Warhammer Fantasy: A Dynasty of Dynamic Alcoholism

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torroar said:
"But there is another way! This!" She points at the criminal.

Or rather, at the familiar thick but incredibly squat cylinder which has been strapped to the man's chest with four cloth bands tied to the corners.

"Is a boomdisc! Another invention of mine! You do not need to know how to fix it! You do not need to use your hands – if you've even got the things – to use it!"

Only now does Anna walk back to behind her ice wall, the other engineers scurrying to do the same.

"All you must do!"

She raises a hand and a single, long, curved piece of ice forms in her hand that goes around the shield and towards the man.

"Is to reach! Your! Enemy!"

Then she jiggles the stick, it presses against the boomdisc's top which is now facing outwards from the man's chest, and it detonates. The boom shocks and startles some of the Flagellants, but not a single one of them looks away or blinks. Whoever the man had been, he is no longer. Everything above the thigh is gone, spread out across the area or destroyed outright. His smoking legs collapse to the ground, and the rope is now broken and singed again. It will require replacement, no doubt. Anna just looks amongst the Flagellants, who stand enraptured from the display.
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Of course it'd be Anna who'd invent suicide bombers. I don't know what's worse, the innumerable memes I can't post here, or the fact that other factions will copy us.

Honestly, most users on this site grew up in the time of the War On Terror, and are well-exposed to the horrors of suicide bombers. And between the ones who laugh and the ones who remain disgusted, there's more of the latter here. I'd possibly go so far as to say even having them exist in-setting is pretty unpalatable. I know you've talked about how modern military thinking is incompatible with Warhammer Fantasy because everyone in the Empire has to fight and die to the last man, but this is something where real-world politics are something we don't want reflected in the story.
Cjdavis103 said:
Seriously after everything he's been through at this point and the lady is still stringing him along? I'm fairly certain he's done more than most grail knights have done in their entire lives twice over.

At this point he's a human Gotrek whom just lost his Felix right after he asked her to grant them safety.
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Roland's musing about a blood curse isn't too far off the point. The terms the Lady set for his Grail Quest were never intended to be this excessive, hell, The Lady even tried to promote him to Grail Knight back in Mountain Vietnam. But she couldn't actually reach him to make the moment happen. The depths and other divine/Chaos shenanigans penalized Roland's rolls to reach theGrail so heavily they basically blocked her out. When he left on his Quest, Roland swore to fix his homeland and remove the stain upon his family's honor. But every second his son exists, every time that brat somehow manages to slip away or chose running over killing Roland, that stain deepens. Roland and The Lady basically agreed to a contract. They both have to follow through with it because Honor Is God in Bretonnia. Neither can Roland just run the kid down, because mono-focusing on the goal to the point of leaving others to suffer goes against honor and chivalry. Roland is obliged to help others, to be kind to those the rest of the world tramples over, to never abandon a comrade in arms. So when the terms have utterly spiraled out of proportion to the original intent, both Roland and The Lady have to see this through.
 
Look, if you accept the existence and military use of flagellants, there is no material reason to discourage this. They are already a suicide bomber, just a very inefficient one. It is explicitly called out in the text that they are:
A: volunteers
And b: extraordinarily unsuited to doing any kind of military action.
This mitigates point b.
They were already going to die, but now they will accomplish more than charging a spearwall with a knife and the rags on their backs.
Though this will require a fairly sweeping redesign of doctrine on flagellants. They're not just a tarpit unit anymore.
 
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The only difference between someone without care for their life flailing about with an axe or explosives Is scale, not any hard moral line.

Plus… at least one other faction already practices suicide bombers. We're not exactly the first- what's a doom diver?
 
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All for using bombs. Fighting druchii? Those people are dead. Bombs just let them take more with them.
In fact, wait no- those people are worse than dead. Any one taken will be brought to pain that only most hardcore of morrites would endure, and then beyond.

Of course, both taking flagellants and strapping bombs onto them won't do well for our reputation... but it's better to live with some stains on your honor than to die "honorably".
 
Shine said:
Some of these people can't even walk properly. Some of them don't even have all four limbs and all five senses, and no matter what we do or say, they will insist on rushing the enemy in a wailing mass. I agree it is quite dark, but if we're already at the point of blatantly weaponising them and focusing them for our fights, it only feels right to make sure they can actually do….

anything, really, beyond occupy a dark elf for approximately one swordstroke.
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I don't agree with that. If you want to weaponize them so bad, then give them military surplus gear instead. Attach a few more Sigmarite warrior priests alongside them, to let them die alongside a man of faith and with symbols of their god.

This, this just feels like taking an easy option. And with justifications of "Well, they're in a shit situation mind/body/spirit-wise" "We're in a dread situation of incoming war" "And this just makes them better at this".

There's more to this choice than just deciding to make better Flagellants. It's... it's also like looking and somebody and deciding about the best way to use their suicide. Not just about how best to dearly sell the lives of your men -- because you know some people are going to die -- but how best to use a suicidal man. And on a moderately big scale; because you get thousands of Flagellants.

This isn't like sending a score of people on a suicide mission to blow up an enemy depot. Nor like telling a knightly order to hold the line/break through the enemy no matter what/die well because we desperately need to win or survive this battle. This is more... planned. More cold-blooded. And that matters, I feel.


I also disagree with the idea of just "Well, this idea got brought up, so hey we should just go for it as otherwise it's a waste right?" ... I probably worded that badly, or at least, didn't word that to really get across what I was trying to... Hmm. ... I don't agree with the "it's a fait accompli" framing of this thing? That, the idea that this isn't something you can decide to reject on good grounds?
Shine said:
Edit: More or less, the line was crossed as soon as we rallied them- no matter what, these people have placed their lives in our hands, and it's lives we will have to cash in. It falls on us to make sure, utterly wretched fighters these people are, that said lives are at least not wasted.
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Ah. And here we go. "The line was already crossed, and so we might as well do this."

That is an argument line I dislike, and wanted to fight against and address. Because drawing lines is important. And if a line is crossed, it's valid to fight against that crossing and to go back against it. When it comes to ethics, morals, religion, good and evil. ((Probably too general a point here. Not specific enough. But, oh well.))

I don't agree with the idea that choices can't make a moral situation like this sort of one, worse or more morally fraught, you know? Or, like, I think there are more far-reaching things involved! That is, that a choice like this could have consequences not just for this one situation, but also in the future. That, sure, maybe it's not quite so bad to give bombs to Flagellants, in this particular situation and this particular battle... but I don't like approving this idea because who knows what might grow of it? As I said in my previous post. It might be Flagellants now, but it might be something else later.

Or maybe it won't grow much. Maybe it will just mean that future rulers or Generals are more eager to look at Flagellants and go "You know, we've made Flagellants kind of useful, haven't we? They're a disposable force that still hurts the enemy..." and decide not to improve quality of life for the people as much, or try to provide succor to Flagellants or try to convince Flagellants to stop being Flagellants, because they are now useful. And so, where somebody in the future might have tried to make an effort to provide spiritual healing to Flagellants? Instead, they don't want to, because Flagellants are useful to Ostland, rather than being a very ill and tragic fate for some people.

Beware what you give incentives to, basically. Or beware who you might inspire or give ideas to. It took a mind like Anna to think up something like this, while both Frederick and his wife and Urgdug all went "Daaamn!" at it and hated it. Karola would hate it even more. Ortrud probably wouldn't, though.
 
Ah, fuck this shit...
This is the same freaking thing as with the Ogres. Once we create something, there's nothing stopping everyone else from doing it. We made Thunderbringers and the freakinf Ogres of all people copied us. Think the Destro factions won't be using this to their own advantage? Not sure about you, but I'm not going to enjoy Chaos Cultist suicide bombings.

Voting yes means that we create a wholly new concept. Something anyone with a braincell can understand and copy.

Let's just.... not.
Not interested in Doomdiver suicide bombers. Or anything related really.

Chaos has more expandable garbage troops to exploit this strategy then we do.
 
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For the record, exploding troops exist in Warhammer already.

Bloated Corpses and Explosive Squigs and certain Chaos Cultists/Sacrifices and some Druchii Shackled. The former are from TWW, the squigs are actually Anna's inspiration, the third are obvious, the fourth are just a natural extension of Druchii cruelty. The squigs showed up in the Dwarf Rumor Mills. When greenskins were feeding them warpstone and throwing them in the then-Badlands. Even before that, some varieties exist thanks to certain mushroom concoctions and are utilized by night goblins. Additionally, Anna's plan isn't to arm all of the Flagellants, just some.

The plan is to arm the third rank in the mob, so that the first two explicitly soak up potential things like crossbow volleys/first gouts of hydra fire/tarpit Sisters of Slaughter/mob other melee troops that would not take kindly to Druchii shooting into their number during an involved clash. Plus, the mined ones are not going to be bare chested, they'll have sack cloth and what not draped on them. Outwardly, look like the rest of the crazies.

But again, it's only a potential thing.

You can literally see a Chaos Sacrificial bomb person in the Roland interludes immediately preceding the main update post. Serana betrayed her father because she had an inmate compulsion for that sort of thing.
 
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Actually @torroar Bloated Corpses were created by GW in the White Dwarf catalog that introduced the Vampire Coast units, they weren't invented by CA for TWW.
Czes said:
Ah, fuck this shit...
This is the same freaking shot as with the Ogres. Once we create something, there's nothing stopping everyone else from doing it. We made Thunderbringers and the freakinf Ogres of all people copied us. Think the Destro factions won't be using this to their own advantage? Not sure about you, but I'm not going to enjoy Chaos Cultist suicide bombings.

Voting yes means that we create a wholly new concept. Something anyone with a braincell can understand and copy.

Let's just.... not.
Not interested in Doomdiver suicide bombers. Or anything related really.
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Ogres would have done it anyway, they're Ogres.

Greenskins already have explosive artillery via modified squigs.

The idea that we shouldn't make something because our enemies will adapt is a fallacy that just mires us in stagnation. I'm not saying we should leap on this, but this argument is predicated on self-destructive views.
 
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EVA-Saiyajin said:
The idea that we shouldn't make something because our enemies will adapt is a fallacy that just mires us in stagnation. I'm not saying we should leap on this, but this argument is predicated on self-destructive views.
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It's predicated to limit ourselves things that cannot be easily copied. Like technology hard to produce without an industrial base.

But yeah. As long as this doesn't create suicide bombing cultists, my prior argument is moot.
 
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Also, and thought this was known, but Thunderbringers are y'all just pre-empting the canonical Ogre Kingdoms unit known as Leadbelchers. So that's not something you created from the ether that otherwise would never have come about. The Leadbelcher Ogre Unit canonically happened when some ogres raided an Imperial artillery column, but some years in the future. I wanna say there was a lotta timeline issues, but that it was somewhere in the 2400s? Something like that.
 
In regards to the Knights.
Those without horses come to Salkaten.
Those with horses act as a quick response force against potential raiders or deep strikes out of Jegow. That's my immediate idea.
 
Realistically few factions that we'd be concerned with have access to explosives in amounts required to make destro suicide bombers in too concerning amounts (at least ones that wouldn't do it anyway, Chaos doesn't need us to think this for them, they'd do it on a more civilian terrorism level easily)

And, not to put too fine a point on it, but this is do or die time, every dead drucchi is a victory, we need the maximum possible use of all our soldiers, else Sakalten falls and the drucchi have free reign over the province while we are left open to the beastman attack
 
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Garlak said:
If you want to weaponize them so bad, then give them military surplus gear instead. Attach a few more Sigmarite warrior priests alongside them, to let them die alongside a man of faith and with symbols of their god.
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If only we could.
The fanatics are explicitly called out to include a significant minority of outright cripples. They have no skill, and we have no armour for them. Additionally, while I wouldn't mind attaching a priest to them, they are, bluntly put, the *last* people who need it- especially with their lifespan measured in hours.

There aren't many ways to enable the dying and crippled to fight. The more intact ones, I can only hope we find spare spears in our armouries, but the ones down eyes, hands, their general health… they will die, and it would be utterly pointless too.
Garlak said:
This, this just feels like taking an easy option
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That's the point.
We're not doing this because it's hard, we're doing this because we know it will work.

Garlak said:
This isn't like sending a score of people on a suicide mission to blow up an enemy depot. Nor like telling a knightly order to hold the line/break through the enemy no matter what/die well because we desperately need to win or survive this battle. This is more... planned. More cold-blooded. And that matters, I feel.
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mm… you're right that this is different. I prefer spending already dead followers than living ones.
Since the beginning of armies, and until the end of mass armed conflict, generals have and always will have to openly spend lives. Call it cold, and you're not wrong… but spending people's lives and accepting their deaths won't ever go away. It's better to do it for those already near certainly dead, for the sake of those not going to blatantly and nearly pointlessly die.

Garlak said:
Or maybe it won't grow much. Maybe it will just mean that future rulers or Generals are more eager to look at Flagellants and go "You know, we've made Flagellants kind of useful, haven't we? They're a disposable force that still hurts the enemy..." and decide not to improve quality of life for the people as much, or try to provide succor to Flagellants or try to convince Flagellants to stop being Flagellants, because they are now useful. And so, where somebody in the future might have tried to make an effort to provide spiritual healing to Flagellants? Instead, they don't want to, because Flagellants are useful to Ostland, rather than being a very ill and tragic fate for some people.
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……
yeah, there's nothing really I can say to that. In my opinion, every fanatic who sells their life more dearly rather than die piteously and pathetically is a victory, but nor can I say you are wrong.

I hope not- flagellants are just a terrible military force in general, if nothing else- but that doesn't make you wrong.
 
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So it's already a thing, and the tactical issues of having living bombs that can be set off by the enemy ala in TWW is being accounted for. So those at least aren't viable arguments against it.

Frankly speaking I'm getting more inclined to it by dint of the erroneous arguments against it, which is a little disappointing.

PurposefulZephyr said:
Evangeline would certainly disagree.
And if using flagellants wouldn't hurt our general reputation, using suicide bombers could be taken with similar revulsion Frederick and Natasha had.
Not that I consider it a sizable or even a noticeable blow to our reputation, but it's potentially there.
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torroar said:
Nah.

I can give you this one for free, no coy vagueness.

Flagellants, insane religious zealots, are baked into the Imperial faction as a thing. Magnus the Pious has had flagellants in his forces, from the Great War Against Chaos, even, and there are plenty joining the journey south. In fact, your potential Ostland pool of flagellants is already halved due to the GT and multiple ALs calling them to go south and fulfill ancient religious obligations to the dawi. Oh you'll need to keep reins on them, for sure though. Less than you'd think though thanks to Frederick's blessings and prior dwarf related deeds.
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Evangeline would not disagree. Because there is a difference between a person knowingly and willingly molding someone into a crazy zealot and life making you one.

And remember how her direct superior is Magnus? Someone who had flagellants in his army in the Great War against Chaos?
 
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PurposefulZephyr said:
using suicide bombers could be taken with similar revulsion Frederick and Natasha had.
Not that I consider it a sizable or even a noticeable blow to our reputation, but it's potentially there.
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If the themselves ask for it though or even insist , then it sorts of mitigates any blowback cause flagellants gonna flagellant besides they are explicitly setting out to kill themselves and no amount of injury , malnutrition , lack of gear or training and any amount of pain is gonna stop them , so I am having a hard time seeing the moral argument against making them better at it at the cost of our enemies
 
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Yes, I know using flagellants is considered normal by most. But suicide bombers are only so far used by
torroar said:
Bloated Corpses and Explosive Squigs and certain Chaos Cultists/Sacrifices and some Druchii Shackled.
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which aren't exactly great comparisons.

Also, I am voting for using that. Just keeping in mind how it can shape potential public narratives about us. Especially people further south, who won't see nor care for our desperation in this fight. People like our southern rumorer.
 
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Sigmar, I want a priest to consult on this...
It doesn't seem wrong in the context of Warhammer per se, and that and it's military applications are the only reason why we are even considering this, but damn if it doesn't feel all kinds of wrong...
 
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torroar said:
cupping his bulging fat chin. "Thirteen? Yeah. Around there."
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DAMN SON! Would you look at that, ogre ready conscripts at below the usual human age recruitment. Imagine the reinforcement power!

New background for Urgdug: A Child Ogre Guard of Ostland Recruit (COGOR)

torroar said:
Another boom. It's getting closer, or rather, you seem to be.
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Here we go, here we go!
torroar said:
Another boom, this one now much closer. But you barely hear it, your mind consumed in thought.
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*Grips the screen!*
torroar said:
"Well-," Urgdug says before his eyes bug out as his fifteen foot height lets him see something
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Come on, Come on!

torroar said:
"As you can Gods' damned well see," Anna is saying, clear and cold without any passion despite the regular vulgarity. "Such is the result. Fucking imagine, then, what it can do for you bastards. We- ah. Father."
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Awwww… wait, she's using the flagellants as test subjects!?
torroar said:
"But how can you kill the Druchii, if they are so much faster, so much stronger, faster?" Anna continues. "I!" she points a thumb at herself, "Know how!"

"Teach us!"

"Tell us!"

"Sigmar praise you, tell us please!"
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Welp



torroar said:
Or rather, at the familiar thick but incredibly squat cylinder which has been strapped to the man's chest with four cloth bands tied to the corners.
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By the gods we have done it! We have formalised the suicide bombers over Araby! Succ it!

torroar said:
"I could not ask that of you, let alone that they might not react well to agents of Ostland descending the length of the Empire to call upon them," he says, though his grimace now has to fight with a shy smile at the gesture.
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Future Dwarf Rumormill:

OSTLAND SPONSORS MOUSILLON RESTORATION BY SENDING THE LEGION OF ROLANDSSONS AND ROLANDSDOTTIRS!
 
Is there any difference between giving the Flagellants bombs and using them as a coastal tripwire force? Both are going to die but the latter seem to have a worse fate since they might be captured. Quite frankly the only moral choice I see here is the one to guarantee a quick death with the potential to kill the Druchii.
 
PurposefulZephyr said:
Yes, I know using flagellants is considered normal by most. But suicide bombers are only so far used by

which aren't exactly great comparisons.
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That line of thought applies to arcane magic, too. Just because it's used by others we oppose, doesn't make it intrinsically evil.
……Well, it is admittedly Suicide bombing. But if the fanatics are for it, then it's hard to answer why we shouldn't let them die more effectively.
 
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