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Warhammer Fantasy: Divided Loyalties - an Advisor's Quest

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Boney said:
Not necessarily. The bread and butter of the Light Order is Daemons, and they don't even have a formal specialization for dealing with Beastmen. The Ambers are the ones who would have the most expertise at opposing Beastmen, followed by the Jades and Brights.
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And the Ambers being the Ambers I am guessing that they don't publish that many papers on beastmen.
 
[X] Spinning Lyre
[X] Bagpipes

Boney said:
when the talks were on the verge of being presented to the Runesmiths as a shored shaft, you find a place in conversation to gracefully bring up the matter - though the intense silence that was the initial response made you question whether you had actually done so. But after an equally intense sidebar, the worryingly lithe Vlagians lay the matter out for you.
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I struggle to understand what exactly happened here.
What's a "shored shaft"?
Why did Mathilde have to carefully bring it up after the meeting with Belegar? Didn't the Vlagians themselves bring it up, thus everyone already being in the know?
What am I picturing when there's a sidebar after a silence? A fashionable break in between talks?
Boney said:
Concealed among those shipments is a few shelves worth of books for you to sort through at your leisure, mostly in Reikspiel with a minority in Kislevarin dialects. The distress the Vlagians referred to seems to not be any physical damage - they're actually shockingly well-preserved for their age - but a great deal of Khazalid notes in the margins that, from the brief skims you've been able to give them, would raise a great deal of questions that it is now your responsibility to not answer. You look forward to being able to carve out enough time to sort through them.
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Did the final deal actually include any kind of mundane book exchange between Vlag and KAU? As in books that the Vlagians legitimately hold or rights to books other than their own Runesmithing tomes?

Boney said:
And some Beastmen tribes have been known to collaborate with Chaos cultists within the Empire, and sometimes with the Norscans, and so know to accumulate the coins those trade partners would value."
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I'd love to learn more about Beastman peacetime society at some point. Everything I've read from commenters and everything I've seen in PC games left an impression that trading baubles for valuables with humans would not be something they are capable of, let alone being a middleman merchant for other Beastmen not near the coast.
Boney said:
perhaps the other will decide to seek greener pastures elsewhere
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I like how this works as wordplay for both of the relevant factions.
Boney said:
You called on a divinity to seek something ancient and lost, and in this place, it is impossible for that divinity to find anything but this. This place was sacred to Them before the name and form that you know, before the name and form that others know, before any name still spoken on this world. This place is more ancient than anything you can name, and more lost than anything you can comprehend.
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Is it Avatar and our high Windsight that gives us this insight or something else beyond that. Because it sounds very mystical.
Boney said:
He's not amused by your reaction, but by his own - he's mocking himself for defaulting to that form of oily flattery when it's entirely unnecessary.
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This is stellar characterization. It makes complete sense and still feels like it's teaching me something new about Egrimm
 
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I am now imagining Mathilde setting her coin to deceiver when instigating the war. @Boney I know that we sacrificed for faith, but could we maybe use the divine fingerprint trick to make ourselves seem like the center of the Waaagh?
 
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Rafin said:
I struggle to understand what exactly happened here.
What's a "shored shaft"?
Why did Mathilde have to carefully bring it up after the meeting with Belegar? Didn't the Vlagians themselves bring it up, thus everyone already being in the know?
What am I picturing when there's a sidebar after a silence? A fashionable break in between talks?
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Shored shaft is being used as a mining metaphor/dwarf saying in the same sense as "presenting it as a done deal"
The vlagians brought up the runesmith materials. Mathilde carefully brought up the matter of the fire spire books, which in the end were not listed on any official records, instead slipped in with the runesmith materials.

Rafin said:
Did the final deal actually include any kind of mundane book exchange between Vlag and KAU? As in books that the Vlagians legitimately hold or rights to books other than their own Runesmithing tomes?
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No:
Boney said:
Mathilde opted to take the win and leave with everyone's dignity still intact. Without the draw of the Fire Spire books, the Karak Vlag libraries would be sparser than any other major Karak.
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Nurgle said:
It has taken me way too long to figure out that Randal means wolf shield. Like is Ulric his father or brother, gay lover, or bromance.
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This would be relevant if the god's name were Randal, which it isn't. It's Ranald, which apparently means "ruler's counselor".

That said, Ranald and Ulric do in fact appear to have been bros.
 
Briefvoice said:
I think it's interesting how the people of Karak Vlag can be simultaneously completely unashamed of having done what they need to do to survive and also utterly shamed by having done what they need to do to survive.

If someone else calls them on it, they are unashamed and defiant. When forced to answer to themselves, they want to think about it as little as possible.
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Part of it is that the current leaders of Karak Vlag are the ones having to make a choice between two dishonorable actions. To a real stickler, those dwarven notes in the margins arguably amount to Secret Runelore than none outside the guild should ever see upon pain of death and the less strident would still really prefer never be seen by a non-dawi. On the other hand, said Secret Runelore is literally written in the margins of someone else's big books of magical secrets that they really shouldn't have been reading in the first place and are contractually obligated to return to a valid claimant.

Traditionally dwarven culture responds to these sorts of conflicting oaths by blaming the person who got themselves into the situation, and even those dawi who will defend the actions what they did to survive can be very uncomfortable grappling with that sort of thing and having to make the call on what to do.
 
picklepikkl said:
This would be relevant if the god's name were Randal, which it isn't. It's Ranald, which apparently means "ruler's counselor".
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That's fitting, honestly. Much ink has been spilled regarding the concept of the power behind the throne, the Éminence grise/grey eminence. Ranald very easily could have originally been King Taal's own intrigue advisor, I think. It's deeply funny in relation to Mathilde and this quest's nature.

I also find it hilarious that, despite no longer being an advisor and taking part in the every-turn council meetings, Mathilde's been consistently advising and influencing and generally helping so many rulers for things that aren't directly her job. There's everything to do with aiding Heidi about Mandred being a wizard, of course, but also giving Roswita some advice about how she could make a bid for Empress, helping Konstantin with Nuln's foundries, the whole thing where we killed Boris' dad so he could actually start reforming Kislev, etc.

Last but not least is all the other times we've been helping out Belegar - helping untangle the feud with Thorgrim, helping establish closer relations with Karak Vlag, and making his library grow more than he would have thought reasonable.
 
So, I have a quick question: do we have any sort of estimate on when the Waystones are going to result in any visible improvements? Like, for Praag, considering where it was put, do we know when things are apparently supposed to reach the 'average' level of taint for Praag in New Town?
 
ReaperofInterest said:
So, I have a quick question: do we have any sort of estimate on when the Waystones are going to result in any visible improvements? Like, for Praag, considering where it was put, do we know when things are apparently supposed to reach the 'average' level of taint for Praag in New Town?
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We have this bit here:
Boney said:
"Forty of these," you say, tapping on the schematics, "equidistant around the shore." You tap a map of the region around the Black Water. "According to the range of estimates of how much exposed warpstone there is underwater, the ambient level of magic in the water will reach an equilibrium at somewhere between a quarter to a twentieth of the current levels within a year of completion."
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Parabola said:
I also find it hilarious that, despite no longer being an advisor and taking part in the every-turn council meetings, Mathilde's been consistently advising and influencing and generally helping so many rulers for things that aren't directly her job. There's everything to do with aiding Heidi about Mandred being a wizard, of course, but also giving Roswita some advice about how she could make a bid for Empress, helping Konstantin with Nuln's foundries, the whole thing where we killed Boris' dad so he could actually start reforming Kislev, etc.

Last but not least is all the other times we've been helping out Belegar - helping untangle the feud with Thorgrim, helping establish closer relations with Karak Vlag, and making his library grow more than he would have thought reasonable.
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We chose Waystones, but I feel like through our various actions we're like, touching on our other options. Not the same as taking them, but... Helping Gretel the Border Princess, fixing the Nuln mess with böök, doing emergency exploratory surgery on Kislev then immediately slapping a Band-Aid on it, double checking Nyklaus to make sure he wasn't a vampire...

Mathilde is Active, her hobbies include meddling and learning languages in order to increase the efficiency of her meddling.
 
Rafin said:
What's a "shored shaft"?
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Mining metaphor for a fait accompli.

Rafin said:
Why did Mathilde have to carefully bring it up after the meeting with Belegar? Didn't the Vlagians themselves bring it up, thus everyone already being in the know?
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The original topic was for the books that Runesmiths are supposed to have. The topic Mathilde needed to be careful about bringing up was the books that were left in Karak Vlag's custody by the Fire Spire, and so should still be in exactly the state they were left in instead of covered in Runesmith notes.

Rafin said:
What am I picturing when there's a sidebar after a silence? A fashionable break in between talks?
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A separate but related conversation. The Dwarves are discussing the matter between themselves.

Rafin said:
Did the final deal actually include any kind of mundane book exchange between Vlag and KAU? As in books that the Vlagians legitimately hold or rights to books other than their own Runesmithing tomes?
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No.

Rafin said:
I'd love to learn more about Beastman peacetime society at some point. Everything I've read from commenters and everything I've seen in PC games left an impression that trading baubles for valuables with humans would not be something they are capable of, let alone being a middleman merchant for other Beastmen not near the coast.
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The Beastmen that aren't capable of it would get trivially outcompeted by the Beastmen that are. Metallurgy doesn't care about how pure your devotion to Chaos is, if you want to arm your entire army with steel and clad your elites in it, you gotta either know what blacksmithing is or be on good terms with someone who does. The central dichotomy of the Beastmen is that their self-conception of pure wild and savagery that they believe makes them truer children of Chaos than the Norscans and Kurgans and the like, is ideologically incompatible with steel and carpentry and fletching and alcohol and writing and mythology and castes and hierarchy. It doesn't matter how many times the writers throw the word 'squalid' in when describing a civilization, that is still a civilization.

Rafin said:
Is it Avatar and our high Windsight that gives us this insight or something else beyond that. Because it sounds very mystical.
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Perform a double-blind study and find out.

fictionfan said:
I am now imagining Mathilde setting her coin to deceiver when instigating the war. @Boney I know that we sacrificed for faith, but could we maybe use the divine fingerprint trick to make ourselves seem like the center of the Waaagh?
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The thing about seeming like the centre of the Waaagh is that if enough greenskins believe it it'll stop being a trick and start being the truth, and then things get Interesting.
 
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