I think a meeting with the Sons of Skavor is desperately needed. Not only have they been done dirty by Gazul, but their object of veneration is critically vulnerable to being fed to the Tower. Skavor is right there, body and soul, pre-packaged for easy consumption. Breaking into the Underearth is just going to give the Tower more energy to schlorp up, and the Sons of Skavor will be facing an angry Gazul one way and a hungering Princeps the other.
As for things being different than Divided Loyalties, that's one of the big open series questions for me, especially since this quest was inspired by it and the whole crux is one of the major original revelations from DL. It'd kinda spoil alot of things if it was listed, but maybe I missed a post somewhere?
Yes, it protects against magic. Specifically on tabletop it adds +2 to all attempts to dispel magic. It's a rune that aids countering hostile spells and such not buffing resistance.
The only reason the Chaos Dwarf Daemonsmiths suffer the Curse of Stone is because they make active use of the Winds of Magic in ways outside of Rune Magic, channeling the magic through their own bodies the same way elves, humans and other races do to use magic. It's the act of channeling magic that causes their bodies to slowly turn to stone, not mere exposure.
The idea that the rune is needed to keep dwarves from turning into statues simply from exposure to ambient magic is a Divided Loyalties thing only and you shouldn't expect to see it in other quests.
Yes, it protects against magic. Specifically on tabletop it adds +2 to all attempts to dispel magic. It's a rune that aids countering hostile spells and such not buffing resistance.
You're talking about the Master Rune of Valaya, a Battle Standard Rune. Which is different from the Ancestor Rune of Valaya she also made. Neither of which is the Rune of Spellbreaking, something she worked on with Grimnir.
And none of the three match the criteria of "protecting underground shelters" and just preparing the Dwarfs as a people from the coming of Chaos.
I think a meeting with the Sons of Skavor is desperately needed. Not only have they been done dirty by Gazul, but their object of veneration is critically vulnerable to being fed to the Tower. Skavor is right there
Seconded. I will correct my vote to make "Morr's offer" more explicit, although I think that even without specifying this it goes into the same direction.
[X] Comforting lies, and some blackmail.
-[X] Offer to lay the 'rejected by Ghazul' within Morr's gardens
Of course we have to secure the Roost and prevent it from being devoured... Although we wouldn't even need to worry if Skavor has already passed away in Morr's realm when the Tower/banquet explodes.
So Skavor and his dwarves existed in WHF before this quest, and the resulting race after Tylos/Kavzar are the Skaven? Hmm...
While I am ordinarily fond of the Dawi, both this dilemma and the history lesson highlight their worst traits.
If Karaz Ankor marshalled its strength and marched on Tylos, they would break it and the nascent abomination godling.
But they won't. There is not enough time and they are too busy with their world war.
Instead, we would get an army from the local holds trying to serve as the executioner for the Sons of Skavor, which would not be enough to topple the Tower, but would instead prove a hearty meal for the future Horned Rat.
Better to convince Sons of Skavor to skiddadle once again.
Good idea, but I thought we would already be in the lead. If someone adds a sub-option, it should be counted with the main vote, right? I thought it was like this for all votes and options in general...
If the tally is read by a human being
but since we are in the age of ChatGPT and automation, I will modify my vote regardless
Skavor really is Magnis the Red as a dwarf isn't he?
Well I am sucker for a non-conformist nerd and I agree that an attack by the mountain dwarfs would end up benefiting the Future Rat God.
[X] Comforting lies, and some blackmail.
All's well as you're led out of the Prince Stonehammer's rooms. One lie, and countless lives saved. No war yet, but to allow the blasphemies below uncontested. Well, not quite. As you walk back to the Roost, you send a message by the illusory telegraph. A raven pecking at Skavor petrified until stone cracked and flesh bleed anew. Two words – I KNOW. All you need to say.
The next day, a Dwarf with emeralds for eyes and one stone leg delivers a letter – next week, in Elftown: neutral ground. Good enough. You have a meeting with Fafnir Fogfather.
~
Rosamunde also delivers her report that morning.
"You ask, Lord Raven for my accounting of Summerland, the district of the Brotherhood of Moulder. I will give you three things I saw – a street, a service, and a secret.
The scene for the first - the third circle of that District, Pomona. One of many glasshouse-plantations, stuffed thick with blood orange trees. Too ripe; the magic's gone awry. The harvest's meant to be twice a day; noon and sunset, the winds of life and death forcing bloom-fruit-wilt-bloom, nature overclocked. But it's going continuous now, the oranges made and then falling, rotting as they do, splat, splat, splat. The slaves are knee high in purulent pulp, tripping, falling, drowning. A fly enters, attracted by the slaughter – the magic catches, it falls down dead and from it two maggots who leap and fly and die again and again until there are twelve thousand maggots swimming in the crimson sludge, with the screaming slaves. Hark! A brother, in his grey-green robes, identical to all others. This one is young, a mere acolyte – not yet bald, limp corn-husk hair. He raises a hand to the glass – does not dare enter. A noise like a glass saw cutting flesh; a flash of violet – all is silent. Within the greenhouse, all the trees are dead – black wood, no leaves, standing corpses. All the fruit has gone to dust; no maggots writhe but the floor is black with the insect dead. And the slaves? Old, where they were not – bent women and grey men, pitifully crying. The Brother's hair has regained its shine; he's now halfway to a child. Humming, he wanders off, calling for a replacement shift.
The blight's getting worse, so the grapevine says. Three, ten – perhaps a hundred tomorrow? Better to buy before the Brotherhood breaks.
The cast for the second – a friend of yours. The Lady Tophania I did spy at the Flora, the Circle Sixth. She was speaking to another brother, this one very old. Liver-spotted, nearly blind, he shivered as he spoke. "The same for the boy?" he whispered close. "Double, in fact," said the Elf "the visions are worse and worse". "Truly?" says the old man "the Gods never reward the faithful. The age of miracles is long past." He hands over twelve sea-green pills. On each a rune of sorts – a harp, a key, a lightning bolt. I am no herbalist, Holy One, but I can recognize mandrake root – bottled sleep, but for the cost of bad dreams (or visions of the Daemon Realm, if old wives can be believed).
I asked a friend of a friend of a friend, and they told me the lady Tophania takes no cures, eats little, sleeps less. A gift, one must presume, but to whom?
The reason for the third – I was hungry. With all the advertisements for the bloody Minotaur steaks, I wanted to try one for myself. Have no fear – it was not coin from your purse nor mine for which I planned to pay. Meat in the Cities is new, I think – half the reasons for the colonies in Stalia is to give us our pound (or ton) of flesh. So, I was curious indeed, where, why, how – street meat, in the Seventh Circle.
Fecundita is silent as a tomb. Devoted to the personal projects of the Eldest Brothers, one wanders through a thick hedge-maze. Left and right and up and down, stairs and dead ends and all number of thorns and brambles to snare the unwary. Only the worthy are shown the path, and, as always, virtue comes with coin. Buy a voucher for the steaks, know the path – left, left, right, clamber down the well with the hidden ladder, right, left, then the second right past the moonflowers. A wrought iron door – the only metal I had seen. Beyond it, a banging, muffled, but incessant, between each, just a second of quiet where you might think you'd heard a scream. I knocked, one-two-three, in rhythm with the unseen. A creak of the door; a disgusting man. Stained black robes with blood and pus, froggy eyes deep set over a snub, endlessly sniffling nose, a thin lipped smile with twice two many teeth. Beside him, a wife, a paramour? I did not think the Brothers had lovers. But he introduces himself as Symeon Barbarian, and his partner (?) as Lacey. She's a strange one – pretty, I thought; delicate, pale skin, eyes of forest green – but in such old-fashioned dress; veil upon veil upon gauzy gown, a mass of silk and muslin so thick you might swear she had wings underneath.
There are apologies immediately, snivelling for the recall. A note of minor error in production, soon resolved – some strange magical jargon "illegitimate extra-epistemic interference of the livestock". I ask to see the production – his smile goes maniac. Lacey buries her head in a scarf – weeping? "Too harsh by half" Symeon says, which is how I'd describe his smell "for a lady to see". He moves to another door, this one of gromril, above which says "ABBATOIR". "A moment" he says, with a flick of a hand, and vines appear from within his robes. Like tentacles, they flap around him, licking up the blood like a bouquet of tongues. Sated, they push the door open a crack, and he hums as he wanders into the murk. For a moment, the banging is clear – and then, Symeon's voice, even louder than that "SHUT UP!". The banging stops. Lacey, in the corner, winces, and drops something – a green marble rolls to my feet. I pick it up – it's sickly cold to the touch. Before I can ask, Symeon comes back, a bloody package in his hands. Wiping the snot from his dripping nose, he hands it over – ten pounds of steak, red and raw, marbled with yellow-white fat that almost seems to wriggle in the corner of your eye. The stench was making me nearly vomit; I cannot think the Lords and Ladies who eat such things have any knowledge from which it comes. But that's not different to everything else – all forging is cooled by sweat.
The ball, by-the-by, was gone from my pocket when I next looked. I checked my pockets true and there was nothing of the sort. Worse, the meat was already bad - in the moist flesh mottled like a bruise, covered in the white fluff of mold, in the most curious pattern:
Methinks in Moulder there may be more than men."
AN: I have passed through the vale of finals and emerged out the other side. A short update as I get back into the rhythm of it, but updates shall hopefully be returning to their previous frequency.
This one is young, a mere acolyte – not yet bald, limp corn-husk hair. He raises a hand to the glass – does not dare enter. A noise like a glass saw cutting flesh; a flash of violet – all is silent. Within the greenhouse, all the trees are dead – black wood, no leaves, standing corpses. All the fruit has gone to dust; no maggots writhe but the floor is black with the insect dead. And the slaves? Old, where they were not – bent women and grey men, pitifully crying. The Brother's hair has regained its shine; he's now halfway to a child. Humming, he wanders off, calling for a replacement shift.
She's a strange one – pretty, I thought; delicate, pale skin, eyes of forest green – but in such old-fashioned dress; veil upon veil upon gauzy gown, a mass of silk and muslin so thick you might swear she had wings underneath.
Five bucks say she does. Which also means they don't just harvest from Beastmen: They know about the scale between humans, mutants, and Beastmen, and they do not care. It's like something out of Texan Chainsaw Massacre or Ravenous: The Carnism of society eventually turns to consuming the people. And being very sexist at the same time.
Before I can ask, Symeon comes back, a bloody package in his hands. Wiping the snot from his dripping nose, he hands it over – ten pounds of steak, red and raw, marbled with yellow-white fat that almost seems to wriggle in the corner of your eye. The stench was making me nearly vomit; I cannot think the Lords and Ladies who eat such things have any knowledge from which it comes. But that's not different to everything else – all forging is cooled by sweat.
The ball, by-the-by, was gone from my pocket when I next looked. I checked my pockets true and there was nothing of the sort. Worse, the meat was already bad - in the moist flesh mottled like a bruise, covered in the white fluff of mold, in the most curious pattern:
While you owe it to yourself to look into the politics of meat, the effects of the meat-packing industry, and how creatives have used those horrors to create some of the best media out there, there is a short version:
The Skaven's rampant cannibalism, sexism, and insatiable hunger for any kind of sustenance even if it's spoiled or contaminated, begins here. The city is eating Chaos-Corrupted meat. And the Beastmen have either been sourced from over the mountains, through trade with Morathi's Chaos Cultist Elves, or from underneath the city where the head priest we met and executed once was.
The Horned Rat is a Chaos God, but this is Fantasy, not 40k. Chaos is more than the Four, this is a very polytheistic setting.
That being said, Clan Pestilens are a bunch of Rats who got so sick they flirted with being Nurgle before getting brought back under The Horned Rat's domain. Rot and Ruin, instead of Decay and Disease.
So I'm not surprised that the Brotherhood is Nurgle-influenced yet not outright consumed by Grandfather.
@Graf Tzarogy what does xenophon know about the origins of the brotherhood of moulder? Seems like a very unique organization to tylos. Also who has oversight over them from the government?
I mean, there was no secret as to where the Minotaur Steaks come from. They are very upfront about the fact that you are eating Chaos-Infused flesh, because Chaos is what makes Minotaurs in the first place. What's weird is that they are going after minotaurs in the first place instead of normal livestock, really.
