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Warhammer Fantasy: Divided Loyalties - an Advisor's Quest

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I am struggling to imagine what a few digits extra to our Ulric rolls and maybe some answered questions about the Cult would do, considering I can't remember a single time Mathilde has needed that nor have I seen a single plan saying we should try that.

I'm not opposed to number go up/just in case we need it purchases but not when we expect some large expenses in the immediate future.

DragonParadox said:
Ulthuan is both at the centre of a vast trading empire and all of its Kingdoms are richer than Belegar while also being older than all the nations of the Old World.
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So all we have to do is kill Malekith and then use protecter shenanigans to copy the library of Hoeth. Easy. We'll be the biggest library in no time. 😎
 
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[X] [LIBRARY] Back-fill: Social Sciences
[X] [LIBRARY] Library of Mournings: Medicine and Flora of the Reik Basin
[X] [LIBRARY] Library of Mournings: Medicine and Anatomy
[X] [COLLEGE] No purchase.
[X] [DWARF] No purchase.
[X] [PURCHASE] Ulric (Imperial Esoteric, 100 gc)
 
I want to talk about a concept in Librarianship known as "weeding". It means to go through your collection and remove any texts you don't need, usually to create more space for incoming books.

What gets weeded and how often it occurs varies based on the type of library—research libraries, particularly those in medicine, will periodically purge any academic textbook that is out of date and replace it with updated editions, whilst a public library might weed out unpopular books in favour of books that are attractive to their local community, but if they are underfunded it might not happen quickly enough to adjust to the changing needs of that community (for example, if there's a major demographic shift in the local area).

Essentially, maintaining a collection of books is an active process—you don't just fill a building to capacity and call it a day. It's something that happens continuously over the library's life span.

Now I don't know what the stance on weeding is in the Old World, but I suspect that due to the influence of Verena and Her cult, most libraries reject the concept weeding and instead attempt to horde as many books as possible. However, that is not always possible, because you need storage space, you need staff, and you need a lot of money to just constantly maintain your collection, let alone expand it.

Mathilde doesn't need to worry about any of that. She has infinite money, infinite space, and an eternal, undying librarian that can create as many bodies as it needs.

This means that over a long enough time period, KAU will become the greatest collection of knowledge in the world, simply because it is the only one that doesn't have resource limitations. It never needs to weed, it never needs to look at two different books and try to decide which is more important for its community and its mission, it just collects books indefinitely. Other libraries can't do that, and even if those libraries escape disaster, they will reach an equilibrium between their desire of new texts and their ability to maintain them, and will plateau and even stagnate.

Kron-Azril-Ungol is the only library in the world that doesn't have a growth cap, and in a world where knowledge equals wealth, status and prestige, that makes it a massive threat to nearly every organisation on the planet. It is an all devouring beast who's hunger for knowledge can not be sated, no matter how much it is fed.

It is the Archive of the Silvery Depths, the treasures it holds is more valuable than the gromril once hewn from its halls.
 
[X] [LIBRARY] Back-fill: Social Sciences
[X] [LIBRARY] Library of Mournings: Medicine and Flora of the Reik Basin
[X] [LIBRARY] Library of Mournings: Medicine and Anatomy
[X] [COLLEGE] No purchase.
[X] [DWARF] No purchase.
[X] [PURCHASE] Ulric (Imperial Esoteric, 100 gc)
 
ChronOblivion said:
I really don't think the two book points matters at all, it isn't important in the first place, so I'm not defining my plans based on what gets them. And yeah, my entire issue is that we spent insane amounts of cash on books for increasingly miniscule bonuses on a single digit number of tangential rolls. There are other things to spend money on, I entirely approved of buying top quality lab equipment and lush accomodations when we were setting up the Project, that had direct relevance to our Core goals. There are plenty of situations where spending cash made obstacles go away, and buying even more books are a crazy inefficient method of doing that. We have like 800 left.
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I don't see a pressing need in the Project for hundreds more gc spent in the short term, do you? I think we're in a comfortable enough spot that we don't need to save up money 'just in case of an emergency', or in the case of some other people's opinions, in case we find something cool to buy in Lothern. Again, if we feel like we're short on money we can just take the EIC ithilmar action that we have available to us.

As for buying Ulric books out of pocket being "crazy inefficient", I want to point out we only have three options available to us:
  1. We buy them out-of-pocket via Ulrikadrin. This is only 100 gc.
  2. We use our giant library budget solely on Ulric books, when 'normally' the budget covers around ~1500 gc (Barak Varr books, as a reference). This is essentially asking Belegar to save us up 100 gc.
  3. Get an agreement with the Cult of Ulric and then copy those books with our scribes. 0 gc, but it would take a whole two whole actions, which are infinitely more valuable than any monetary amount. It's hard to justify pushing for that only on the basis of Ulric books.
    1. Alternatively, try to get an agreement with the Collegium Theologica - it's an Ulrican institution, so it miiight have the holiest of Ulric's books, though not guaranteed. At least for this you'd be able to justify it by saying we'd get a lot more than just Ulric books, and hopefully not much overlap with the University of Nuln.
We get 220 gc a turn already from the EIC, which is probably about to see an increase from the Black Water opening up. 100 gc every few turns is nothing. I really don't see a reason to worry about it.

MrHobbit said:
While updating the map, I was looking at the options that Thorgrim would have to retake, if they reclaim Mount Silverspear. I can see several options for the Karaz Ankor: Karak Drazh, Karak Ungor, and Mount Gunbad. The Bokha Palace Accords gives Thorgrim a way to call in Kislev and the Empire to help him retake Karaks.
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I'm not sure the Karaz Ankor has a large enough population to really sustain many more dwarfholds beyond Mount Silverspear. Maaaybe Karak Drazh, given its location and connection to Karak Eight Peaks? It would be nice of K8P didn't have to worry about the orcs that brought about Waaagh Birdmuncha, and it would strengthen Thorgrim's plans of ensuring the World's Edge is safer for traders and for the human nations in general.

If there's a surviving royal family and brave individuals willing to risk it, it might happen a few decades from now. But I can't see it happening soon, not while Mount Silverspear's plans aren't fully set in stone yet.
 
Parabola said:
If there's a surviving royal family and brave individuals willing to risk it, it might happen a few decades from now. But I can't see it happening soon, not while Mount Silverspear's plans aren't fully set in stone yet.
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They had supported the Karag Dum expedition I think, is the reason Boney gave for why they didn't help with the K8P expedition.
 
Nerdasaurus Rex said:
I want to talk about a concept in Librarianship known as "weeding". It means to go through your collection and remove any texts you don't need, usually to create more space for incoming books.

What gets weeded and how often it occurs varies based on the type of library—research libraries, particularly those in medicine, will periodically purge any academic textbook that is out of date and replace it with updated editions, whilst a public library might weed out unpopular books in favour of books that are attractive to their local community, but if they are underfunded it might not happen quickly enough to adjust to the changing needs of that community (for example, if there's a major demographic shift in the local area).

Essentially, maintaining a collection of books is an active process—you don't just fill a building to capacity and call it a day. It's something that happens continuously over the library's life span.

Now I don't know what the stance on weeding is in the Old World, but I suspect that due to the influence of Verena and Her cult, most libraries reject the concept weeding and instead attempt to horde as many books as possible. However, that is not always possible, because you need storage space, you need staff, and you need a lot of money to just constantly maintain your collection, let alone expand it.

Mathilde doesn't need to worry about any of that. She has infinite money, infinite space, and an eternal, undying librarian that can create as many bodies as it needs.

This means that over a long enough time period, KAU will become the greatest collection of knowledge in the world, simply because it is the only one that doesn't have resource limitations. It never needs to weed, it never needs to look at two different books and try to decide which is more important for its community and its mission, it just collects books indefinitely. Other libraries can't do that, and even if those libraries escape disaster, they will reach an equilibrium between their desire of new texts and their ability to maintain them, and will plateau and even stagnate.

Kron-Azril-Ungol is the only library in the world that doesn't have a growth cap, and in a world where knowledge equals wealth, status and prestige, that makes it a massive threat to nearly every organisation on the planet. It is an all devouring beast who's hunger for knowledge can not be sated, no matter how much it is fed.

It is the Archive of the Silvery Depths, the treasures it holds is more valuable than the gromril once hewn from its halls.
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Actually we do have a cap, how much Belegar is able to spend and while that limit is very, very high by human standards, it is only moderately impressive by the standards of dwarfs, elves or Cathay (maybe places in Ind and Nipon too we do not know enough about them to judge). I realize this is not going to win me votes since I am arguing that the Cool Thing is less cool than generally assumed rather than trying to drum up excitement for another Cool Thing, but I feel this is getting hyperbolic enough to be worth the counter. We do not have control of the most resources ever put at the disposal of a library, we just have a very large amount by any reasonable standard and a willingness to grab from sources that have never been collated before. Mathilde's xenophilia and willingness to grab from any source is at least as relevant as the wealth put at the disposal of the library IMO.
 
DragonParadox said:
Actually we do have a cap, how much Belegar is able to spend and while that limit is very, very high by human standards, it is only moderately impressive by the standards of dwarfs, elves or Cathay (maybe places in Ind and Nipon too we do not know enough about them to judge). I realize this is not going to win me votes since I am arguing that the Cool Thing is less cool than generally assumed rather than trying to drum up excitement for another Cool Thing, but I feel this is getting hyperbolic enough to be worth the counter. We do not have control of the most resources ever put at the disposal of a library, we just have a very large amount by any reasonable standard and a willingness to grab from sources that have never been collated before. Mathilde's xenophilia and willingness to grab from any source is at least as relevant as the wealth put at the disposal of the library IMO.
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And, to be fair to the elves, they've probably been motivated to collect knowledge from Cathay, Ind, Nippon, Khuresh and Araby for millennia, and since Finubar re-established contact with the Old World, from humans there for centuries. Add on what survive of dwarven texts from the Golden Age, and the elven libraries could be enormous.

They may also have magic to help with indexing and conservation.
 
Parabola said:
I'm not sure the Karaz Ankor has a large enough population to really sustain many more dwarfholds beyond Mount Silverspear.
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The only reason Mount Silverspear has a chance of success is because Thorgrim is doing everything in his power to depopulate the minor holds in the Vaults in order to repopulate the minor holds on the Silver Road. It's an impressive piece of slight of hand—shuffling dwarves around to expand the breadth of the dwarven empire—but it's not the sort of trick that can be easily repeated.
 
Alratan said:
And, to be fair to the elves, they've probably been motivated to collect knowledge from Cathay, Ind, Nippon, Khuresh and Araby for millennia, and since Finubar re-established contact with the Old World, from humans there for centuries. Add on what survive of dwarven texts from the Golden Age, and the elven libraries could be enormous.

They may also have magic to help with indexing and conservation.
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Maybe, on the one hand yes the High Elves are a global trading power with vast wealth, if anyone would have access to most of the books in the world if would be them, on the other hand their default stance on most lore seems to be that they do it best. Eltharion is unusual for believing that non-elven Waystone knowledge would be relevant for instance. I'm not sure how much they would have sought out foreign books.

And the end of the day I think the scale falls somewhere in the middle, they do not have as many books as they could have because they did not specifically seek them out every time, but they stil have a lot due to age, wealth and positioning.
 
[X] [LIBRARY] Back-fill: Social Sciences
[X] [COLLEGE] No purchase.
[X] [DWARF] No purchase.
[X] [PURCHASE] Ulric (Imperial Esoteric, 100 gc)
 
Nerdasaurus Rex said:
The only reason Mount Silverspear has a chance of success is because Thorgrim is doing everything in his power to depopulate the minor holds in the Vaults in order to repopulate the minor holds on the Silver Road. It's an impressive piece of slight of hand—shuffling dwarves around to expand the breadth of the dwarven empire—but it's not the sort of trick that can be easily repeated.
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It's also the absolutely correct choice if the campaign is a success. If the dwarfs can hold mount silverspear then kak is suddenly much safer, which in effect let's the quite vast army of kak do many more expeditionary campaigns to reinforce other holds or allies.
Currently kaks army stays in kak to protect it against any waaagh that could roll up the silver road, if that is no longer the case, well suddenly the giant isn't chained down anymore.
 
On the other hand, they could follow K8P's example and invite Undumgi to live with them. That way they need fewer dwarves to make a functional Karak.
 
[X] [LIBRARY] Back-fill: Social science

MrHobbit said:
While updating the map, I was looking at the options that Thorgrim would have to retake, if they reclaim Mount Silverspear. I can see several options for the Karaz Ankor: Karak Drazh, Karak Ungor, and Mount Gunbad. The Bokha Palace Accords gives Thorgrim a way to call in Kislev and the Empire to help him retake Karaks.

The Empire and Kislev would best be able to help any reclamation effort in Karak Ungor. It would help secure a large swathe of their borders, Peak Pass, and put a fortress near Karak Vlag. Ungor was also the first Karak to fall in the Time of Woes, and would provide a huge morale boost. Karak Drazh was the third largest Karak before the Time of Woes and it would be a simple matter for Karaz-a-Karak, Karak Eight Peaks, Karak Azul, and Barak Varr to deploy soldiers to help retake it. Retaking it would secure Death Pass. Mount Gunbad was a fabulously wealthy mine and would further secure the Silver Road. But it would probably be the hardest to deploy soldiers too.

Though at soonest this all is like, sixty years out into the future. It'll take a long time to retake Mount Silverspear and more time besides to build up the strength to retake another one. Even if you count in assistance called upon by the Bokha Palace Accords.

It's funny. Mathilde gave Thorgrim a third victory without really knowing that it helped Thorgrim's goals and while Thorgrim had absolutely zero idea that Mathilde was about to do anything like that. You have Karak Eight Peaks, Karak Vlag, and now the Bohka Palace Accords provide a template for his League of Nations.
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Hunh, That is an interesting observation. To Thorgrim, a League of Nations would be a lovely tool for protecting the Karaz Ankor. To Mathilde, it's one that could preserve and expand the network that all rely on to survive; They're both looking to build a stronger international cooperation, if for different reasons. Even Laurelorn has a side on that, since we've heard some of their own bring the perspective that the alliance with the Middenland and the Empire at large could become a strong defensive depth.

And, of course, now you have Tzar Boris to bring a new perspective to that same goal: Looking to rebuild Kislev, after having a notable example of what even a little international cooperation can bring to to table.

It feels like it bodes well if everyone in the region has a strong idea of what they can get, long term, out of a lasting and strong alliance.

EDIT: I realize the prospect of a new Everchosen is probably going to make those advantages even more pointed, but such a prospect is also a pretty short term. "Why it benefits us all to stand together now" vs "Why it benefits us all to stand together for the next few centuries."
 
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DragonParadox said:
Maybe, on the one hand yes the High Elves are a global trading power with vast wealth, if anyone would have access to most of the books in the world if would be them, on the other hand their default stance on most lore seems to be that they do it best. Eltharion is unusual for believing that non-elven Waystone knowledge would be relevant for instance. I'm not sure how much they would have sought out foreign books.

And the end of the day I think the scale falls somewhere in the middle, they do not have as many books as they could have because they did not specifically seek them out every time, but they stil have a lot due to age, wealth and positioning.
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The counterpoint is that their librarians have a quasi-religious obligation to gather knowledge; and that this isn't restricted to knowledge produced by elves. Now, they may not read the books produced by younger races, but I think they'd archive it for posterity…
 
Alratan said:
The counterpoint is that their librarians have a quasi-religious obligation to gather knowledge; and that this isn't restricted to knowledge produced by elves. Now, they may not read the books produced by younger races, but I think they'd archive it for posterity…
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Gathering books and not reading them would be odd, the priests of Hoeth worship knowledge not the physical form of books, if they think knowledge is worth preserving they'd probably read it, if they think it isn't because humans are stinky or something they would not. There might be a legitimate theological debate between different factions in the White Tower over this.
 
Ompa60 said:
On the other hand, they could follow K8P's example and invite Undumgi to live with them. That way they need fewer dwarves to make a functional Karak.
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Boney has said before that K8P's physical makeup makes that a much easier prospect than other Karaks- they could just say 'all the humans live in Karag Nar, we get the other 7', and the fact that Nar was the Karag for outsiders in olden days even makes it traditional.

They'll have a much harder time when it's more like 'okay, the manlings get floors 12 through 16' and are actively living alongside them.
 
Parabola said:
I'm not sure the Karaz Ankor has a large enough population to really sustain many more dwarfholds beyond Mount Silverspear. Maaaybe Karak Drazh, given its location and connection to Karak Eight Peaks? It would be nice of K8P didn't have to worry about the orcs that brought about Waaagh Birdmuncha, and it would strengthen Thorgrim's plans of ensuring the World's Edge is safer for traders and for the human nations in general.

If there's a surviving royal family and brave individuals willing to risk it, it might happen a few decades from now. But I can't see it happening soon, not while Mount Silverspear's plans aren't fully set in stone yet.
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That's why I said I don't think it will happen for sixty years at minimum. :V

Boney mentioned it would be able thirty years until the Karaz Ankor had repopulated to the extent that it can afford to retake another Karak. But I can't find the quote. I believe it was said before Thorgrim revealed the Eyes of Grimnir and announced the commencement of the Second Silver Road Wars. @picklepikkl do you recall it?

It's interesting. I believe that Mount Gunbad would be the most difficult to move the troops to. Karak Drazh is probably the easiest for the Karaz Ankor to move the troops to. The rivers and location put Drazh in a place that is easily accessible to its military forces. However, Karak Ungor is a lot more open for Kislev and the Empire to assist.

Thorgrim is surely making plans for it though. It'd be bad if he wasn't making plans for that. Making a League of Nations is great, but the League needs to be used for other goals too. It can't be the end goal in and of itself. The end goal would be the restoration of the Karaz Ankor.

Nerdasaurus Rex said:
The only reason Mount Silverspear has a chance of success is because Thorgrim is doing everything in his power to depopulate the minor holds in the Vaults in order to repopulate the minor holds on the Silver Road. It's an impressive piece of slight of hand—shuffling dwarves around to expand the breadth of the dwarven empire—but it's not the sort of trick that can be easily repeated.
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It's mostly because of the Eyes of Grimnir. I want to say that Boney mentioned it would take the Karaz Ankor thirty years to recover to colonize another Karak, but I can't find where that was said. It's something that would only take time to repeat.

The Phoenixian said:
Hunh, That is an interesting observation.
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You have no idea how pleased I am that someone commented on the League of Nations part. I agree that it is interesting how everyone sees it differently.

Alratan said:
The counterpoint is that their librarians have a quasi-religious obligation to gather knowledge; and that this isn't restricted to knowledge produced by elves. Now, they may not read the books produced by younger races, but I think they'd archive it for posterity…
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They would definitely do both. Boney mentioned that Ulthuan wouldn't be an empire if they weren't interested in extracting knowledge from other cultures.

Mopman43 said:
They'll have a much harder time when it's more like 'okay, the manlings get floors 12 through 16' and are actively living alongside them.
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The League of Nations at least should make it easier to justify the deployment of soldiers to assist in reconquests. Assuming that Thorgrim would be open to that anways in sixty or so years.
 
The Phoenixian said:
EDIT: I realize the prospect of a new Everchosen is probably going to make those advantages even more pointed, but such a prospect is also a pretty short term. "Why it benefits us all to stand together now" vs "Why it benefits us all to stand together for the next few centuries."
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It should be noted there are never going to not be Everchosen. If we beat this one the next few centuries are almost guaranteed to bring another one. I mean Kull was less than two centuries ago. An Everchosen is always a reason to unite, it's just that some people *cough*humans*cough* forget too quickly.
 
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