Ghyan does concentrate in all water regardless of the season, it does seem odd they the Dark Gods never made anything of it.
Warhammer Fantasy: Divided Loyalties - an Advisor's Quest
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Ghyan does concentrate in all water regardless of the season, it does seem odd they the Dark Gods never made anything of it.
It flows with water, but I'm not sure it concentrates in it if it's stagnant, as stagnant water doesn't sustain that much life for that long. You might well find unusual Ghyran-Dhar swamp monsters though, but they're not as wide spread as the forest monsters, as there's less area of swamps than of marshes.
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Lakes are famously diverse and rich ecosystems, swamps too for that matter. Just because they do not favor human life does not mean there is no life in general.
The problem is Ghur naturally concentrates on living animals and Shyish naturally concentrates on corpses, both of which are materials for an army. Without a body of some kind to repurpose, the addition of Dhar to the magic is a lot less likely to create a stable construct instead of just an explosion of badness.
Aqshy concentrates on fire, and making a rapidly spreading Aqshy+Dhar fire is less likely to create an army than an omnidirectional inferno of destruction. So we never see them because either their creator or someone else has to take care of them quickly. The same likely goes for Ghyran+Dhar literal waves of toxicity and pestilence, but they also have the problem Nurgle tends to steal them because they are adjacent to him, and treemen are already a thing so you'd need to corrupt them to work that angle.
Chamon+Dhar would likely require a complicated clockwork contraption or some other kind of high tech to act as the body, so expect the Skaven to invent it any day now, but they haven't gotten around to it yet.
Aqshy concentrates on fire, and making a rapidly spreading Aqshy+Dhar fire is less likely to create an army than an omnidirectional inferno of destruction. So we never see them because either their creator or someone else has to take care of them quickly. The same likely goes for Ghyran+Dhar literal waves of toxicity and pestilence, but they also have the problem Nurgle tends to steal them because they are adjacent to him, and treemen are already a thing so you'd need to corrupt them to work that angle.
Chamon+Dhar would likely require a complicated clockwork contraption or some other kind of high tech to act as the body, so expect the Skaven to invent it any day now, but they haven't gotten around to it yet.
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deathofrats0808
Don’t think of it as dying; just as leaving early
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The Grey Men don't seem to be universally hostile enough to be Dhar based.
Codex
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Looking back, I find this quite funny in hindsight.
Yes, 4000 of the initial 10k adventurers who joined the Expedition ended up dying, but those who survived became some of the most loyal Dwarf Friends out there, standing side by side with the Dwarves as the Undumgi. I love it when the whims of the dice and good storytelling makes me look back and snicker at how wrong a character is in the grand scheme of things.
TimEd
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He was right though. He had control over troop placement, and ensured the greedy and the assholes were placed in the meatgrinder at the bloodiest time. We intentionally left the issue to him, since I think we had a minor AP crunch to deal with.
Also when we learned what group this dude is part of and what they regularly do, that just proved how right we were to trust him with that duty.
Codex
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Did Codrin Petrescu speak to all 10k of these people and make an accurate judgement over whether that person deserved to die or not? Certainly not. He wouldn't have had the time. The impression I'm getting is that he just sent the mercenaries as the frontline. We have absolutely no assurance that the ones who died were assholes.
In fact, it's more likely for good people to have died than the horrible ones. Horrible people will do anything to survive, but good people will try their best to hold the line. Codrin was betting that the majority, if not all, of the mercenaries deserved to die and therefore all of them would serve as the frontline and hopefully they'd all die.
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TimEd
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What I remember of the timeline of events is this.
His evaluation wasn't a spur of the moment thing. When Mathilde noticed the issue, she saw that Codrin was already aware of the problem and has already been working towards grouping the worst offenders together. Sure, there were probably good eggs there, but like what was quoted above, he was aiming to have as much bad eggs as possible die, rather than ensuring more of the good eggs lived. He tried his best to cut off the rot, and if some good meat got included, that was a worthy price to pay to ensure no rot remains.
Codex
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I reread those sections. Codrin had no conclusive proof or evidence of his statements, he just said them and we took him for his word. There was no realistic way for him to find out whether they deserved to die or not because by the time we talked to him about this, there was never a confrontation that those soldiers entered that they could realistically loot from. He had no effective proof and he simply said "I care about Stirlanders and Sylvanians, and these people have the possibility of making things worse for us, therefore they need to die".
He's never mentioned anything about worst offenders, just things about how he would ensure that as many of these people would die as possible. We could have interfered and actually looked at what method he was using to determine this, but we rightfully decided that we were busy with other things.
That's overly harsh. No, he can't individually interview every single person. But he can use whatever trusted supporters he has (and from our later talk, there were a good few using this as a way to get out of sylvania, and they'd be experienced in sussing out motivation), and he can judge groups as a whole and by their leaders (a mercenery band vs settlers, people known for discipline vs a group that made trouble before, etc), plus any notably problematic people (gossip and such).
If he's got 10 subordinates (he's probably got more) and groupsize is about 100 (which may be too large, but not by that much), then each man would only have to work through 10 groups. That's very much doable. You can fudge that number up and down, but it stays in the range where the journey would've given him enough time to get a decent grip on things.
Some good man in groups judged problematic may have died, and some bad men were not noticed (Kragg's dwarfening complicates things further, but not even Kragg knew he'd be doing that). But we have no reason to assume incompetence on his part, and some reasons that show he knows his stuff, so the assumption should be that he had could cause to believe there was a danger (the thread agreed), and that his actions were at least somewhat effective towards that goal. I don't think there's any indication he deliberately increased casualties, just who'd receive them first.
TimEd
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Yes, we had other things to do. So why would we bother doubting his judgement now? Especially since we now know that Codrin is a dedicated vampire hunter, who would rather continue with that mission (ie stay in Sylvania) rather than move out and enjoy his well earned rich rewards.
Exactly this. Someone was always bound to be left with the shit job of army meatshield, he just tried to make it so the assholes got that position when the worst of the fighting was about to happen.
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Codex
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I don't assume incompetence. I assume callousness. Codrin strikes me as a guy who's lived his whole life hunting Vampires, undead and necromancers, and people who live that lifestyle are often jaded and cynical to the degree that they find it easy to justify causing the deaths of thousands of people. I believe that he chose his "In Group" (Stirlanders and Sylvanians) and decided anyone outside that in-group in his command were worth less and therefore it's easy to justify putting them in places that get them killed. No realistic solution presents itself that would give him an accurate census of a group of 10k people he had never met before, even if he had 100 trusted followers (unlikely that it was that many, you don't survive long trusting that many people), covering 10k people that they had no connection with and finding out if they're worthy of death is unlikely.
deathofrats0808
Don’t think of it as dying; just as leaving early
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Or, how about we don't attempt to debate an incident that happened three years and nine and a half thousand pages ago. Whether Codrin was right or not to make that decision is irrelevant at this point. It happened. Those people are dead. There's little point debating it now when it can't be changed. I see you Omega. Hands off the keyboard!
TimEd
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You say that like this bit was a surprise to anyone at all. Even King Belegar knew just how dangerous gold can be when shown to the mercenaries. It's the entire reason why we picked that action where we hit that gold pile with Eye of the Beholder.
This is either not true, or it misses the point. At something like 20 supporters, groupsize of 50 means each man has to make a judgement about 10 groups. If you take 3 days for each, then within a month you'd have an overview, and could spent more time on specific groups as needed. So he definitely had enough time and manpower to get a rough idea, certainly more than "in-group vs out-group". So if the claim is "he did not have the ability to make a judgement", then it is false.
Now, if the claim is "he did not have enough information to judge all of them worthy of life or death"then that is true, certainly by our standards, but it misses the point. His main goal would be to figure out "are these are at a serious risk of pissing off the dwarfs", and then putting them into the frontlines.
As for the initial part:
There's some amount of callousness, sure. That's kind of required for a military leader. Making judgements about the relative worth of various units for various reasons is a big part of it. Mathilde did the same later one (mercenaries vs dwarfs, one type of dwarf vs another). But i's not like he was drafting innocents. The people there all joined a dangerous military expedition, voluntarily from what we know.
Burned_Cookie
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But do you not feel an obligation to at least listen to the opposition, to allow tgem a chance to change yours?
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The question is why I should have that obligation in the first place. I've heard them out and my opinion remains unchanged, I have no desire to continue a debate I didn't want to start in the first place. There's no reason to continue the line of discussion at this point.
Burned_Cookie
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Eh that's fair.
"Look at how few people are dying in car crashes! Obviously those requirements to install seatbelts to prevent people from dying were a waste of time."
Yes, after the most obviously untrustworthy and dishonest were weeded out, the remainder were particularly reliable.
I doubt he managed to make sure only bad people died, it's a war after all, LOTS of people are dying, and I've no doubt he didn't manage to kill ALL the bad people, but it is well within his power to tilt the odds a little.
We may not know exactly how much, if any, effect he had, but dismissing his actions as unnecessary/ineffective is not supported simply by them being reliable later on.
To be honest I am not sure there is much of a point to even debating this right now, I mean we have seen how Mathilde sees Codrin right now, he is fine, he is a comrade at arms and he did not do anything wrong. Case closed, trying to bring our own morality into matters is not going to change anything, especially as the dead (and properly burried) are well past complaining for any unfairness.
NeonLights
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@BoneyM
Assuming they are useful and nothing's wrong with them, does the Kurgan origin of the enchanted weapons preclude their use by Imperials or the Eonir? Or is everyone onboard with magic weapons that fell out the back of a wagon?
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Assuming they are useful and nothing's wrong with them, does the Kurgan origin of the enchanted weapons preclude their use by Imperials or the Eonir? Or is everyone onboard with magic weapons that fell out the back of a wagon?
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comfertable -> comfortable
Figuring out the exact mechanisms of an enchantment from a completely foreign magic paradigm is extremely difficult, but if Mathilde is able to do that, then there would be ways to make use of them.