RHUNRIKKI STROLLAR (Warhammer Fantasy Golden Age Dwarf Runelord Quest)

[soulcake]

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On Thread Etiquette:
I'm not going to weigh in on the logic of either side's arguments, but I will ask that everyone read over what they write and really consider if the words they used are polite and won't be inflammatory intentionally or not. You cant account for people's tolerances perfectly but at least try to say your piece without saying things that can be easily construed as overly dismissive of the other side of the argument, thank you.

Please endeavour to be cordial. :^)

 

[kinglugia]

Kinda tempted to write an omake for Nain, but gonna wait until the Journeyman thing is posted to see his stats for the Trial.

 

[Voikirium]

I had a sort of odd idea. Well, not like odd, odd.

More like an idea for something Nain could make?

Splitter (Master Rune of Breaking, Rune of Cleaving, Rune of Might): A simple ax. Unadorned, not ostentatious. Its beauty, if it has any indeed, comes by virtue and not by aesthetic. But do not be deceived: it is deadly. Every blow falls like the strike of a giant, destroying the unworthy, shoddy works of other smiths, shattering like glass under each and every blow struck. If their work is not so dismal, the might imbued about its edge and in the wearers' strikes by the runes that glow about it make it terrible to guard against, piercing through armor of steel like so much animal hide and hewing through the hafts and hilts of weapons unerringly. A single misstep is deadly.

 

[BronzeTongue]

I'm still catching up to the thread, but I wanted to add my two cents to the discussion on an adamant gronti.

As neat as the idea is on the surface, I think it's supremely wasteful and doesn't make a lot of sense as a project that Snorri would go for.

Looking at the bar costs of gronti, we could make ten sets of armor and two weapons for the cost of a full adamant bloodthirster gronti. That's a hell of a lot of heroes, and they bring more to the table than their equipment slots.

Dwarven hero units already bring in all kinds of abilities and experience that a gronti won't have unless we build them into it. A gronti can't possibly do all the things a company of dwarfs with custom runic equipment could do, and it certainly couldn't do it in as many places simultaneously.

Sure the gronti would be better than any one of them, but I'd like to point out that Kholek Suneater was having trouble with something like five heroes with equipment of that level or lower. He died largely due to a bolt tipped in the stuff.

If a gronti takes the resources of ten suits of armor, then it needs to be capable of killing two independent suneater tier threats simultaneously on separate battlefields to even come close to par.

This is relevant on more than a mechanical or practical level; it plays into Snorri's whole attitude towards life.

The boy had simply asked if the candidate's axe was worth more than the number of axes he could have made had he not made it a masterwork. Relentlessly pursuing Gromin's responses until at last the Runelord gave him a concrete number of eight axes that could have been made, only to then demand Gromin give his best reckoning as to the amount of work the boy's Axe had done.

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Why would Snorri make one big axe when he can get more work done with it's weight in normal sized ones?

 

[Dutch]

I'm still catching up to the thread, but I wanted to add my two cents to the discussion on an adamant gronti.

As neat as the idea is on the surface, I think it's supremely wasteful and doesn't make a lot of sense as a project that Snorri would go for.

Looking at the bar costs of gronti, we could make ten sets of armor and two weapons for the cost of a full adamant bloodthirster gronti. That's a hell of a lot of heroes, and they bring more to the table than their equipment slots.

Dwarven hero units already bring in all kinds of abilities and experience that a gronti won't have unless we build them into it. A gronti can't possibly do all the things a company of dwarfs with custom runic equipment could do, and it certainly couldn't do it in as many places simultaneously.

Sure the gronti would be better than any one of them, but I'd like to point out that Kholek Suneater was having trouble with something like five heroes with equipment of that level or lower. He died largely due to a bolt tipped in the stuff.

If a gronti takes the resources of ten suits of armor, then it needs to be capable of killing two independent suneater tier threats simultaneously on separate battlefields to even come close to par.

This is relevant on more than a mechanical or practical level; it plays into Snorri's whole attitude towards life.


Why would Snorri make one big axe when he can get more work done with it's weight in normal sized ones?

Click to shrink...

Mate. We've already taken the "eternal" out of the "eternal bloodthirster-sized ancestor gronti" if we're also going to take out the "bloodthirster-sized" we might as well not bother with the entire project.

And frankly I want to see Grimnir's Adamant visage chokeslam a Greater Daemon.

 

[Thor's Twin]

I'm still catching up to the thread, but I wanted to add my two cents to the discussion on an adamant gronti.

As neat as the idea is on the surface, I think it's supremely wasteful and doesn't make a lot of sense as a project that Snorri would go for.

Looking at the bar costs of gronti, we could make ten sets of armor and two weapons for the cost of a full adamant bloodthirster gronti. That's a hell of a lot of heroes, and they bring more to the table than their equipment slots.

Dwarven hero units already bring in all kinds of abilities and experience that a gronti won't have unless we build them into it. A gronti can't possibly do all the things a company of dwarfs with custom runic equipment could do, and it certainly couldn't do it in as many places simultaneously.

Sure the gronti would be better than any one of them, but I'd like to point out that Kholek Suneater was having trouble with something like five heroes with equipment of that level or lower. He died largely due to a bolt tipped in the stuff.

If a gronti takes the resources of ten suits of armor, then it needs to be capable of killing two independent suneater tier threats simultaneously on separate battlefields to even come close to par.

This is relevant on more than a mechanical or practical level; it plays into Snorri's whole attitude towards life.
Why would Snorri make one big axe when he can get more work done with it's weight in normal sized ones?

Click to shrink...

While I find myself agreeing with the sentiment, I think the example used is a little off to properly discuss the value expected from an Adamant Gronti.

Kholek Suneater was not killed by five dwarven heroes. He was killed by three dwarven heroes, a demi-god/progenitor creature of an entire race, A supercharged anti-magic banner, and supporting fire from tools specifically designed to kill Kholek. Tools that we had time to make because the demi-god had slowed down Kohlek enough to give us the time needed to craft them.

So, given that an integral part of the ability to kill Kholek was a creature with sufficient mass and killing potential to tangle with the Suneater, I am hesitant to say that such an expensively potent gronti would need to be able to kill two Suneater equivalents to prove its worth. It's a discussion worth having, for if we can achieve the same goal with pure gromril then using adamant seems superfluous, but that has not really been established.

As for why Snorri would make one big axe rather than a bunch of smaller ones? Because you use the appropriate tool for a job, and some trees just can't be cut down no matter how many smaller axes you have hewing at the trunk.

 

[BronzeTongue]

Mate. We've already taken the "eternal" out of the "eternal bloodthirster-sized ancestor gronti" if we're also going to take out the "bloodthirster-sized" we might as well not bother with the entire project.

And frankly I want to see Grimnir's Adamant visage chokeslam a Greater Daemon.

Click to shrink...

I'm not saying we shouldn't make gronti, just that using adamant for the hell of is a bad idea on a lot of different levels. If it was just suboptimal it'd be one thing, but it's also nonsensical in character and plays directly against the themes Snorri has built himself around.

If that wasn't enough, I'd also like to point out That wasteful self indulgence is a horrible memorial for Grimnir. It's spending crucial resources to look cool instead of continuing the job he quite literally spent his life doing.

While I find myself agreeing with the sentiment, I think the example used is a little off to properly discuss the value expected from an Adamant Gronti.

Kholek Suneater was not killed by five dwarven heroes. He was killed by three dwarven heroes, a demi-god/progenitor creature of an entire race, A supercharged anti-magic banner, and supporting fire from tools specifically designed to kill Kholek. Tools that we had time to make because the demi-god had slowed down Kohlek enough to give us the time needed to craft them.

So, given that an integral part of the ability to kill Kholek was a creature with sufficient mass and killing potential to tangle with the Suneater, I am hesitant to say that such an expensively potent gronti would need to be able to kill two Suneater equivalents to prove its worth. It's a discussion worth having, for if we can achieve the same goal with pure gromril then using adamant seems superfluous, but that has not really been established.

As for why Snorri would make one big axe rather than a bunch of smaller ones? Because you use the appropriate tool for a job, and some trees just can't be cut down no matter how many smaller axes you have hewing at the trunk.

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That's a fair enough point, and to an extent I agree with it. I'm not saying we shouldn't make gronti or anything, just that adamant is a bad material for it.

Kholek was delayed substantially by two or three stone gronti made by a master, even if they couldn't kill him. Stone equipment couldn't bring a dwarf into that league, but pure gromil and adamant can. Using iron, steel, and maybe regular gromil will get us gronti that can do the job without costing resources needed to elevate a significant number of heroes. Opportunity cost is part of the evaluation of what qualities as the right tool for a particular task.

I stand by my statement on how effective an adamant gronti would need to be though. The environment and specialized tools were key parts of that fight, but those sort of things will be made for any serious effort if at all possible.

 

[Dark as Silver]

Mate. We've already taken the "eternal" out of the "eternal bloodthirster-sized ancestor gronti" if we're also going to take out the "bloodthirster-sized" we might as well not bother with the entire project.

And frankly I want to see Grimnir's Adamant visage chokeslam a Greater Daemon.

Click to shrink...

You know we can still go Adamant plated rather than fully Adamant for a 75% cost saving keeping 100% of the Rune boost power, at the low cost of a reduction in durability from possibly indestructible to merely Snorri can't imagine anything can destroy it?

E: The Gronti may still be more valuable than the total wealth of small holds though. Based on the fact it will have more Gomril than KoS armour did.

 

[TehChron]

I'm not saying we shouldn't make gronti, just that using adamant for the hell of is a bad idea on a lot of different levels. If it was just suboptimal it'd be one thing, but it's also nonsensical in character and plays directly against the themes Snorri has built himself around.

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Not really.

Snorri loves flexing his ability to remind the Beardlings why hes the big Runelord of the North. And an Adamant Gronti does a lot to equalize things when a Demigod/Ancestor God isnt in the area to manage big threats, on top of the fact that we see Gromril get no sold by the higher tier minions of chaos fairly regularly

It goes without saying that anything cast in the image of Grimnir should not break in the face of such monsters, thus, Adamant it is.

 

[Jreengus]

You know we can still go Adamant plated rather than fully Adamant for a 75% cost saving keeping 100% of the Rune boost power, at the low cost of a reduction in durability from possibly indestructible to merely Snorri can't imagine anything can destroy it?

E: The Gronti may still be more valuable than the total wealth of small holds though. Based on the fact it will have more Gomril than KoS armour did.

Click to shrink...

Adamant plated feels like half-assing it and when your are making a gronti of an ancestor that feels sacrilegious. Plus if it does break at some point in the future that would utterly crush the morale of any dwarves watching so we really don't want it to have a (comparatively) chewy center.

For the whole is it worth more than equipping a bunch of dwarves issue, I feel like the value of the Grimnir gronti is less in the pure combat power and more in the reminder it serves of Grimnir as a symbol. Long term I think we should do the same for the other ancestors after they leave and I suspect a full set of 7 could end up with a super combo synergy, if nothing else seeing all 7 of them march to war would probably raise the spirits of the army they are attached to to unbreakeable levels.

 

[Dark as Silver]

Adamant plated feels like half-assing it and when your are making a gronti of an ancestor that feels sacrilegious. Plus if it does break at some point in the future that would utterly crush the morale of any dwarves watching so we really don't want it to have a (comparatively) chewy center.

For the whole is it worth more than equipping a bunch of dwarves issue, I feel like the value of the Grimnir gronti is less in the pure combat power and more in the reminder it serves of Grimnir as a symbol. Long term I think we should do the same for the other ancestors after they leave and I suspect a full set of 7 could end up with a super combo synergy, if nothing else seeing all 7 of them march to war would probably raise the spirits of the army they are attached to to unbreakeable levels.

Click to shrink...

You know we often forget how incredible somethings are just because a tier above them exists.
Here are some fun Stormwrath quotes.

Fjolla can't help but stare at the absolutely massive amounts of Pure Gromril being carted into Master Snorri's private workshop by his huffing apprentices.

"It'd take me four years worth of commissions to get even a fraction of that," Dolgi mutters, leaning against his anvil as he shakes his head.

She can only nod.

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-- A set of Pure Gromril armour so massive that an entire Clan could equip themselves with Gromril weapons from the amount of metal used. Each individual plate is enough to beggar any but the eldest and richest dwarfs of a hold, fitted to provide maximum mobility as well as protection.

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Given that I think KoS is much shorter than 10m which I think is Bloodthirster height and armour isn't solid unlike a Gronti, this represents probably enough of an investment for even Snorri to notice. Calling it half assed is a ludicrous sign that you're deeply out of touch with the actual value of things in universe.

Would you be voting to use our Adamant stockpile in the cult commissions? If not why bother half assing that?

 

[Dutch]

Would you be voting to use our Adamant stockpile in the cult commissions?

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If it were for a one of a kind superproject/wonder in honor and remembrance of an ancestor?

Yes. Without missing a heartbeat.

 

[Jreengus]

You know we often forget how incredible somethings are just because a tier above them exists.
Here are some fun Stormwrath quotes.


Given that I think KoS is much shorter than 10m which I think is Bloodthirster height and armour isn't solid unlike a Gronti, this represents probably enough of an investment for even Snorri to notice. Calling it half assed is a ludicrous sign that you're deeply out of touch with the actual value of things in universe.

Would you be voting to use our Adamant stockpile in the cult commissions? If not why bother half assing that?

Click to shrink...

The cult commissions are simple orders, we aren't even putting master runes on them, they are absolutely half assed because if we full assed them Snorri would still be working on them centuries after they are due. I get that using pure gromril would be an extravagance for a regular runesmith or even most runelords but Snorri absolutely has the ability to use adamant for it. To use gromril is to make a deliberate choice to make the Grimnir gronti worse than we could do in order to save resources, and to me if we make this we should do absolutely everything we can to ensure it endures until the end times themselves.

 

[Ptolemy03]

Adamant plated feels like half-assing it and when your are making a gronti of an ancestor that feels sacrilegious.

Click to shrink...

Shouldn't we wait till we complete the Rune Metal line then and use whatever super material we get instead since it will probably be better than adamant

 

[EVA-Saiyajin]

Shouldn't we wait till we complete the Rune Metal line then and use whatever super material we get instead since it will probably be better than adamant

Click to shrink...

Seeing how hard it is to get Adamant, I somewhat doubt we'll be getting that much of the next step within the next thousand years. Also, if we stop creating by dint of a much sparser superior material, we'll end up creating that much less in all types, not just Gronti.

 

[BronzeTongue]

Not really.

Snorri loves flexing his ability to remind the Beardlings why hes the big Runelord of the North. And an Adamant Gronti does a lot to equalize things when a Demigod/Ancestor God isnt in the area to manage big threats, on top of the fact that we see Gromril get no sold by the higher tier minions of chaos fairly regularly

It goes without saying that anything cast in the image of Grimnir should not break in the face of such monsters, thus, Adamant it is.

Click to shrink...

You're asserting a lot of things as fact there that are very much up for debate. I'm still not sold on the idea that a single huge super weapon beats out a larger number of very good ones that can act across an entire front or in concert at a single location.

We've seen that the high end stuff can be taken by well equipped people working together, and they have the advantage of being able to also be in multiple places handing lots of "little" threats at once.

Additionally, I'd like some evidence for that claim about gromil in the context of grontis if you don't mind. Here we saw two or three stone constructs wrestle with Kholek for long enough that the KoS could run further than Suneater could chase him. Given that, I'm having trouble buying that say a bloodthirster could fold a gromil one in half while being assaulted by 4-5 Ironarm class heroes.

 

[EVA-Saiyajin]

Again, I can settle for making a Pure Gromril or even regular Gromril one just to give us an idea of what we can do.

 

[Jreengus]

Shouldn't we wait till we complete the Rune Metal line then and use whatever super material we get instead since it will probably be better than adamant

Click to shrink...

Quite possibly, though I highly doubt we will be able to aquire it in sufficient quantities to even plate the gronti let along use it for the core.

To be clear my issue isn't that gromril is a terrible material and we shouldn't use (it obviously isn't.) My issue is making a tribute to an ancestor and while doing so making an active choice to use a worse material (even if only fractionally worse), that seems like an insult to the ancestor in question. Make it a generic dwarven warrior and I'm fine with it being made of gromril.

 

[Dark as Silver]

The cult commissions are simple orders, we aren't even putting master runes on them, they are absolutely half assed because if we full assed them Snorri would still be working on them centuries after they are due. I get that using pure gromril would be an extravagance for a regular runesmith or even most runelords but Snorri absolutely has the ability to use adamant for it. To use gromril is to make a deliberate choice to make the Grimnir gronti worse than we could do in order to save resources, and to me if we make this we should do absolutely everything we can to ensure it endures until the end times themselves.

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Funny you mention working on it for centuries.
We get two bars of Adamant a turn so a Adamant Bloodthirster Gronti represents 160 years of accumulation + another two decades of working on it.
Very nearly centuries itself.
Using plated adamant rather than solid makes literally no measurable performance difference between the two except in the circumstance that it picks a fight with something that is more destructive than Snorri can imagine. Its not a worse Gronti. Its a more cost efficient one.

Quite possibly, though I highly doubt we will be able to aquire it in sufficient quantities to even plate the gronti let along use it for the core.

To be clear my issue isn't that gromril is a terrible material and we shouldn't use (it obviously isn't.) My issue is making a tribute to an ancestor and while doing so making an active choice to use a worse material (even if only fractionally worse), that seems like an insult to the ancestor in question.

Click to shrink...

If we built a gold statue to an ancestor, do you think they'll turn around and say "why didn't you use platinum? I've never been so insulted."?

 

[Dutch]

Shouldn't we wait till we complete the Rune Metal line then and use whatever super material we get instead since it will probably be better than adamant

Click to shrink...

Seeing how hard it is to get Adamant, I somewhat doubt we'll be getting that much of the next step within the next thousand years. Also, if we stop creating by dint of a much sparser superior material, we'll end up creating that much less in all types, not just Gronti.

Click to shrink...

Basically this. Adamant is the top tier we'll be able to for a gronti body. There's no way we'll some manage to get 32 bars of the material above it.

I'm betting we'd be lucky to get even get 3.

 

[Alratan]

One of the reasons I'm very keen on making an adamant giant Grimnir the Warrior is to cement that aspect of his nature as the predominant one, rather than Grimnir the Slayer.

I also suspect that making accurate internal physiology from adamant might empower the resulting gronti. An adamant heart and skeleton seems like a must, for example, and then you get into adamant musculature, and then brain, etc

 

[Jreengus]

Funny you mention working on it for centuries.
We get two bars of Adamant a turn so a Adamant Bloodthirster Gronti represents 160 years of accumulation + another two decades of working on it.
Very nearly centuries itself.
Using plated adamant rather than solid makes literally no measurable performance difference between the two except in the circumstance that it picks a fight with something that is more destructive than Snorri can imagine. Its not a worse Gronti. Its a more cost efficient one.

If we built a gold statue to an ancestor, do you think they'll turn around and say "why didn't you use platinum? I've never been so insulted."?

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Don't dwarves prefer gold to platinum? I don't know how the ancestors themselves would react but to me, assuming we had a pile of oathgold large enough to make the statue with, then yes choosing to use a worse type of gold is unacceptable. It's essentially the parable of the widow in action, the value of the offering is relative to the means of the one making it.

 

[EVA-Saiyajin]

One of the reasons I'm very keen on making an adamant giant Grimnir the Warrior is to cement that aspect of his nature as the predominant one, rather than Grimnir the Slayer.

Click to shrink...

Never thought of it like that. That's kind of brilliant.

I was admittedly more focused on the idea of plaitlings and beardlings looking at this masterpiece that wanders around with the Hearthwardens and asking their parents or teachers which Ancestor God that is, and those adults who had the same confusion say it's Grimnir, stunning those who associated him with his Slayer image, and from there learning the one who made it saw Grimnir before he became the figure everyone associated him with and is still alive, a living link to the Ancestors.

Just imagine opening a child's world like that...

Though now I really want to do a Gromril one first. We don't have enough for an Adamant one yet, and it will give us an idea of what we're capable of, provide a supercombatant and heavy lifter for the Hearthwardens.

 

[TehChron]

You're asserting a lot of things as fact there that are very much up for debate. I'm still not sold on the idea that a single huge super weapon beats out a larger number of very good ones that can act across an entire front or in concert at a single location.

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I mean, we have several examples of such in the Quest alone. When an enemy champion isnt checked by something on a comparable tier it tears through relative mooks like chaff.

When the Greedy One was mass summoning and wrecking the Throng when Snorri wasnt distracting it in a duel.

When the first big Shard Wyrm was tearing through the Throng when an enemy hero unit couldnt engage it, and many dwarven lives were spent as we literally spent turns building up infrastructure in its hunting grounds to force it to face Hero characters and it still fought everyone on even terms.

Suneater only going down to an exceptionally prepared defensive emplacement (The Entirety of the Karak + Wyrm Banner) and supporting Heros for our resident Demigod to fight evenly, with a highly specialized weapon to serve as the decisive element

The Crippled Bloodthirster only held in check by another Demigod, and so on and so forth.

So yeah.

My assertions have a whole lot of basis lol

The most important takeaway from this though?

Only two of those enemies were truly unique in that they were one of a kind. But there are many minions of Chaos that are one of a kind.

An Everchosen marching on Kraka Drakk without having a counter in place would be disastrous, for example. Snorri isnt going to be around forever. Or even precisely where he needs to be at all times.

 

[Dark as Silver]

Oh found this

So when I say cost, it literally is cost. A Gromril Gronti isn't unheard of, but from what I can tell from the discussion, the scale of what's being proposed certainly is. Because the cost is ludicrous. Varn or Zhufbar by your reckoning are the only other places with the Gromril to pull this off, the former for its natural seam and the latter because thats where most of the stuff from Varn gets refined in the first place.

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Don't dwarves prefer gold to platinum? I don't know how the ancestors themselves would react but to me, assuming we had a pile of oathgold large enough to make the statue with, then yes choosing to use a worse type of gold is unacceptable. It's essentially the parable of the widow in action, the value of the offering is relative to the means of the one making it.

Click to shrink...

...
If our choices were make a big statue of oathgold to Valaya and spend the oathgold to make an entirely secular orphanage. Which do you think Valaya would approve of more?

An Everchosen marching on Kraka Drakk without having a counter in place would be disastrous, for example. Snorri isnt going to be around forever. Or even precisely where he needs to be at all times.

Click to shrink...

If this is planning for after Snorri is gone a Gronti is a terrible choice unless we understand why they stop working the future and how to make that not happen.

 

[BronzeTongue]

One of the reasons I'm very keen on making an adamant giant Grimnir the Warrior is to cement that aspect of his nature as the predominant one, rather than Grimnir the Slayer.

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That's a worthy goal, but I don't see how that end connects to this action. Sure it's big and impressive, but the mindsets and pressures that made the idea of a slayer emerge would still exist. Changing how the dwarves interact with that kind of pain would require focused actions taken as they emerge, not a one off display of faith that doesn't really connect with their lives.

Even if we could somehow leverage this into control of Grimnir's image (which we almost certainly can't) they'd just reframe what they're doing as proactive defense or something in their pursuit of a socially acceptable form of suicide.