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Warhammer Fantasy: Divided Loyalties - an Advisor's Quest

Voted best in category in the Users' Choice awards.
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chocolote12 said:
"What would we call the Tzar but for the other ethnicity in Kislev?"
. "Uh, Tzar but backwards?"
"No, that's too obvious."
. "Flip half of it and toss an apostrophe in. And take out the T."
"You're a genius."

( :V ?)
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Y'know, that's exactly the kind of laziness thing I could see GW doing. Either that or something even dumber. My own pet theory before you came along was:
"What should we call the ruler of Praag?"
"Well they're near the Chaos Wastes right? And Kislev call Chaos the Za, we should base the name off that."
"We could come up with some sort of etymology with some amount of thought behind it… or we could just throw in an apostrophe and a random letter in the middle of it. Let's do that for now and we'll come up with something better later."
And they never did.
Prospalz said:
You probably should be looking at the central Asian languages, like Kazahstan, the seven or so other -stans, Mongolia, etc. That said, with a three letter word, you might find absolutely nothing anyway.
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I've just followed your advice and ran every major language of Central Asia listed on Wikipedia and was also available on Google Translate and unfortunately nothing, the closest results where "Z'ra" translating into "Because" in Turkmen and "Why?" in Uzbek. There were other languages used in Central Asia according to Wikipedia but they weren't available on Google Translate.
 
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NexusEye said:
I've just followed your advice and ran every major language of Central Asia listed on Wikipedia and was also available on GoogleTtranslate and unfortunately nothing, the closest results where "Z'ra" translating into "Because" in Turkmen and "Why?" in Uzbek. There were other languages used in Central Asia according to Wikipedia but they weren't available on Google Translate.
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I...

You did a bunch of actual research here on the question of why a ruler might be called a Z'ra and the literal best answer the Internet gave you was "Why? Because."

That was hilarious. Thank you.
 
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NexusEye said:
On an unrelated note from the vote, does anybody know why the ruler of Praag is called "Z'ra"? I've tried plugging it into Google Translate through Detect Language, Russian, Ukrainian, Belarusian, Polish, and Czech and found no results. Wiktionary doesn't seem to have an entry for Z'ra, googling for Z'ra gets me nowhere, and putting in "Z'ra" in quotatation marks alongside the keyword ruler just shows Praag's wiki entry as the first result. It seems to be an invention of Warhammer rather than a real word but I don't know why they picked Z'ra instead of something else, was it derived from some word in one of the Eastern European languages they stuck in a blender to make Kislevarin or did they just make something up from some random letters and call it a day?
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Maybe it's from Hungarian. Z(ana)ra.

Are the Ungols known for selecting their leadership for their musical talents? :V
 
storryeater said:
People in poorest areas, where survival is fraught, tend to birth more progeny so that at least some will make it to adulthood. That ironically means that atrocious living conditions can lead into overpopulation.
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You are thinking of the modern world where there is healthcare and relative safety even in the poorest areas. Until the middle of the 19th centuriy our cities here on Earth were population sinks, no demons, no evil magic. More people died than were born in cities and they only survived due to constant immigration from the countryside
 
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I'm here late and confused why
[X] River Gate and Northeastern Kislev
Doesn't have more votes. The Tzar is our ally, who we will continue to deal with long into the future. What's the argument that the Z'ra is more important?

I suppose I buy the argument that changing the minds of the people is more impactful, but changing the opinions of the citizens of Praag is not really a focus of ours.

[X] Karlsbridge and Old Town
 
Neablis said:
I'm here late and confused why
[X] River Gate and Northeastern Kislev
Doesn't have more votes. The Tzar is our ally, who we will continue to deal with long into the future. What's the argument that the Z'ra is more important?
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The argument is if the Tzar loved us anymore he would adopt us and that would be awkward. :V

Seriously though we do not need to seek Boris' favor and that is a suboptimal use of these stones.
 
I haven't read most of the comments, but here's my reasoning:

The first Waystone should be in a defensible position and should seem like a unquestionably positive thing to the Z'ra. Every other useful spot will quickly get its own Waystone after that.

[] Karlsbridge and Old Town (Edit: After reading various arguments I have decided not to vote any option over any other for now).

The richer population is also the population that the Z'ra cares most about. If he cared all that much about the denizens of New Town then New Town wouldn't be populated by anyone he cared about anymore. I mean, what kind of person decides to move to Praag from the countryside (or from another city) and then ends up settling in New Town? What kind of person starts a family there? What kind of multi-generational family thrives and survives there? Whatever you say about them, they are definitely not the kinds of citizens that anyone with any levers of power to pull gives a damn about. Except maybe for rich Chaos Cultists and those who have business deals with them.

The Water Gate option would be pandering to someone who is already more than happy with us. Otherwise I'd be approval voting for it too.

And the temple of Dhaz/graveyard location is nice enough, but doesn't have as much going for it IMO. Prioritizing holy sites is not a message I care overly much about and it doesn't seem to be in the lead when it comes to gaining vital support, maximizing lives saved, triaging the worst spots or having the highest anti-Chaos impact.



@Boney Do our two Waystone Colleagues have any opinions or comments on the four options? I'm curious even if they aren't the kinds of concrete opinions that would sway Mathilde towards a specifc option.
 
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Rafin said:
I haven't read most of the comments, but here's my reasoning:

The first Waystone should be in a defensible position and should seem like a unquestionably positive thing to the Z'ra. Every other useful spot will quickly get its own Waystone after that.

[X] Karlsbridge and Old Town

The richer population is also the population that the Z'ra cares most about. If he cared all that much about the denizens of New Town then New Town wouldn't be populated by anyone he cared about anymore. I mean, what kind of person decides to move to Praag from the countryside (or from another city) and then ends up settling in New Town? What kind of person starts a family there? What kind of multi-generational family thrives and survives there? Whatever you say about them, they are definitely not the kinds of citizens that anyone with any levers of power to pull gives a damn about. Except maybe for rich Chaos Cultists and those who have business deals with them.

The Water Gate option would be pandering to someone who is already more than happy with us. Otherwise I'd be approval voting for it too.

And the temple of Dhaz/graveyard location is nice enough, but doesn't have as much going for it IMO. Prioritizing holy sites is not a message I care overly much about and it doesn't seem to be in the lead when it comes to gaining vital support, maximizing lives saved, triaging the worst spots or having the highest anti-Chaos impact.



@Boney Do our two Waystone Colleagues have any opinions or comments on the four options? I'm curious even if they aren't the kinds of concrete opinions that would sway Mathilde towards a specifc option.
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New town is the one that's called out as the most defensive in the text, here

Boney said:
Situated at the heart of Old Town and in the shadow of the Citadel of Praag, a Waystone placed here will be safe from retaliation by any thinking servants of Chaos that might be found within Praag
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Neablis said:
On the other hand it would be nice to be able to ask for an army and get it no questions asked.
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Does not matter how much he loves us Kislev does not have that kind of power projection. Vlad might have done that for someone he liked, but only because Vlad was an idiot.
 
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@Boney it's been stated that having a significant overdensity of waystones is useful for draining corruption out of places faster, but once they're uncorrupted is having that many waystone in one place useful? Or would you just move most of them to another location once the process is over?
Is it even proper to assume there is an end 'uncorrupted' state?
 
[] Karlsbridge and Old Town

I figure that immediately obvious benefits will get more people onboard than if we have to explain why the Chaos related chaos that ensues is actually a good thing.

Changed my mind later
[X] Bridge of Death and New Town
 
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Hydroplatypus said:
[x] Karlsbridge and Old Town

I figure that immediately obvious benefits will get more people onboard than if we have to explain why the Chaos related chaos that ensues is actually a good thing.
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I know this might just be a figure of speech, but I have seen this sentiment several times so I thought I'd answer it here. We will not be doing anything, we have no earthly clue what the Z'ra is planning or how he aims to sell it to his people, Mathilde does not even speak the language. All we do know is that this guy who lives in Praag and deals with the people on a daily basis wants the stone in New Town.
 
[x] Karlsbridge and Old Town

After some consideration, I'm changing my vote. I think I prefer the idea of the history books cementing the first waystone as being very close to both the Magnus Garden and the Fire Spire. That would be a strong statement for future generations.
 
thisisinsane said:
Way stones are infrastructure. You build where it is valuable to build and to consolidate your gains, not as a beach head. At least, not with this model.

[x] River Gate and Northeastern Kislev
[x] Karlsbridge and Old Town
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In the chapter where we first see the whole Waystone, Mathilde explicitly describes it as designed to be deployed in beachheads. As opposed to a hypothetical cheaper model with less capacity that would be appropriate for holding down safe areas and consolidating existing positions.

WW2 beachheads IRL explicitly required lots of dedicated infrastructure. The Waystone is like that.
And that's how we should be selling it ! If you want mass deployment despite the huge expense of a Waystone, you need to sell it as a key tool to the feudal nobility. The immediate happiness of the people is irrelevant to this calculus : we can make all the locals very happy without creating any incentive for anyone else to pay the massive cost of Waystones anywhere else. Instead if you use it to reconquer Praag, the military aristocracy everyone will understand that buying Waystones is immediately useful and valuable and above all worth the cost.

If you want to spread Waystones all over the world, you need the appropriate sales pitch. And that's Bridge of Death and New Town.

Glau said:
Ah. I see. You are discounting the cost of moving to another city to zero or close to.
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You're discounting the cost of moving to Praag. Praag's population are immigrants and the immediate descendants of immigrants. And cities have constant immigration or their population shrinks fairly fast, and we know Praag has a constant housing crisis (it's why the poor are forced to live in the deeply tainted areas). So it's very likely that this example Ivan guy is already accepting the cost of moving ! And he chose to move to Praag !
Presumably for a mix of reasons, from "it's the closest city" to "fuck Chaos, yay my tribe and it's pride/heroes".

thisisinsane said:
Beach heads are risky and anything that has high magic, runesmithing, and college enchantment in it is too expensive to risk. If you can't aford to lose it, don't put it in a war zone.
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I am begging you to learn about military logistics and procurement. We absolutely do spend fortunes on dedicated equipment for beachheads. It's *literally how beachheads work*. You spend fortunes on dedicated boats and weapons and moving air strips and new bridges so that your invasion can work. Exactly the same deal as a Waystone.
 
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