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. :^)

 

[SuperSonicSound]

Sometimes a full head of steam just needs a splash of cold water applied to it lol

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Or it requires you to not twist the words of the qm to use as a bludgeon. Quite how you got from "no cynically spamming smelters" to all discussion of experimenting with them is gaming the system im not sure but it certainly doesnt feel like good faith.

Within the context of the quest lore Snorri experimenting to find the most productive variant of the adamament maker combo is entirely belivable and absolutely not gaming the system.

 

[065tdsa]

I'm pretty sure that if any Dwarf couldn't pay for their prosthetics, their Clan did on their behalf, because that's what Clans do. Any Clanless who need them probably get help from the Cult of Valaya instead, since that seems like something they would do.

 

[Copperscale]

I'm mostly going off the scene where someone came in for a fitting for... an arm, I think, with a daemon scratch on the palm and elbow, and there was no talk of pay. If we are charging it's much less of an issue, if still one.

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I think the way it works is that the funds that the temple would have used to care for the injured individual, instead go to funding the commission.

That, or the Temple of Valaya commissions Snorri to make a limb for the injured, and the newly healed dwarf makes good on his debt to the temple when they have the means.

If they have the funds (such as by being a master), then the Temple just handles the measuring and fitting to save Snorri the time.

 

[Modus_Tollens]

Instead we are charging them in debt. Charging the returned wounded, after the Great Incursion, with a mental debt of honor, and not just a few heroes but a LOT of common Dawi. Thousands of them, going by the numbers of toys we can make. Enough to make a major, notable dent in crippled Dawi who owe us a happy life.

THAT stinks of power grab. Of getting a really big rep to do something. Of building up a political base.

Now, it's Snorri. He's not doing that. He wants to help. We know this as players. But other Dawi do not have a magical Snorri mind reader, they have tales and stories and outright myths. They have to go off inaccurate information because duh, that's reality.

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Then we should ask for minor things. Maybe things that don't benefit us at all, but serve the greater agenda of a dawi. "And should great fortune come upon you some day, give aid to (INSERT NAME HERE] for whatever this is worth to you."

"Pay it forward" is a perfectly acceptable geas to bind someone to.

 

[Walliseatscheese]

A little too much dwarf in this statement I think. Given that this is a system where spreading a rune what could improve the lives of thousand of dwarfs (the rune of Forged Limb) in the most effective way possible could lead to Civil War and people being declared heretics I think it is fair to say the system has some deep systemic flaws, but our PC is in far too deep to see them. It is not that the Ancestor Gods are without flaw it is that we are playing one of their fervent worshipers adn as such will never see those flaws.

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There would be a Civil War if we blatantly spread the Rune everywhere and effectively forced the Cult of Vayala to try to apply pressure to other Runesmiths to take on contracts to produce Forged Limbs.

The Civil War and Heresy comes from indelicately handling Organization Sized Oaths and putting the Vayalians at odds with the Runesmiths because their Oath of Healing would oblige them to try to wrangle the Runesmiths to help heal people.

This is generally, on the surface, not a bad thing, but it could have happened in such a way that lead to the Runesmiths feeling like the Vayalians and Snorri were pressuring and forcing them to do what they (the Vayalians) wanted instead of what the Runesmiths judged to be what they (the Runesmiths) should be doing.

From there it had the potential to hit Civil War and Snorri committing some form of suicide out of shame.

The very slow and specific release of the Forged Limb Rune, coupled with the fact that we aren't rapidly expanding the scope of our services, means that we are quite nicely avoiding the path to the path to Civil War.

Snerra's expansion of the service, as our Apprentice, combined with her plans to be as Apolitical as possible with her services means that the Limbs are expanding in reach in a manner slow, thorough, and distinct enough that there are no risks of conflict over this.

The only ones who know the Rune are those of Snorri's line, and they themselves are making decisions about expanding services.

If another Runesmith wants in on the Rune, they are able to directly approach us and ask for it rather than us forcing it on anyone in exchange for unrelated knowledge.

I've wandered from my point.

The issue of Civil War and Heresy boils down to Oaths and Autonomy of Institutes and Grandmasters to make their own decisions. The only way it would have happened is if we wrote a check that the Runesmith Guild didn't want to cash, and so far we have done our best to keep all check writing in house rather than forcing the Guild to pay out for something we wanted. Eventually other Runesmiths will ask us for some of what we've been buying, and it'll slowly spread out from there until every Runesmith is able to make an informed decision with no pressure on whether or not they want in on the Dis-Disarming business.

 

[tri2]

I wonder if we could make a full cyborg dwarf? replace all their body parts and then their organs full on runic conversion of a dwarf except for their brain.

 

[mmgaballah]

Now, it's Snorri. He's not doing that. He wants to help. We know this as players. But other Dawi do not have a magical Snorri mind reader, they have tales and stories and outright myths. They have to go off inaccurate information because duh, that's reality.

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Snorri get away with it by staying out of politics and treating any sort of politics that he comes across as the fafing about of bumbling beardlings ignoring it

 

[BelligerentGnu]

@soulcake, question: if Orri Silverbrow gets it in his head to reverse-engineer Forged Limb and start making prosthetics himself, is that likely to come back on us?

Regarding adamant: unless and until we make an ogre/bloodthirster size gronti or outfit an entire damn unit of dwarves with adamant equipment, we are producing adamant faster than we can use it. We have no pressing need for another adamant smelter.

 

[SuperSonicSound]

@soulcake, question: if Orri Silverbrow gets it in his head to reverse-engineer Forged Limb and start making prosthetics himself, is that likely to come back on us?

Regarding adamant: unless and until we make an ogre/bloodthirster size gronti or outfit an entire damn unit of dwarves with adamant equipment, we are producing adamant faster than we can use it. We have no pressing need for another adamant smelter.

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That's entirely back to front, we can't equip units with Adamant because we can't make enough of it, we're only saving up for larger projects because production is so small.

 

[TehChron]

Or it requires you to not twist the words of the qm to use as a bludgeon. Quite how you got from "no cynically spamming smelters" to all discussion of experimenting with them is gaming the system im not sure but it certainly doesnt feel like good faith.

Within the context of the quest lore Snorri experimenting to find the most productive variant of the adamament maker combo is entirely belivable and absolutely not gaming the system.

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Your argument would hold water if you weren't twisting Alratans words to imply he wasnt advocating making those experiments as potential test runs and thus having more Adamant Smelters lying around as functional but failed prototypes, rather than merely testing combos without making anything which has long been an avenue of research for Snorri

When he quite clearly was

Given the level of secrecy involved in any runelord's business, it would seem to be pretty hard for others to know whether a Runelord is cynically spamming variants of arrays containing the compressed Adamant Maker or whether they've just come up with a really good smelter design/rune array, upgraded the Master Rune like we've done for Awakening, or even created and compressed another Master Rune containing Adamant Maker. Trying to find out would seem to be a radical breach of tradition itself.

Particularly if the Runelord in question stockpiles lots of their output for later projects.

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Let's not play games here

 

[tri2]

oh yeah we should probably research a way to make more adamant smelters without master runes

 

[ArchAIngel]

@soulcake, question: if Orri Silverbrow gets it in his head to reverse-engineer Forged Limb and start making prosthetics himself, is that likely to come back on us?

Regarding adamant: unless and until we make an ogre/bloodthirster size gronti or outfit an entire damn unit of dwarves with adamant equipment, we are producing adamant faster than we can use it. We have no pressing need for another adamant smelter.

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I mean, I'd love to give the Hearth Guard all Adamant weapons. That'd be nice.

But it's also why I want MR Purification research done so we know if we can, I dunno, surround the Smelter in Hearthstones and suddenly we get .75 bars of Adamant from a baseline, and 1.5 bars from a Dragonblooded Smelter. Or something like that.

 

[SuperSonicSound]

Your argument would hold water if you weren't twisting Alratans words to imply he wasnt advocating making those experiments as potential test runs and thus having more Adamant Smelters lying around as functional but failed prototypes, rather than merely testing combos without making anything which has long been an avenue of research for Snorri

When he quite clearly was

Let's not play games here

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Nah, you're still completely wrong on this, there's a category difference between "Spamming smelters" and making several in the process of finding a more perfect combination of runes. The QM spoke up against the former not the later. No amount of word play changes that, obviously Alratan would be quite happy to push that as far as possible but it doesn't change the fact that we could almost certainly make 3-4 more smelters via that process and have absolutely no censure from any one, it even fits with Snorris character as a paragon of production.

 

[BelligerentGnu]

That's entirely back to front, we can't equip units with Adamant because we can't make enough of it, we're only saving up for larger projects because production is so small.

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As far as I can tell, we have no such projects we're saving for. Adamant is just accumulating because we're using ~1 bar a turn.

I mean, I'd love to give the Hearth Guard all Adamant weapons. That'd be nice.

But it's also why I want MR Purification research done so we know if we can, I dunno, surround the Smelter in Hearthstones and suddenly we get .75 bars of Adamant from a baseline, and 1.5 bars from a Dragonblooded Smelter. Or something like that.

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For me personally, quantity of adamant is no longer an issue. We have enough that it has replaced pure gromril as our material of choice for difficult commissions. Outfitting the Hearth Guard with adamant would be nice, but I feel no need to push to make that happen.

That said, I'm bang on-side for researching Understand MPurification, because I think it'll give us valuable insights into the nature of runes, and a boost towards t5 Rune Metal.

 

[DragonParadox]

There would be a Civil War if we blatantly spread the Rune everywhere and effectively forced the Cult of Vayala to try to apply pressure to other Runesmiths to take on contracts to produce Forged Limbs.

The Civil War and Heresy comes from indelicately handling Organization Sized Oaths and putting the Vayalians at odds with the Runesmiths because their Oath of Healing would oblige them to try to wrangle the Runesmiths to help heal people.

This is generally, on the surface, not a bad thing, but it could have happened in such a way that lead to the Runesmiths feeling like the Vayalians and Snorri were pressuring and forcing them to do what they (the Vayalians) wanted instead of what the Runesmiths judged to be what they (the Runesmiths) should be doing.

From there it had the potential to hit Civil War and Snorri committing some form of suicide out of shame.

The very slow and specific release of the Forged Limb Rune, coupled with the fact that we aren't rapidly expanding the scope of our services, means that we are quite nicely avoiding the path to the path to Civil War.

Snerra's expansion of the service, as our Apprentice, combined with her plans to be as Apolitical as possible with her services means that the Limbs are expanding in reach in a manner slow, thorough, and distinct enough that there are no risks of conflict over this.

The only ones who know the Rune are those of Snorri's line, and they themselves are making decisions about expanding services.

If another Runesmith wants in on the Rune, they are able to directly approach us and ask for it rather than us forcing it on anyone in exchange for unrelated knowledge.

I've wandered from my point.

The issue of Civil War and Heresy boils down to Oaths and Autonomy of Institutes and Grandmasters to make their own decisions. The only way it would have happened is if we wrote a check that the Runesmith Guild didn't want to cash, and so far we have done our best to keep all check writing in house rather than forcing the Guild to pay out for something we wanted. Eventually other Runesmiths will ask us for some of what we've been buying, and it'll slowly spread out from there until every Runesmith is able to make an informed decision with no pressure on whether or not they want in on the Dis-Disarming business.

Click to shrink...

The fact that you have to be slow and specific to avoid conflicting oaths tearing us apart is a basic flaw in the system and I would go so far as to say it it on the Runesmith's side.

The point of any craft, any sort of tool use in fact is to improve the standard of living. That we cannot do that as fast as simple practicality allows, that thousands of dwarfs will have a lower standard of life because of guild exceptionalism is a failure in the standards of that guild and ultimately of its founder. That this is not a thought that would ever pass Snori's mind does not make it less true.

 

[TehChron]

Nah, you're still completely wrong on this, there's a category difference between "Spamming smelters" and making several in the process of finding a more perfect combination of runes. The QM spoke up against the former not the later. No amount of word play changes that, obviously Alratan would be quite happy to push that as far as possible but it doesn't change the fact that we could almost certainly make 3-4 more smelters via that process and have absolutely no censure from any one, it even fits with Snorris character as a paragon of production.

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Look, I'm not gonna drag this any further than this post

But sometimes you need to be willing to acknowledge the spirit of a person's words enough to acknowledge that maybe the letter of it didnt dot every "I" or cross every "T". But that doesn't change the fact that that particular Avenue of discussion is a dead end.

That's all there is to it.

 

[Karnax626]

Nah, you're still completely wrong on this, there's a category difference between "Spamming smelters" and making several in the process of finding a more perfect combination of runes.

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You're right that the two are different. The latter is called 'testing', and does not result in usable pieces of equipment, otherwise we'd have plenty more smelters from when we worked on improving the original design with the Brotherhood, instead of the one improved smelter we did get.

 

[soulcake]

@soulcake, in the event that we have Compressed the Adamant Maker combo and make a new Adamant production combo out of it, would the MR Purification / Adamant Maker combo be rendered redundant / obsolete?

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No in-depth comment, but Master Runes are rarely ever rendered Redundant.

We are, as far as I can tell, not really charging for the limbs. Which makes sense, we have lots of money, and someone missing body parts will have a harder time making money. Not impossible, but harder. So charging money doesn't work.

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I'm pretty sure that if any Dwarf couldn't pay for their prosthetics, their Clan did on their behalf, because that's what Clans do. Any Clanless who need them probably get help from the Cult of Valaya instead, since that seems like something they would do.

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This ^

@soulcake, question: if Orri Silverbrow gets it in his head to reverse-engineer Forged Limb and start making prosthetics himself, is that likely to come back on us?

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Only if Orri didn't make it clear he'd cracked it on his own, which is what many will assume regardless. Besides, if there are enough differences in effect it should be noticeable and recordable, though any differences may be seen as being substandard and- yeuch it gets weird. The possibility exists, but it's unlikely.

As for this whole debacle over the Master Rune and the Smelters.

Making Smelters and testing combos using them leads to the question "Why are you frivolously using these Master Runes in what is essentially experimentation." Runelords are competent and reasonable enough to not make something as significant as a Master Rune without deliberate purpose. So the experimentation excuse rings hollow given the resource costs of making a Master Rune and the fact that Snorri ought to know better.

As for the secrecy of the Runelords not revealing whether they're spamming Master Runes, well. Snorri would know, and that's enough to put a kibosh on that.

Pls no more sniping at eachother before it escalates. @TehChron please stop being cheeky, both @SuperSonicSound and @Alratan please stop trying to find ways around spamming Master Runes and Smelters.

 

[ArchAIngel]

Well, that makes sense, then! Solves a LOT of the issues I had thought we'd accidentally stumbled into. Guess that's what I get for posting at 10 in the morning after going to bed at 6!

Apologies for bothering you.

 

[Robotninja]

Making Smelters and testing combos using them leads to the question "Why are you frivolously using these Master Runes in what is essentially experimentation." Runelords are competent and reasonable enough to not make something as significant as a Master Rune without deliberate purpose. So the experimentation excuse rings hollow given the resource costs of making a Master Rune and the fact that Snorri ought to know better.

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Once we know more about alchemy, is it possible for us to make smelters with the purpose of alchemical purification of specific stuff using new rune combos?

 

[soulcake]

Once we know more about alchemy, is it possible for us to make smelters with the purpose of alchemical purification of specific stuff using new rune combos?

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Try it and find out!

(Holy moly now I think I get why QMs post this phrase so often.)

 

[Robotninja]

Try it and find out!

(Holy moly now I think I get why QMs post this phrase so often.)

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Okay, better question. Would doing so be socially taboo/iffy? Because it would be for a very new purpose compared to previous smelters.

 

[Ptolemy03]

@Robotninja that's iffy. But I think, personally that since we are not actually using runes, no one
can actually complain since we are using a completely (relatively) new science to test things. I.e. we are not using the knowledge of any of the guilds therefore they cant really complain

 

[LightLan]

Okay, better question. Would doing so be socially taboo/iffy? Because it would be for a very new purpose compared to previous smelters.

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Learning about alchemy definitely isn't.

Making an entirely new and improved smelter also isn't, if alchemy would allow for that.
Though still only one of those new improved ones a century I'd guess.

 

[ArchAIngel]

That would almost certainly depend on how Alchemy actually rolls out, really, so until we know Eltharin and have more magical books of magic magic to read, I'd say that's a "We dunno yet".

Like, remember Azakit isn't even unlocked yet. We have no idea how it works.