I got a little ahead of myself in saying that humans killing all the instigators would cause shame. After all, the Sisters of Twilight and Ariel did most of the work against the Avatar of Anath Raema, by far. Frederick just took advantage of her weakest moment.
In a way his successful blasphemy is a bigger deal than the killing blow.
Continuing the debate regarding Protagonist Agency after @torroar put his two cents in would probably be in poor taste and generally not useful for discussion, but I do feel a bit misrepresented, most likely due to my own inabitility to make my point across.
Yes, other events are happening in the wider world with no Hohenzollern participance. Quite a few of them, actually. That's awesome. I always applauded and highly valued that particular part of this quest's worldbuilding.
My issue was and remains with the predominant role that Hohenzollerns have in those conflicts they do participate in, when those conflicts are massive/high level enough that Hohenzollerns objectivelly really shouldn't take the centre stage.
One can argue that it's in the very nature of quests, and to a point they would be right.
Though, I would argue, that just doing one's part and making a contribution to the bigger picture, if written correctly, is sufficient enough to generate feelings of triumph and overcoming obstacles, without needing the protagonist to take the centre spot even on the biggest stages.
And it would add to depth and vibrancy of the world.
One could also argue that it's up to taste.
And... I can sorta see that and accept it. It's my own preference, and something that I truly think makes stories better, but it may very well be just a preference.
Look man I like Branko Ćopić as much as the next person living in Serbia, but if you want that sort of story you are in the wrong @torroar quest. See here for something with more distributed perspectives: From the Brink : Blood Ravens Quest [Warhammer 40k]
To Both Anath Raema and the Asrai I imagine. Nobody wants to see their demigod getting his gonads burned and killed by a human turned into monstrous beast, regardless of whose teats current Orion prefers over the other
Well I suspect most of them would want to keep their distance, you know with the whole "he set my dick on fucking fire" thing.
There's picking a fight and then there's choosing your battles, and if you don't have to fight the guy who set your genitalia on fire for his opening move you probably won't.
I got a little ahead of myself in saying that humans killing all the instigators would cause shame. After all, the Sisters of Twilight and Ariel did most of the work against the Avatar of Anath Raema, by far. Frederick just took advantage of her weakest moment.
You are correct. I've made corrections to the kill list accordingly:
Orion, Avatar of Kurnous, Apex of the Savage Hunt, Twisted King of the Bloodstrewn Woods [Credit Shared With Eldyra of Tiranoc, Araloth the Bold of Talsyn]
Vorteshka Flayerblade, Avatar of Anath Ramea, High Priestess of the Savage Hunt, Ur-Shade of Naggaroth [Credit Shared With Eldyra of Tiranoc, the Sisters of Twilight]
Drycha, Briarmaven of Woe, Handmaiden of Coeddil, Eldest And Most Malice-filled Dryad of Athel Loren [Credit Shared With Eldyra of Tiranoc, Naieth the Prophetess]
And the Asarai, presumably, are going to create additional safeguards this time considering how bad things got. I wonder if they'll make that duel between Araloth and Orion a tradition. Every time he's reborn, before he starts the Wild Hunt, he has to fight one of the greatest champions of the Asarai in front of dozens of witnesses. While he's at his weakest. That would make hiding serious issues quite difficult I would imagine.
GW REALLY pushed Chaos hard in the last Editions, because they wanted to destroy the Setting and move on to AoS. So, Chaos got the God-Sue-Mode Treatment and effortlessly wiped out the World.
Of course, none of the longtime Fans were really buying it. The Order Factions had stood and fought for so long against Chaos. And suddenly they just keel over and die? What should've been an epic Struggle for Chaos instead became 'Super Easy, barely an Inconvenience.' The Forces of Orders unceremonious defeat just felt forced. As one Guy put it, Chaos didn't even get to look cool while destroying the World in The End Times.
Anyway, point is: Chaos is NOT inevitably victorious in the World of this @torroar Quest. Yes, they are incredibly powerful. Yes, they are a huge Threat. Yes, they CAN win and destroy the World POTENTIALLY. Yes, the will exist far beyond the Liftime of Frederick and many, MANY of his Descendants.
But their Victory is not inevitable. They can suffer setback and even clear defeats. They can be hurt. They can bleed. And perhaps, maybe, far off in the distant Future...they can die.
Another great vortex perhaps, how about attacking the chaos wastes, going further into the warp itself to slaughter them. Wait no.
The Old Ones couldn't do it, the elves and dwarves at the height of their golden ages couldn't do that, the best they could manage is the Vortex which delays them, but doesn't stop them at all. And since those times the dwarves, elves lizardmen etc. have only grown weaker, and at least in the old world humans haven't even got close to the strength required to replace them, while every year the chaos wastes grow that little bit bigger, more chaos cults are established and chaos's patsies like the dark elves and skaven become an ever more dire threat.
I agree GW decided to wank chaos to the Nth degree, but this arrangement since long before GW'ds decided chaos was its favourite faction. This has been the arrangement since the earliest editions, that chaos can be staved off, but never suffer a true defeat and never be truly defeated.
Should it be easy no, but as far as I can tell the difference currently is "will chaos be the one to destroy the vortex, or will their greatest and most dedicated servant Malekeith do it for them."
the the tribes that would form the empire were there long before Sigmar was born in a time were the old world was covered in forests that had been left with no over site by the elves or the dwarfs on acount of the war of the beard which means the beast men infestation back then would have likely matched or exceeded the Drakwald that those tribes had some how manage to carve out land from the monsters to settle shows that the best men's iron grip can be severed
as for Sigmar and his purges to be fair to the guy the list of shit he had to deal with was frankly absurd he purged the green skins to the point it took them a thousand years to recover , he raided Norsica so hard that an ever chosen showed up to try stop him which he crushed as for Drakenfell in canon he came back after Magnus dealt with him a few hundred years later during the era of Karl Franz so its perfectly possible that Sigmar did deal with Drakenfells but he just came back to life a centuries later and in regards to Zacharius I have two theories the first is that after Sigmar kicked Nagash's ass Zacharius was so rightfully scared that he kept his head down and did every thing in his considerable power to stay low enough on Sigmar's shit list hoping that he would die of old age before his turn came , the other theory is that Sigmar's bloody campaigns had depleted the empire so much that by the time Zacharius's name came up on his shit list he was forced to wait until the population recovered enough for another major war by which point he ended up going on his long walk and the issue kept being delayed
in regards to the best men question about the point in purging them .... its to keep them from being a threat to explain so long as the green moon comes new beast men will be created no matter what but so long as the beast men are consistently purged in such an effective and organized way that more beast men die every year than are created even if it takes years , decades or centuries the beast men as a faction will be rendered into a non entity no matter how powerful there heroes are whiteout armies they are no were near as dangerous as they could be and as the beast men numbers dim and the human population rises the lands they once stalked would be settled ,fortified and patrolled eventually reaching the point were there is no land left were beast men could form without running into a patrol of men not to soon after to cull them
as to your claim that the beast men are organized well to this I say that the beast men oppose order and organization in all thing on a fundamental level as a consequence of being creatures born of chaos examples of this are shown in there refusal to indulge in even basic construction unless an extremely power full beast lord is standing over there heads making it clear in no uncertain terms what his going to do to them if the don;t get to work and even then the best they can do are cartoonishly shity siege ladders and crappy chariots , another example is that when a beast lord gets injured in battle almost every other beast men leader under him will from some thing that resembles a line (if you squint at it)thinking they could challenge him for leadership due to his less than 100% state and if the winner of the fight looks weakened enough the disorganized sort of line will only get bigger so best men herds have a hobby of falling apart at the seems even when the win , the green skins and the Skaven have better claims to being organized , cohesive and unified than the beast men could ever be and my final examble comes from the table top were the best men army has a special rule were almost every unit can deploy via ambush but you have to roll for the unit to actually show up at the intended position on time and more often than not the unit will show up at either the wrong place and/or time and some times they wont show up at all does that look like an organized army to you
And going by Ostland at least in this quest, its pretty damn clear that it was a terrible time. Utterly awful, horrific, with civilisations barely clinging on day to day and could indeed be lost day to day, a situation to my knowledge shared across human territories with the exception of places like Middenland and Tababecland only because they got themselves fantastic defensive positions on top of a giant mountain and in a giant crater respectively.
And then at least Middenland were apparently dicks to everyone else about it.
So no it shows that humans can eek out a terrible, painful, scary depressing living in little clearings surrounded by nearly unmatched horrors, being treated as food and play things.
Slight correction to myself, Magnus in canon never met Drachenfel, but Sigmar apparently did once and was able to beat him, but did not even come close to killing him. I'd disagree. Far more likely Sigmar was stretched to his limits trying to get 13 distinct peoples all of whom had long histories of hating each other with blind frothing at the mouth intensity, who had only just been taught how to use iron to not kill each other, in the middle of desperately fending off one threat or another.
I'm very well aware of how beastmen work, but as nicely pointed out by a map
Its not ****ing option. Because not only would it require infinitely more men and resources to patrol everything, well congratulations new bands will just move the fuck in.
The solution to beastmen is to burn the damn forests down, give them no where to hide, but I don't fancy suggesting that option to the trees.
And yet this faction routinely fucks up the wood elves, burninates itself across the old world etc.
Because they're the orks without any of the humour, they're disdaineful of civilisation because they have no need of it, their internal struggles only produce "better" leaders by their metrics of who can pillage the most shit. They routinely cause more attrition to the empire than nearly every other foe combined and perhaps in a setting where we would say be able to industrialized then yeah we could potentially keep that down...
You are correct. I've made corrections to the kill list accordingly:
Orion, Avatar of Kurnous, Apex of the Savage Hunt, Twisted King of the Bloodstrewn Woods [Credit Shared With Eldyra of Tiranoc, Araloth the Bold of Talsyn]
You are correct. I've made corrections to the kill list accordingly:
Vorteshka Flayerblade, Avatar of Anath Ramea, High Priestess of the Savage Hunt, Ur-Shade of Naggaroth [Credit Shared With Eldyra of Tiranoc, the Sisters of Twilight]
Another great vortex perhaps, how about attacking the chaos wastes, going further into the warp itself to slaughter them. Wait no.
The Old Ones couldn't do it, the elves and dwarves at the height of their golden ages couldn't do that, the best they could manage is the Vortex which delays them, but doesn't stop them at all. And since those times the dwarves, elves lizardmen etc. have only grown weaker, and at least in the old world humans haven't even got close to the strength required to replace them, while every year the chaos wastes grow that little bit bigger, more chaos cults are established and chaos's patsies like the dark elves and skaven become an ever more dire threat.
I agree GW decided to wank chaos to the Nth degree, but this arrangement since long before GW'ds decided chaos was its favourite faction. This has been the arrangement since the earliest editions, that chaos can be staved off, but never suffer a true defeat and never be truly defeated.
Should it be easy no, but as far as I can tell the difference currently is "will chaos be the one to destroy the vortex, or will their greatest and most dedicated servant Malekeith do it for them."
No offense, but I'm starting to agree with Others who said it: Your constant Pessimism is getting grating.
Apparently, we can't even be glad about the Victory we had today. NOOOO, everything must be doom and gloom! According to you, we apparently should feel no joy or pride in what we accomplished - which was some BIG things, by the way - because it will be all for nothing anyway.
And yes, in CANON Chaos' Victory may always have been inevitable. But this isn't Canon. This is a Quest by @torroar. I highly doubt that the eventual Ending has to be 'And then Chaos won. THE END!!' in this Story.
Any General Hostility to negative comments here is absolutely not on your behavior. It's... well, you put it best. You can't control how other people read your stuff.
I'd like to think that your previous two posts that you linked here helped me in my writing. Of course, maybe some people think that I didn't change enough or at all or whatever, but I certainly thought about the things you said.
Either way, thanks for reading and offering what you could, and I accept the reasoning behind your decision.
At this rate I'm half expecting there to be a literal spirit or pseudo-daemon (not of Chaos) of rage within Frederick akin to the Beast of Darkness for Guts. It's even been referred to directly in the fight against Orion.
Hopefully less indiscriminate than the one I compared it to, in the event such is the case.
I feel when Orion is back and kicking he's going to take his humiliation death very hard and probably not want to even mention it to anyone or anybody he would probably take it to not underestimate mortal ever again it had hurt his ego to the point of fracture I think
Or the way we've sort of adopted Eldyra as Cool Young Elf in the Laurelorn updates; she's the likeable and helpful secondary character who's definitely making herself useful, but she's not really the center of events.
Eldyra is the elf equivalent of a YA protagonist, she owns bones, but the quest isn't written from her perspective so we didn't get paragraphs dedicated to her saving Araloth from Orion or how she managed to drive Orion back and wound him before Anath Raema interfered.
(On another note, given how Orion demanded that he was to be killed after he found himself driven to lesser madness before, I assume he wouldn't seek revenge on Frederick for killing him)
This is one of the first times I've seen Frederick coming close to boasting, when he gets fed up with being led around by Naieth and Sunweaver failing to get anything accomplished. And I say "close" because it was more a tool he used than something that drove him, as true boasting is based on.
Let's focus in on Karak Ungor, for the purposes of this answer.
It might be surprising to hear it, but Frederick didn't take center stage, for the most part. He just happened to be there in the sections that involved him.
The fight against Skulltaker was a note on the side compared to Thorgrim killing Grishgak, the Warlord of Red Eye Mountain, while over in that one tower, Frederick+Ungrim fought Skulltaker. In the running in the tunnels after the escape from the Chaos Dwarf compound, which involved the White Dwarf breaking out the moment there was a distraction. As in, Frederick could have entirely failed in his escape attempt, and Grombrindal could have escaped due to the ritual drawing the CD's away to watch. For most part, Frederick was a companion to the Real Protagonist, if it were a BL novel, being Thorgrim himself. Thorgrim fought off Grishgak on his arachnarok in a grand duel before the armies, Thorgrim killed a member of the Council of 13, Thorgrim led the armies and organized the Throng and made the tactical decisions. He just happened to have some human aid that came in on the side, who at most would have gotten a few notes here and there amongst paragraphs and paragraphs of him juggling Traditionalists and Radicals amongst the dawi as well as negotiating with other nobles and thanes.
Before Karak Ungor, there was the Battle of the Bone Gate. There, Frederick killed Warhoof, yes.
But he didn't need to. Narariel had already rallied her troops, and was assaulting the Bone Gate itself. Frederick could have remained inside the Pulverizer circle and Warhoof would have escaped, all while Narariel shattered the Bone Gate and routed the beastmen. Frederick's fight with Warhoof was somewhat important, yes, but not to the overall progress of the greater battle.
If Skulltaker had won against Frederick, Roland, and Ungrim, he would have then fought against Thorgrim, Garagrim, Kragg and all the others, and would likely have lost as they ganged up on him. If Ghorros had killed Frederick, Laurelorn still would have won as they broke the Bone Gate.
I think the problem here is that in my opinion the Hohenzollerns aren't taking center stage at all, but that they're just performing on the Hohenzollern Stage. Where it seems, by virtue of the writing, that Frederick or another Hohenzollern are most prominent. But the Hohenzollern Stage is just one plate spinning amongst many, and it is by the own concept of the quest that the players are focused on just that one plate. It isn't that the other plates aren't spinning, that the other players aren't acting on their own stages, it's just that the viewpoint is for the most part on one plate. You said that it should be fine if one is just making a contribution without taking the center stage. Well, that's exactly what happened...from the perspective of Naraiel Dawnstone in Laurelorn Quest, and Thorgrim in the Grudgebearer Quest, and so on. To them, he helped, but the most important things (rallying the troops, routing the beastmen, breaking the Bone Gate / leading the Throng, reclaiming the hammer, killing first Doomclaw and then Grishgak) were done entirely by them! It just happened that a human was present, and he was fighting off to the side, and did some stuff, and happened to accompany them here and there.
I think we'll just have to agree to disagree, because to me it feels like you're talking about something that is already happening but to you it isn't, and I think that that's just coming down to a matter of differing perspectives as writer/reader and not one that is going to be 'fixed' if that's even the right word for it. Sorry man. I just get the feeling that this conversation in particular is going to be an endless spiral, and not one I really want to involve myself in anymore. So if we could move on, that would be great. If not...sorry again?
According to you, we apparently should feel no joy or pride in what we accomplished - which was some BIG things, by the way - because it will be all for nothing anyway.
I ask you to retract that statement and because I never said it.
My blathering has had nothing to do with this entire situation I too am elated by it.
Disagreement is fine, even encouraged I want people to prove me wrong. However, do not put words into my mouth, that I can't abide.
Anyway, as for the pessimism, yes I have a very pessimistic view of most things so when I look at the facts on the table, look at the fact that victory against chaos has never been an option ever even before GW starting being a bunch of morons, what conclusion am I to draw?
That the GM will give us one? Maybe he will, but I'm not going to hold out hope of being given one for fairness sake and I'm not comfortable making assumptions about how he'd even come up with a how, since there's basically nothing in canon to draw from that I know of.
So perhaps instead of getting huffy, instead you can try and rebut me? Balls in your court as it were, I gave most of what I could to disagree with your opinion, now please, answer it beyond the blithe assumption that there's some method of actually hurting them which apparently nobody in the past 6000 years thought of.
And no the ending doesn't have to be then chaos won the end, there's a lot of horrible monsters who can get a game over on the order factions.
Ultimately this is a problem of GW that torroar is trying to make work as best he can, but its their damn fault for making effectively all their enemy factions work by dark matter generator logic while only rarely talking up the order factions beyond emphasising how shit they are compared to how they were.
