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I think Alric would have still been ok if it wasn't for the fact that one of the other, much younger, fighters did do so well. (The Nordland navy Jade… and Jesus I just realised how bad that could have been if she won.)

it's one thing to lose to the super dragon, it's another that that one of the baby ladies and lords did a lot better.
 
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I think Alric would have still been ok if it wasn't for the fact that on of the other, much younger, fighters didn't do so well. (The Nordland navy Jade… and Jesus I just realised how bad that could have been if she won.)

it's one thing to lose to the super dragon, it's another that that one of the baby ladies and lords did a lot better.
I think Arburg willingly stepped into the ring to give a good show and to test her skills against Dragomas out of deep respect. She's one of the "Battle Magic Graduates" like Gehenna, and mentioned to be new so this is her first Duel in the Obsidian Hall. A good way to show off Dragomas' supremacy is to present a good fight and do her best to impress everyone looking while also helping shore up the position of one who has given so much to the Battle Wizards and possibly allowed her to hit LM.
 
I think Arburg willingly stepped into the ring to give a good show and to test her skills against Dragomas out of deep respect. She's one of the "Battle Magic Graduates" like Gehenna, and mentioned to be new so this is her first Duel in the Obsidian Hall. A good way to show off Dragomas' supremacy is to present a good fight and do her best to impress everyone looking while also helping shore up the position of one who has given so much to the Battle Wizards and possibly allowed her to hit LM.
Yes, but also a way to see how you compare to the boss. All wizards are competitive, to some extent
 
I think Arburg willingly stepped into the ring to give a good show and to test her skills against Dragomas out of deep respect. She's one of the "Battle Magic Graduates" like Gehenna, and mentioned to be new so this is her first Duel in the Obsidian Hall. A good way to show off Dragomas' supremacy is to present a good fight and do her best to impress everyone looking while also helping shore up the position of one who has given so much to the Battle Wizards and possibly allowed her to hit LM.
I think that's going to deep into it, you can respect someone and still want to beat them.
 
I don't think they meant the Jade threw the fight. They just didn't go into it expecting to win, and made the choice on the basis of an expected loss.
I think she's smart enough to know that she could not have been a better Matriarch than Dragomas, and that she likely couldn't beat a goddamn dragon. I'm certain she tried her best and wondered how far she could get, but if she seriously expected to win and seriously believed that she would be a better leader than Dragomas, then I'd have serious doubts about her ability to assess things.
 
You know, with the chiselhands human racial trait having ascended to a thread meme at this point, I do hope that some time in the future, maybe a few years down the line, another confused character asks Mathilde to explain the elves view on human magic and she uses this exact example.

Scratch that, I hope it goes into the book on Eonir diplomacy. It's wonderful.

Since I've yet to work it into an update proper:


Nordland has a concern or two, yes.

But why do the Nordlanders not simply dig down? Grumblegrumble /s
 
You know, with the chiselhands human racial trait having ascended to a thread meme at this point, I do hope that some time in the future, maybe a few years down the line, another confused character asks Mathilde to explain the elves view on human magic and she uses this exact example.

Scratch that, I hope it goes into the book on Eonir diplomacy. It's wonderful.



But why do the Nordlanders not simply dig down? Grumblegrumble /s
It's not like they have no room for expansion- they've still got plenty of forest in the bit they control that's almost certainly full of gribblies instead of humans- but it's certainly going to be much harder. And less profitable, given they don't have any prospecting trees to work with.
 
It's not like they have no room for expansion- they've still got plenty of forest in the bit they control that's almost certainly full of gribblies instead of humans- but it's certainly going to be much harder. And less profitable, given they don't have any prospecting trees to work with.

And that forest hasn't been helpfully pre-cleared of all the gribblies by a local Faniour population.
 
But that forest doesn't have a local Faniour population which has a random chance of rousing the Toriour population to raze your village to the ground.
The local Faniour population can barely rouse the Toriour when there's a war happening in their woods. When those villages were set to be razed, the Ulricans were the ones sent to do it. I have doubts about how much the Toriour actually care that the forests are being encroached upon when they have their City.
 
The local Faniour population can barely rouse the Toriour when there's a war happening in their woods. When those villages were set to be razed, the Ulricans were the ones sent to do it. I have doubts about how much the Toriour actually care that the forests are being encroached upon when they have their City.

Having so little room left to maneuver within the forest against the latest Beastherd that they had to flush the Beastherd into the Schadensumpf instead of being able to wipe it out directly is what made them willing to take action against Nordland when the opportunity presented itself, so while they might not care about the forest for its own sake, they see the value in having a sizeable buffer zone surrounding their city and don't like it shrinking.
 
I mean, specific moral merits of the conflicts aside, Mathilde herself has on a few occasions advocated the use of short lived, fecund humans to bear the brunt of casualties in conflicts, instead of a longer lived, slower to reproduce elder race.
I don't think the Toriour expected the villagers to put up any sort of actual resistance, they just wanted to test the loyalty of their new allies and how far they were willing to go while cementing the relationship in blood, by proving they're not like the Nordlanders.
 
I think that's the thread.

I'm not sure mathy has ever said or thought that.
It's definitely come up for consideration, as far back as Karagril at least.
You're still not quite comfortable with weighing human lives against Dwarven ones, but their contribution would prevent total deaths and how did one measure that against the very small but admittedly real chance of a mercenary's tall tale catching on and fracturing the veil of secrecy the Skaven think they have?
 
It's definitely come up for consideration, as far back as Karagril at least.
The difference is that was a collaborative effort where Dwarves and humans fought side by side. The assumption is that the Ulricans went there alone, because if they had been fighting side by side with Elves they definitely wouldn't have looked at all 10k villagers leaving with the Ulricans and go "oh all right, safe travels".
 
There's side by side, and there's 'you lot go in first' or 'you stand there and receive the charge'. I don't remember many mixed units.
Still, I expect you're right about it being the Ulricans only, but even if it hadn't been, leavers would be equally removed from the forest. Maybe it'd depend if they wanted punishment, or just to get the forests back.
 
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