost themselves to these new energies that permeated the land, either in desperation during the long war or out of curiosity after it. By embracing the artificial energies that exist nowhere else but here, they doom themselves and all their descendants to die with this world. They live and die without ever knowing the true radiance of stars.

One day, we will leave this world behind to be squabbled over by lesser beings and fallen Dragons. One day, this world will be swallowed by the Ruinous Powers, who will rejoice for a moment or two and then grow bored and turn their backs on it. One day a new sky will turn red as we descend upon an unsuspecting world and make it ours. And one day, we will leave that one too.

Deathfang takes a deep breath, and then turns to look at you once more. "Does that satisfy your curiosity?"
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The bolded part, stating that once Chaos wins they'll grow bored with the world and turn their back on it, gives me the sense that this in miniature is exactly what happen with Beastmen and other out of favour Chaos aligned races (Fimir, Dragon Ogres). They won, rejoiced, and grew bored, quickly looking for the hot new thing. In this sense Chaos gives me an oddly childlike impression in terms of desire and attention span. Quickly grow bored of old toys, want new things often specifically because they don't already have it.

Then as for why humans over the other 'non-owned' races, I suspect a mixture of human susceptibility and mutability, that is they're simply the low hanging fruit. Again, childlike. Elves for example give me the impression that even when they worship Chaos they're generally more balanced, difficult to fully suborn maybe, at least from Chaos' perspective. Vampires of course are this taken to the absolute extreme.

For all their vastness, the Chaos gods can be surprisingly uncomplicated at times. Even the incarnation of complexity is following a rather simply nature. Reminds me of Boney's comment one time about why Chaos Daemons are how they are. I think it was something like, it's a very large imagination, but not a varied one?
 
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The War of the Ancients Story
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    • have i told this story yet? idk but it's good. The War of the Ancients Story:

    my pre-sigmar history professor went to this ancients conference. like to be clear this is a man who has a doctorate in being a history nerd. he reads the library of the old world to his four-year-old son. and the ancient races are one of the cornerstones of pre-sigmar history, right, so this should be right up his alley?

    wrong. apparently ancients scholars are like, advanced. there is a branch of ancients scholarship that specifically looks for ancients cultural practices based on the archaeological artefacts unearthed in talabheim. my professor, who has a phd in pre-sigmar history, realizes he is totally out of his depth. but he already committed his day to this so he thinks fuck it! and goes to a panel on elven-dwarven relations, because that's relevant to his interests.

    background info: the elves and dwarves used to be bros when they were ruled by legendary kings who were directly channelling the gods of their people but then they fell apart when they started being ruled by regular fuckwits who made mistakes and by the time the leaderships who were like a continent and a half way from each other realized this those in the epicenter had already speedrun like fifteen different tiers of atrocities against each other. but the exact details of who's to blame or if anyone's to blame is very open to interpretation, and scholars believe all kinds of different things about what flaws both races have and how much each are actual flaws and how much they're just incompatibilities between the two people that there wasn't enough of a dialogue between them to deal with when it caused local flareups and the ancients stans get extremely tense about it.

    so my professor sits down to watch this panel and within like five minutes a bunch of crusty academics get super heated about the ancients' theoretical flaws. because it's academia, though, this is limited to poorly concealed passive aggression and forceful tones of inside voice. one professor is like "this isn't even about economics!" and another professor is like "this proves it's about economics!" people are interrupting each other. tensions are rising. a panelist starts saying that the dwarves and the elves were fundamentally incapable of coexisting without the oversight of unfathomably wise god-kings, and that the occasional stand-offs between elven and dwarven ships prove this, and another steps in and starts talking about how there's a dwarf on the ruling council of marienburg that gets on fine with the elves—

    then my professor, perhaps in a bid to prove that he too is a smart history-knowing person, loudly calls: "BUT WHAT ABOUT THE WAR OF THE ANCIENTS?"

    some more background: like four thousand years ago there were a bunch of raids on dwarven caravans that by all indications were done by elves, because back then they were the only ones running around that part of the world that had metal weapons to attack things with. so the dwarf king sends an envoy to the elf king to be all, wtf bro? and the elf king gets pissed off and shaves the envoy, which for dwarves is basically the biggest thing you could possibly do to piss them off, and so they launch into a war of mutual extinction that almost wiped out both of them. and if you say it like that it makes the elf king sound like a real douchebag, classic fuckwit king shit. BUT if the dwarves had already started doing punitive attacks on elves before the envoy was sent, then it's less of a 'wtf bro' and more of a 'yeah i'm killing your dudes and now you're going to pay me for it' thing and it's a bit more understandable for someone to be flipping out and even there's an argument to be made that the dwarf king needed to get his people in check. elven arrogance or dwarven vengefulness? it all hangs on the sequence of events.

    much later, when my professor told this story to an ancients nerd friend, the guy said the war of the ancients thing was a one of the biggest landmines in their field. he said it was a reliable discussion ruiner that had started so many shouting matches that some conferences had an actual ban on bringing it up.

    so the place goes dead fucking silent as every giant ass ancients stan in the room is immediately thrust into a series of war flashbacks: the war of the ancients argument, violently carried out over seminar tables, in literary journals, at graduate student house parties, the spittle flying, the wine and coffee spilled, the friendships torn—the red faces and bulging veins—curses thrown and teaching posts abandoned—panels just like this one fallen into chaos—distant bells, skies falling, the dog-eared translations of historical texts slicing through the air like sabres—the textual support! o, the quotes! they gaze at this madman in numb disbelief, but he could not have known. nay, he was a history theorist, a pre-sigmarite tribes man, only a visitor to their haunted land. he had never heard the whistle of the mortars overhead. he had never felt the cold earth under his cheek as he prayed for god's deliverance. and yet he would have broken their fragile peace and brought them all back into the trenches.

    my professor sits there for a second, still totally clueless. the panel moderator suddenly stands up in his tweed jacket and yells, with the raw panic of a once-broken man:

    WE! DO NOT! TALK ABOUT! THE WAR OF THE ANCIENTS!
     
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    • Boney said:
    have i told this story yet? idk but it's good. The War of the Ancients Story:

    my pre-sigmar history professor went to this ancients conference. like to be clear this is a man who has a doctorate in being a history nerd. he reads the library of the old world to his four-year-old son. and the ancient races are one of the cornerstones of pre-sigmar history, right, so this should be right up his alley?

    wrong. apparently ancients scholars are like, advanced. there is a branch of ancients scholarship that specifically looks for ancients cultural practices based on the archaeological artefacts unearthed in talabheim. my professor, who has a phd in pre-sigmar history, realizes he is totally out of his depth. but he already committed his day to this so he thinks fuck it! and goes to a panel on elven-dwarven relations, because that's relevant to his interests.

    background info: the elves and dwarves used to be bros when they were ruled by legendary kings who were directly channelling the gods of their people but then they fell apart when they started being ruled by regular fuckwits who made mistakes and by the time the leaderships who were like a continent and a half way from each other realized this those in the epicenter had already speedrun like fifteen different tiers of atrocities against each other. but the exact details of who's to blame or if anyone's to blame is very open to interpretation, and scholars believe all kinds of different things about what flaws both races have and how much each are actual flaws and how much they're just incompatibilities between the two people that there wasn't enough of a dialogue between them to deal with when it caused local flareups and the ancients stans get extremely tense about it.

    so my professor sits down to watch this panel and within like five minutes a bunch of crusty academics get super heated about the ancients' theoretical flaws. because it's academia, though, this is limited to poorly concealed passive aggression and forceful tones of inside voice. one professor is like "this isn't even about economics!" and another professor is like "this proves it's about economics!" people are interrupting each other. tensions are rising. a panelist starts saying that the dwarves and the elves were fundamentally incapable of coexisting without the oversight of unfathomably wise god-kings, and that the occasional stand-offs between elven and dwarven ships prove this, and another steps in and starts talking about how there's a dwarf on the ruling council of marienburg that gets on fine with the elves—

    then my professor, perhaps in a bid to prove that he too is a smart history-knowing person, loudly calls: "BUT WHAT ABOUT THE WAR OF THE ANCIENTS?"

    some more background: like four thousand years ago there were a bunch of raids on dwarven caravans that by all indications were done by elves, because back then they were the only ones running around that part of the world that had metal weapons to attack things with. so the dwarf king sends an envoy to the elf king to be all, wtf bro? and the elf king gets pissed off and shaves the envoy, which for dwarves is basically the biggest thing you could possibly do to piss them off, and so they launch into a war of mutual extinction that almost wiped out both of them. and if you say it like that it makes the elf king sound like a real douchebag, classic fuckwit king shit. BUT if the dwarves had already started doing punitive attacks on elves before the envoy was sent, then it's less of a 'wtf bro' and more of a 'yeah i'm killing your dudes and now you're going to pay me for it' thing and it's a bit more understandable for someone to be flipping out and even there's an argument to be made that the dwarf king needed to get his people in check. elven arrogance or dwarven vengefulness? it all hangs on the sequence of events.

    much later, when my professor told this story to an ancients nerd friend, the guy said the war of the ancients thing was a one of the biggest landmines in their field. he said it was a reliable discussion ruiner that had started so many shouting matches that some conferences had an actual ban on bringing it up.

    so the place goes dead fucking silent as every giant ass ancients stan in the room is immediately thrust into a series of war flashbacks: the war of the ancients argument, violently carried out over seminar tables, in literary journals, at graduate student house parties, the spittle flying, the wine and coffee spilled, the friendships torn—the red faces and bulging veins—curses thrown and teaching posts abandoned—panels just like this one fallen into chaos—distant bells, skies falling, the dog-eared translations of historical texts slicing through the air like sabres—the textual support! o, the quotes! they gaze at this madman in numb disbelief, but he could not have known. nay, he was a history theorist, a pre-sigmarite tribes man, only a visitor to their haunted land. he had never heard the whistle of the mortars overhead. he had never felt the cold earth under his cheek as he prayed for god's deliverance. and yet he would have broken their fragile peace and brought them all back into the trenches.

    my professor sits there for a second, still totally clueless. the panel moderator suddenly stands up in his tweed jacket and yells, with the raw panic of a once-broken man:

    WE! DO NOT! TALK ABOUT! THE WAR OF THE ANCIENTS!
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    The is the "Does the Balrog have wings?" post, isn't it.
     
    The Laurent said:
    "there's a dwarf on the ruling council of marienburg that gets on fine with the elves—"

    This is the real Important Facts.
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    Hell, I heard there is a Runelord attending high society parties in Laurelorn. Chilling with the ruling class of the city, but I don't know much about it because I choose not to attend those parties when offered the chance making it one of the only members of the Waystone project I haven't spent a social action with despite buttering him up with favors for him to join. :cry:
     
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    Sparsebeard said:
    Hell, I heard there is a Runelord attending high society parties in Laurelorn. Chilling with the ruling class of the city, but I don't know much about it because I choose not to attend those parties when offered the chance making it one of the only members of the Waystone project I haven't spent a social action with despite buttering him up with favors for him to join. :cry:
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    We're not the wizard who told time to do what we want, and there's only so many actions in a six month period. If we were melkoth, maybe we could have for him in.
     
    I wonder how possible it would be to get a second Perpetual Apprentice minion, to help out with the library. It'd be expensive in terms of CF, particularly right now that we're saving up for the Orbs gigaflex, but afterwards (or as a potential reward), it should be doable.
     
    I don't really see a need for perpetual librarian, especially given we have LibrarWE already.
    Spend some AP to help get that Spidarian up to speed faster and then save CF for other things is probably better use of our time and resources.
     
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    I will point out that a good way to get more AP is right in front of us: get both the library and the EIC intel network to places where we are happy with them and then hand off direct control. For the EIC, this would mean letting the Hochlander run the intel network; for KAU, this would mean dropping down to the High-level Policy tier of involvement (or potentially Hands-off, but it seems unlikely that the thread will go for that).
    Boney said:
    [ ] (LIBRARY) Hands-off
    Mathilde will have no involvement at all beyond this point, but will retain full rights to peruse the contents of the library.
    [ ] (LIBRARY) High-level policy
    Mathilde will be able to make decisions such as location, selecting a Head Librarian, and setting broad policies, but will not have day-to-day control over the library, so it will not consume any meaningful amount of Mathilde's time.
    [ ] (LIBRARY) Head Librarian
    Involved in all the day-to-day workings, and able to make staffing decisions, negotiate access to new sources of books, assign priorities for book acquisition, and make sure the day-to-day of the library is going fine. Will count as an organization under Mathilde's control, so will cost a half-action a turn.
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    The EIC intel network is mostly in a place where I don't see a ton of value in Mathilde exerting direct control over it, but there's no point having an odd number of half-actions, so handing it off to the Hochlander doesn't make sense until we reach a point where we're happy with the library (which will probably not be until we have scribes set up and a few more library exchange agreements, I think).
     
    Dragonofelder said:
    I suggested making Shadow Clones, but people protested because it was "heretical" and "usually a Chaos Power" or something like that.

    Some people just don't want progress to be made, /j
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    Shadow Clones are for Ninja Wizards, that's clearly the domain of Clan Eshin. We're Spy Wizards. Magically disguised and highly trained decoys are the way to go if we want to self-duplicate.
     
    Honestly the best way that translates into quest mechanics is that we get the same AP but turns go to four months instead of six.

    I don't actually regard that as a huge difference when put like that, so I'll remember that the actual throttle on what we can read is what Boney can write, and be content with apocrypha. The world is too big for any one person to write, right? So collaborative storytelling for the win, when you want to fill that void in the back of your head that whispers "MORE!"

    That is to say, someone should write an apocrypha about the viewpoints of the other members of the Waystone project, what they think of Mathilde and what they are up to off screen.

    If there's more than one, I'll pledge to do the third!
     
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