Remove ads

[Dungeoncore SI] Purple glows in Dark Places

Reader mode
Ginger Maniac said:
Gotrek and Felix are the main characters of one of the major WHF book series.

Gotrek is a dwarf with a colossal ginger mohawk and, depending on your point of view, either the world's best or worst Slayer. He disgraced himself at some point before the story started (I think for doing the right thing against orders), and took the Slayer Oath as a consequence. Now, he travels the world looking for the biggest and most dangerous monsters to fight, in the hope that one of them will kill him so his honour can be restored. This is where the best/worst thing comes in, because despite fighting dragons, ogres, dragon ogres, giants, vampires, and even a Greater Daemon of Khorne, he's come out on top against all of them thanks to his magic axe and indomitable will. He is phenomenally good at killing things, and just as terrible at getting killed himself in the process.

Felix is a human bard who made a drunken promise in a tavern one night to travel with Gotrek and chronicle his journeys and feats of arms. Being a dwarf, Gotrek held Felix to his word, despite Felix being so blackout drunk he couldn't remember a thing he'd said or done after waking up. Initially resentful, Felix grew into the role and while he's nowhere near as dangerous as his friend, he's equally good at surviving their various scrapes and encounters, and thus should never be counted out of a fight.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Felix may or may not also be an immortal because of his magic sword.
 
@Mechanis seeing as you can summon any element, can you also do radioactive isotopes? Oh wait, that's what my Gremlins play with... I should really get back to Titan of Steel.
 
Yes, but the SI is a bit... leery of doing so, due to worries as to what Warpstone actually is, plus a healthy respect for the dangers of radioactive substances- and unlike your own SI, mine doesn't have access to handy one-size-fits-all robot minions that don't care about being irradiated.
There's also the other side, that unsummoning isn't a thing, so any debris or whatnot needs to actually go somewhere.

@ShadeHawk : I actually take most of my inspiration for future tech from various google image threads, with a side of Miazki movie whimsy and hardedged real-life engineering.
a mech like the ones pictured is far more likely to be more along the lines of the hulking, hunchbacked forms of Iron Kingdom's Steamjacks, while vehicles will be either fluidly quiet constructions driven by mana-engines or hissing, rattling, roaring steam-driven monsters.
generally speaking, however, Gremlin tech will be somewhere between WWI and WWII-era technology, at least for a while, since there's only so far you can push technology from the 'base' tech level they started with, which is largely Victorian barring certain specific advantages (mostly Magical Bullshit) that allow things even modern tech couldn't do, like Tech Knights.

Of course, as Gremlins are perfectly happy to mass-produce things, and the SI will definitely be running export/uplift programs on any allies, the world is undoubtedly going to be a very different place the next time the Everchosen manages to kick most of the various Chaos warbands into all going in the same direction.
if for no other reason then that the Skaven are going to find themselves a little busy soon.
 
Mechanis said:
There's also the other side, that unsummoning isn't a thing, so any debris or whatnot needs to actually go somewhere.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
What!? Of course un-summoning is a thing, you just need to feed the summoned mass into a black hole's Event Horizon to convert it entirely to energy, use that energy to power a really big Mana Turbine, and before you know it all that summoned matter will be right back in your mana pool!
 
@Mechanis The Jakub Różalski images (and Iron Harvest RTS) are meant to represent 1920s, so they would fit into WWI to WWII tech. Though they are probably, as most mechs, unrealistic.

One thing with regards to the last chapter: the fortification of the time of gunpowder and explosives were, terrain permitting, using a net of underground corridors for counter-mining, and some mechanism to detect mining efforts near the fort. For example the Kłodzko Fortress in Poland has extensive network of underground counter-mine tunnels.
 
Mechanis said:
There's also the other side, that unsummoning isn't a thing, so any debris or whatnot needs to actually go somewhere.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

I just write said:
What!? Of course un-summoning is a thing, you just need to feed the summoned mass into a black hole's Event Horizon to convert it entirely to energy, use that energy to power a really big Mana Turbine, and before you know it all that summoned matter will be right back in your mana pool!
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Alternately, summon some antimatter.


Or, actually somewhat practical, transmute the scraps into something useful.
 
@ShadeHawk : true, however there's two factors that make that impractical for the natives (read: the Skaven) even if they should think of it- firstly, Dungeon rooms- especially their outer walls- are 'naturally' more durable due to being saturated by the Dungeon's mana, making them extraordinarily difficult to tunnel through. this is a good thing, too, else the main cavern, which, I'll remind everyone, is a sixteen acre bubble, would collapse in on itself at the slightest provaction. The second is the Dungeon's... I suppose contour sense would be the best description, which absolutely would detect such tunneling efforts nigh-instantly. Also remember that these things are all build on solid rock, not an easy thing to undermine in the first place, even without the aforementioned.

as for Unsummoning, perhaps I should say that there's no practical means to do so. antimatter, for example, would either require more mana than I'd get out of a reaction if summoned in a containment device, or require a large vacuum chamber and some quick hands on a containment field, due to the limitations on where the SI can summon raw materials with arbitrary properties; namely, only in a room that has a Relay or Core in it.
I imagine I don't need to explain how having a bunch of air around for said theoretical antimatter to react with would be... bad.
the only way for the SI to really pull that off would be to tech up to an antimatter Breeder of some sort and use a relatively mundane power source to run it- ironically, the way summoning complexity works Coal runs mana-positive while more sophisticated fuels like petroleum would 'just' run mana-neutral, mostly because mechanical force isn't 100% efficient, so you'll always lose some energy in the form of heat, or friction/inerta resistance, or transmission loss in electrical wire, and so on and so on.
the upshot of all this is, the SI can't just wave a wand and clear away debris, they have to have minions actually clear it away by hand (or bulldozer, or whatever) and actually have somewhere to put it after doing so.
Plus, the SI can't direct-summon into an area that's under attack (things under a Relay count as 'different areas') so anything reliant of such would instantly shut down, barring unit-producing Features such as Workshops- those, however, have limited ability and can summon only certain parts or materials.
oh, and there's no 'research' screen either, minions have to do that essentially the old-fashioned way, allowing for the Dungeon's buff effects making them the near-equals of Kushani Science Bullshit in terms of turnaround time.
 
Mechanis said:
@ShadeHawk : true, however there's two factors that make that impractical for the natives (read: the Skaven) even if they should think of it- firstly, Dungeon rooms- especially their outer walls- are 'naturally' more durable due to being saturated by the Dungeon's mana, making them extraordinarily difficult to tunnel through. this is a good thing, too, else the main cavern, which, I'll remind everyone, is a sixteen acre bubble, would collapse in on itself at the slightest provaction. The second is the Dungeon's... I suppose contour sense would be the best description, which absolutely would detect such tunneling efforts nigh-instantly. Also remember that these things are all build on solid rock, not an easy thing to undermine in the first place, even without the aforementioned.

as for Unsummoning, perhaps I should say that there's no practical means to do so. antimatter, for example, would either require more mana than I'd get out of a reaction if summoned in a containment device, or require a large vacuum chamber and some quick hands on a containment field, due to the limitations on where the SI can summon raw materials with arbitrary properties; namely, only in a room that has a Relay or Core in it.
I imagine I don't need to explain how having a bunch of air around for said theoretical antimatter to react with would be... bad.
the only way for the SI to really pull that off would be to tech up to an antimatter Breeder of some sort and use a relatively mundane power source to run it- ironically, the way summoning complexity works Coal runs mana-positive while more sophisticated fuels like petroleum would 'just' run mana-neutral, mostly because mechanical force isn't 100% efficient, so you'll always lose some energy in the form of heat, or friction/inerta resistance, or transmission loss in electrical wire, and so on and so on.
the upshot of all this is, the SI can't just wave a wand and clear away debris, they have to have minions actually clear it away by hand (or bulldozer, or whatever) and actually have somewhere to put it after doing so.
Plus, the SI can't direct-summon into an area that's under attack (things under a Relay count as 'different areas') so anything reliant of such would instantly shut down, barring unit-producing Features such as Workshops- those, however, have limited ability and can summon only certain parts or materials.
oh, and there's no 'research' screen either, minions have to do that essentially the old-fashioned way, allowing for the Dungeon's buff effects making them the near-equals of Kushani Science Bullshit in terms of turnaround time.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Hmmm... You say that cost is entirely based on complexity, yes? How about Methane? It's literally the simplest Hydrocarbon there is, four Hydrogens stuck to a Carbon atom. It also has the advantage of being able to fire a gas turbine, which has major advantages over a steam engine.

If you were inclined to go the nuclear route, I'd advise pure Uranium 233/235 fuel rods, as those need to be induced to fission rather than spontaneously decaying instantly (as Protonium would), they're a single element and therefore cheap, and they're somewhere near half a million times as energy dense as chemical fuels.

EDIT: In addition, since there wouldn't be any Depleted Uranium to clog up the reaction, they wouldn't leave much in the way of excessively hazardous nuclear waste; they'd just keep fissioning until there wasn't enough to maintain critical mass, which could be easily re-processed.
 
Last edited:
true enough, but the issue is in the quality of everything else; building the actual reactor part of the reactor would be harder as the SI, much like myself, has a much less firm grasp on the particulars of nuclear power systems than good-old-fashioned steam engines or even simple internal-combustion engines.
Steam power has the advantage of being really, really simple in gross execution- all you need is a heat source and a big tank mostly full of water with an outlet tube on the top, and some means of turning pressure into power. Steam engines, also, are considerably more forgiving tolerance-wise and even as spectacular as a steam engine explosion is, it's still less of an issue than a leaky fission pile would be.

there's also the fact that steam engines are just flatout better at being scaled to arbitrary tasks than fission piles- and pure electrical systems are far too inefficient at the SI's tech level. There's good reason Fallout's nuclear-powered-everything was never a thing in real life, after all.
and, well, chaos. I would be sorta leery of using a substance that shares so many properties with Warpstone when it might be exposed to Chaos Fuckery.

finally, to take a step back from my usual Watsonian reasoning and be Doyalist for a moment, letting the SI jump feet-first into nuclear power is just too much on top of the advantages already present- the Dungeon mechanics, immunity to more exotic Warp phenomenon (like Daemonic Possession or Weird Nurgle BS or Slaneshi Super-drugs) and the amount of setting knowledge the SI possesses- some of which literally no-one alive (or undead) in this period knows, and the attendant meta-knowledge of which factions can be worked with and which need to be worked around or destroyed, AND the various random bits of Modern Science Witchcraft they can pull off even with those restrictions- dynamite, areogels, and Stainless Steel alone...

Well, I wanted to write High Fantasy Grand Strategy and Warhammer Factions Reacting To Gremlins, not 'SI dungeon turns into a BESRMoW and stomps over everyone's shit.'
 
Last edited:
Mechanis said:
true enough, but the issue is in the quality of everything else; building the actual reactor part of the reactor would be harder as the SI, much like myself, has a much less firm grasp on the particulars of nuclear power systems than good-old-fashioned steam engines or even simple internal-combustion engines.
Steam power has the advantage of being really, really simple in gross execution- all you need is a heat source and a big tank mostly full of water with an outlet tube on the top, and some means of turning pressure into power. Steam engines, also, are considerably more forgiving tolerance-wise and even as spectacular as a steam engine explosion is, it's still less of an issue than a leaky fission pile would be.

there's also the fact that steam engines are just flatout better at being scaled to arbitrary tasks than fission piles- and pure electrical systems are far too inefficient at the SI's tech level. There's good reason Fallout's nuclear-powered-everything was never a thing in real life, after all.
and, well, chaos. I would be sorta leery of using a substance that shares so many properties with Warpstone when it might be exposed to Chaos Fuckery.

finally, to take a step back from my usual Watsonian reasoning and be Doyalist for a moment, letting the SI jump feet-first into nuclear power is just too much on top of the advantages already present- the Dungeon mechanics, immunity to more exotic Warp phenomenon (like Daemonic Possession or Weird Nurgle BS or Slaneshi Super-drugs) and the amount of setting knowledge the SI possesses- some of which literally no-one alive (or undead) in this period knows, and the attendant meta-knowledge of which factions can be worked with and which need to be worked around or destroyed, AND the various random bits of Modern Science Witchcraft they can pull off even with those restrictions- dynamite, areogels, and Stainless Steel alone...

Well, I wanted to write High Fantasy Grand Strategy and Warhammer Factions Reacting To Gremlins, not 'SI dungeon turns into a BESRMoW and stomps over everyone's shit.'
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Hate to break it to you, but most nuclear piles are steam engines; they're just using nuclear fission as the heat source. Your other points still stand, especially paranoia about warp-fuckery.
 
ltmauve said:
True, but designing a safe nuclear reactor is nowhere near as easy as it sounds.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Step 1: Acquire sufficient Titanium Diboride control rods to scram the reactor if necessary
Step 2: Add More Water (radiation shielding)
Step 3: Have a backup generator for the coolant pump

Literally everything else is optional extras.
 
I'm pretty sure at one point a kid managed to make a small nuclear fission reactor in a shed in his garden once, using fire alarms as the source of radioactive material for it, so they can't be that hard to build.

Not that I'm advocating that you should use it in the story, I like the magitech steam punk theme and it fits a lot better into the setting, but it's a interesting thought.
 
TotallyDemonic said:
I'm pretty sure at one point a kid managed to make a small nuclear fission reactor in a shed in his garden once, using fire alarms as the source of radioactive material for it, so they can't be that hard to build.

Not that I'm advocating that you should use it in the story, I like the magitech steam punk theme and it fits a lot better into the setting, but it's a interesting thought.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Besides, there's already a story for ridiculous nuke-punk dungeon mecha.
 
There's also the slight issue where any 'modern' tech is limited by 'How well/completely SI!Me, who is a layman, can explain how it works and how to build it.' something like dynamite or even outright witchcraft like Areogel (which is surprisingly easy to make for how bullshit it is) is easy.
A layman explaining how a fission pile works well enough to actually build one with a largely Victorian techbase? yeah. I'll leave it to you to imagine the sort of disaster that could be.

as ltmauve pointed out, designing a safe reactor, as opposed to just a functional one, is a task of some difficulty, even if cheating like a massive cheaty thing with magic.

compared to the ease of "make a pressure tank with a water input at one end and a steam output on the other, fill partially, then light a fire under it," well, that crap's so simple I built a (primitive, admittedly) steam-rocket-powered boat toy when I was six (premade plastic boat, tea candle, metal cigar case (with a hole punched in the lid) and a few paperclips to hold it up. sending that thing zooming around in the bathtub was awesome to six-year-old me.)
 
Ah. I tend to forget that other people don't spend quite so much time engaged in recreational reading of engineering texts. And that other people aren't willing to always engage in explosion-laden trial-and-error design processes.

EDIT: Come to think of it, Carbon Nanotubes would probably be obscenely expensive to Conjure, wouldn't they?
 
Last edited:
Indeed. as would, say, a modern RAM chipset. generally, the more 'manufacturing' that goes into a summoned object, the more energy it takes. this is why Elemental gold is just shiny yellow rocks but, say, a fully operational Lightning Cannon runs in at 'a lot.' the exact relationship deliberately weird and nonsensical, though, in-setting becuase it's magic and sometimes magic's rules are just arbitrary and weird, in out of setting because there is no set formula so I can have more flexibility as a writer.
to go back to the chipset example, let's call it a 1200mp-per-chip, but summoning an entire laptop might only cost a couple MP if it's going into a computer lab feature. yes, this sort of arbitrary silliness (at least once the SI is actually doing stuff complex enough to notice it) is going to come up in story as the source of many headaches.

and while Gremlins would be all for explosion-laden design processes (complete with ohh-ing and ahh-ing and probably popcorn from bystanders) the SI would be... less so, at least for NBC hazards.
 
Mechanis said:
@ShadeHawk : true, however there's two factors that make that impractical for the natives (read: the Skaven) even if they should think of it- firstly, Dungeon rooms- especially their outer walls- are 'naturally' more durable due to being saturated by the Dungeon's mana, making them extraordinarily difficult to tunnel through. this is a good thing, too, else the main cavern, which, I'll remind everyone, is a sixteen acre bubble, would collapse in on itself at the slightest provaction. The second is the Dungeon's... I suppose contour sense would be the best description, which absolutely would detect such tunneling efforts nigh-instantly. Also remember that these things are all build on solid rock, not an easy thing to undermine in the first place, even without the aforementioned.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

I know next to nothing about the Warhammer Fantasy setting, so the last chapter was very confusing to me. What I meant was for the main character, the Dungeon Core, to create a maze of underground tunnels starting from the main fort, and spanning the area before it, for counter-mining and for blowing up siege machines that got too close to the fort. Not for Skaven party to try to mine the forts.

Nb. I wonder if lightning from the Lightning Cannon is a magical lightning, or is it natural lightning magically generated. If it is the latter, I wonder if it would be possible to redirect it (via creating higher conductivity channels) to strike back at Skaven army. XKCD's What If? #16 explains how lightning finds its way.
 
Just to confirm, the Karak Dum Expedition has already happened? Cuz Felix becomes a lot better after that, but it would also mean that Archon is on the move towards Praag and.... well you get it....bad stuff incoming
 
ShadeHawk said:
I know next to nothing about the Warhammer Fantasy setting, so the last chapter was very confusing to me. What I meant was for the main character, the Dungeon Core, to create a maze of underground tunnels starting from the main fort, and spanning the area before it, for counter-mining and for blowing up siege machines that got too close to the fort. Not for Skaven party to try to mine the forts.

Nb. I wonder if lightning from the Lightning Cannon is a magical lightning, or is it natural lightning magically generated. If it is the latter, I wonder if it would be possible to redirect it (via creating higher conductivity channels) to strike back at Skaven army. XKCD's What If? #16 explains how lightning finds its way.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
not really enough room to be worth the vulnerability- Warp-grinders would have difficulty with dungeon-reinforced walls, but not that much.
both Skaven and Gremlin Lightning Cannons are magitech- the skaven version uses a great chunk of Warpstone and Skyre technomancy (which can explode sometimes) while the Gremlin version is effectively a supercharged 'Wand of Lightning Bolt.'
There's also the Maze- this is a series of heavily trapped rooms, chambers and halls an enemy must fight their way through to reach the main chamber, and pretty much uses every dirty-pool trick the SI could come up with to make doing so as bloody, long and difficult as possible. against most armies, at least some of their heavy equipment would get eaten by it. Thanquol, however, had a sufficient mass of infantry to just clear the defenses with bodies, and the disregard for the preservation of his own forces to actually commit to doing so. Skaven are natural tunnel-fighters, and they're very, very good at it- arguably even better than the local Dwarves, simply because Skaven commanders tend to be a lot more willing to take a given location over a mountain of their own dead and use highly indiscriminate area weapons like Poison-wind globes or warpfire throwers.

Krantz86 said:
Just to confirm, the Karak Dum Expedition has already happened? Cuz Felix becomes a lot better after that, but it would also mean that Archon is on the move towards Praag and.... well you get it....bad stuff incoming
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

This is indeed after Karak Dum, however, thanks to the nature of the Warp (read: Time Shenanigans*) Archon is currently experiencing some technical difficulties. He's still on his way, but well, you know how the Great Ocean is, sometimes you come out after two minutes and discover a hundred years went by between steps, other times you can high-five your past-self as you walk by each-other, other times you can spend two hundred years being a gladiator and walk out to accidentally become your own grandfather.
*Read: Sigmar Is Actually Cheating For Once
 
Mechanis said:
[About underground network of counter-mine tunnels] not really enough room to be worth the vulnerability- Warp-grinders would have difficulty with dungeon-reinforced walls, but not that much. Skaven are natural tunnel-fighters, and they're very, very good at it- arguably even better than the local Dwarves, simply because Skaven commanders tend to be a lot more willing to take a given location over a mountain of their own dead and use highly indiscriminate area weapons like Poison-wind globes or warpfire throwers.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

Well, that was a problem also in real life - that is why the tunnel of network was made into a maze / labyrinth, in which it is easy to get lost if you don't know it. There are also, I think, prepared ways to close or collapse a tunnel. With Dungeoncore you have much better ability to detect intruders, more ways to deter mining and drilling (boron-carbide steel etc.), and better ways to close tunnels (e.g. with lava, or molten lead). You can also make tunnels of size that is reasonable size for Gremlins, but too small for Skavens.

Mechanis said:
Both Skaven and Gremlin Lightning Cannons are magitech- the skaven version uses a great chunk of Warpstone and Skyre technomancy (which can explode sometimes) while the Gremlin version is effectively a supercharged 'Wand of Lightning Bolt.'
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

Thanks for the explanation. So this lightning attack is redirectable, or not? Can it be grounded?*​

Do Skavens or Gremlins have indirect-fire weapons, like mortars or grenade throwers (and to some extent, onagers / mangonels / ballistas and trebuchets)?

Footnote
*​ Imagine lightning-bolt catcher, which also charges a supercapacitator, to be used as energy source in one owns weapon. "Thanks for the charge...", hehe.
 
Last edited:
You know, I would love to see the single perfectly sane and reasonable skaven. Just the thought of said rat being perfectly logical and level-headed having an intellectual discussion with someone who is BSOD'ing over said skaven.

I can't wait for more, you've done a pretty good job of building this all up, and you have a good grasp of how to portray the fights.
 
Reader mode
You must login or register to reply here.
Remove ads
Back
Top