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NorseQuest (A Norse Xianxia)

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Yeah, it's why we should start moving to check his influence, because he'll get desperate. Especially if we're good at stopping him from getting much intelligence back from our strikes.

So we have three avenues so far towards checking Horra's influence.

1) We need to break up his bandit allies, otherwise, it'll be a tough fight and he's liable to get away in the chaos.
2) We need to figure out his connections to what's apparently those invasive Dwarves, and sever that link, possibly by giving aid to the Duckling Clan? We have an avenue to get in with them.
3) And we need to figure out where he's getting his money from so we can choke that out, which causes his other allies to abandon him.

Do enough of this and he's liable to get desperate, desperate people get sloppy.
 
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I think #3 has to mostly be coming from #1 and #2...plus maybe trade with the trolls, as mentioned, and any economic uses of his magic. Like, he's doing shady shit...I doubt that, his grudge with Steinarr aside, it's for the hell of it. He's aiming to make a profit here, which means his dubious trade deals and the banditry are a significant part of his cash flow.
 
Whatever's going on is clearly linked to the dwarf and the hammering going on in the buildings. Why a dwarf would need humans to craft shit for them is what I'm stuck on. Maybe the dwarf is also an outlaw? Or maybe Horra is riding herd on dwarves working above-ground for... reasons? I come back to Wagner-Alberich, who enslaved others of his kind. Dwarves would definitely have access to secrets from the 'bones of the Earth' too.
 
You know what the worse part about Horra being our enemy? He's also using Norse Cultivation too, so he's hamstringing himself and his family by working with or being a pawn of the enemy.
 
Oh wait. Horra knows how to make weapons that are imbued with sunlight.

That wasn't a countermeasure for the troll. That was just a bonus.
"Apparently, another clan of dwarves are trying to come up from the deeps and have decided that the Meinvaldfjord is a good spot. Of course, the Ducklings have been trying to colonize it for as long as I can remember and they haven't taken too kindly to the Lurkalings — I believe they're called — building underhalls there." He shrugs as there's just not much humans can do about the political messes that stubborn dwarves wind up in. Fighting the earth-dwellers in their underhalls is possibly one of the stupidest things anyone could ever do. "That's about all I know from my contacts, sorry I can't say more. You know how dwarves are."
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That was part of his black market arms deal with the dwarves. He's providing sun-weapons to the Lurkalings that are fighting the Ducklings, isn't he?
 
KreenWarrior said:
Oh wait. Horra knows how to make weapons that are imbued with sunlight.

That wasn't a countermeasure for the troll. That was just a bonus.

That was part of his black market arms deal with the dwarves. He's providing sun-weapons to the Lurkalings that are fighting the Ducklings, isn't he?
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That makes perfect sense. After all why would a dwarf need humans to make weapons for them? Answer: Because they're infusing something into them that's deadly specifically to dwarves.
 
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Well, yeah, that'd do it then.

And if that's the case, the biggest bomb we can drop on his ass would be to sabotage this in order to buy time, and then bring warning to the Duckling Clan.

Huh, might even be an avenue we can explore to gain a strong connection with them. Certainly, having a good relationship with the Dwarves can do us nothing but good, given the shit they can whip out when they decide to put their backs to a project--and even disregarding that, having access to more exotic Metals could be priceless.

Good thing then that we're investigating the Blacksmith regardless, and we can probably infer this IC given what we already know if we can identify the shit they're working on.

Yeah, this plot line, I think we can potentially infer without needing to follow up on the suspected Dwarf, just based on what we observed with the Troll, but getting hard data on the Bandit ploy lets us attack on two fronts.
 
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Alectai said:
Well, yeah, that'd do it then.

And if that's the case, the biggest bomb we can drop on his ass would be to sabotage this. And then bring warning to the Duckling Clan.
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Sure, that hits him in the pocketbook...it doesn't give us legal sanction to take him out, though. Or at least it might not depending on the legalities of what he's doing there. Which doesn't mean we shouldn't do it, of course, but we still need to keep an eye out for proof of his crimes.

@Imperial Fister would him trading weapons to the invasive dwarves be illegal and worthy of an outlawing? It probably depends on whether the Norse in the area have an actual deal with the Ducklings for anything beyond trade and what the terms are, but it seems like that's something Halla actually might know.
 
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Alectai said:
God, is Horra really responsible for everything that goes wrong in this fucking valley?
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No, but he's smart enough to take advantage of them when they do
DeadmanwalkingXI said:
@Imperial Fister would him trading weapons to the invasive dwarves be illegal and worthy of an outlawing?
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Yes, it's a violation of the Ancestral Exchange, the deal forged long ago that serves to provide a way for dwarves and humanity to trade properly. Humans don't get involved with dwarf business in an organized fashion, dwarves don't get involved with human business in an organized fashion.
 
Imperial Fister said:
Yes, it's a violation of the Ancestral Exchange, the deal forged long ago that serves to provide a way for dwarves and humanity to trade properly. Humans don't get involved with dwarf business in an organized fashion, dwarves don't get involved with human business in an organized fashion.
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Excellent. We can work with that, especially if we convince the Ducklings first and bring them with us to convince the Headman. With the dwarves calling for his head for breach of that agreement he is fucked. Now we just need that proof.
 
DeadmanwalkingXI said:
Excellent. We can work with that, especially if we convince the Ducklings first and bring them with us to convince the Headman. With the dwarves calling for his head for breach of that agreement he is fucked. Now we just need that proof.
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Well, we need to have proof on both sides honesty. Which means getting stuck in with the Dwarf affairs without actually violating the rules ourselves.

We can certainly send a warning that "Hey, just letting you know, this dude is mass producing sun weapons, it might be for trolls but you should probably keep on your toes" and then it, you know, actually happening and they go "Tell us more."
 
Alectai said:
Well, we need to have proof on both sides honesty. Which means getting stuck in with the Dwarf affairs without actually violating the rules ourselves.
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We definitely need to talk with the Ducklings, but if they're getting attacked with sun-based weapons and we have proof of Horra selling them to a cloaked nonhuman figure of short stature, well, I think that's pretty good evidence. Besides which, if we convince the dwarves our evidence doesn't need to be quite as ironclad in terms of other humans, since they'll be the ones pushing for his outlawing and that gets into political and diplomatic concerns enough to overcome his kin-bond. We still need solid evidence, but it doesn't need to be quite as overwhelming if the dwarves are pushing for him to be punished.

Alectai said:
We can certainly send a warning that "Hey, just letting you know, this dude is mass producing sun weapons, it might be for trolls but you should probably keep on your toes" and then it, you know, actually happening and they go "Tell us more."
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I think this is ongoing, not new. If the Ducklings have already run into sun weapons, we just need to prove he's the one supplying them.
 
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Man, Hidden in Rags is paying massive dividends so far. A lot of what we're finding out right now would have been a massive pain to find out through other ways.
 
KreenWarrior said:
Also I'm not sure if svartalfar and dwarves are the same thing in quest.
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I enjoy my world building a little too much, sometimes, especially if there's a way to finagle *more* stuff into it.

Svartalfar, dwarves, and trolls are all descendants from a single species. They are to each other what Neanderthals and Denisovans are to us. Svartalfar look a lot more maggot-like than their near-surface dwelling kin.

And they all turn to stone when exposed to sunlight.
 
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two thoughts:
  • Trying to invoke our owl for our inner cultivation
  • Conveying the truth of inner cultivation via rune puzzles seems genre-appropriate and like the inherent obfuscation might help protect from the Enemy
 
mastigos said:
two thoughts:
  • Trying to invoke our owl for our inner cultivation
  • Conveying the truth of inner cultivation via rune puzzles seems genre-appropriate and like the inherent obfuscation might help protect from the Enemy
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Welllll
Shard said:
Having to speak to our friends in runic puzzles would be interesting.

For example:

"To my friends I speak to you of a grand secret hidden in plain sight,
In the soul, there is a gate to glory and death, of bloody sagas and madness.
To reveal it, two parts of three of word-glory must be woven together in thread,
Whereupon you shall gaze upon the Ginnungagap within where the bodiless reside,
To open it, all three must be woven together at once, but beware for three together,
Lets loose a secret trap made by those of Nid, ready to consume you from within,
To survive that trap within the soul, one alone suffices not, three at least must stand beside,
For beyond the tide of war-glory and word-madness, lies blood-feud ancient beyond reckoning."

"Halla, what the fuck, speak normally."
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Like I do in fact actually want this to happen cause it would be hilarious lol.

But I suspect we would need a higher level of obfuscation than this.
 
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