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Warhammer Fantasy: Divided Loyalties - an Advisor's Quest

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[X] [THOREK] Both
[X] [ARM] Johann

Bring on the CyberMinion, and let the Runesmiths burn, and rise once more from the ashes.
 
Alratan said:
That's a lot less of a problem if there's a very large number of compatible runes known, as the number of combinations can get very large very quickly. If there are a thousand other runes that would work with the Rune of Light on a lantern, you can make half a million runic lanterns before you exhaust them.

Alternatively, this could also be a reason the dwarves lost the ability to make the utility runes. Ever single known combination was made, and the dwarves stopped developing new utility runes during the Time of Woe, and as they weren't being made any more the knowledge wasn't passed on, so it was eventually lost. Or worse, all possible utility runes were discovered, so no new utility runic items could ever be made.
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Hmm... Apprentices can copy their Masters - which would make no sense if single runes can only be used once (how would that even be enforced across the Karaz Ankor? It isn't like Runesmiths from Vlag coordinated with Runesmiths from Azul years ahead on what runes their apprentices make so they don't accidentally make the same rune twice - at the time when they didn't have the copters).

If we take the idea that Runesmiths can't make more than 1 item with a Rune but can copy stuff as Apprentices then we open the possibility for Apprentices to churn lots of low level identical stuff - each apprentice can only use a rune or combo once but they can copy their master) with Masters and Runelords actually producing unique masterpieces.

That'd incentivise keeping a large swarm of apprentices around a master - which is incidentally the model Thorek uses (also pretty sure he's keeping his apprentices on for longer since if I remember they're supposed to be almost as good as some full Runesmiths from other holds).
 
I expect that rule of pride allows you to use your runes in a different manner. For example Mathilde enchanted Aethyric Armour on her original robe and then later created a more advanced Aethyric Armour. In runesmith terms it would be the same rune but since it's done differently it's still fine.

We see Kragg do innovations of runes when he crafted Mathilde's gear and I suspect that's basically how things go in order to allow the same rune combinations to be used multiple times.

So for example as an apprentice you might make 30 basic light sources using a lighting rune, these are probably a direct copy from a master and also basically all duplicates. Once you graduate from apprentice though that's not allowed so you might make an axe that creates a flash of light to blind enemies, then a helmet that provides a cone of light in the direction you look, then maybe a light that shoots a thin beam for communication (ignore that these specific combinations might not be available due to Rule of Form).

Basically my guess is that you can't go around making duplicates of existing work (unless you're an apprentice). However, using the same runes should be fine as long as the completed works are all different and you're not simply repeating your own work or the work of someone else.
 
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[ ] [THOREK] Karaz Ghumzul
Lend your influence to pressuring the expatriate Dwarves of Middenheim into revealing the secrets of their ancestral home.
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I'm sure someone already thought of and asked about this, but it's a big thread .... can we throw actions into this to try and make it happen in a less turbulent fashion?

You know, see if there's some carrot and/or reasoning we can use in addition/instead of the stick of pressure?
 
King Arthur said:
I'm sure someone already thought of and asked about this, but it's a big thread .... can we throw actions into this to try and make it happen in a less turbulent fashion?

You know, see if there's some carrot and/or reasoning we can use in addition/instead of the stick of pressure?
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Presumably, we will have an option for how we do this next turn.
 
So, a silly thought that I'm surprised that no one's thought of yet: if we have full confidence in the Seed being able to re-attach Johann's arm, what's to stop Mathilde from doing the same for herself?

I don't know if we'd want to, but it seems like an option.
 
Deathbybunnies said:
So, a silly thought that I'm surprised that no one's thought of yet: if we have full confidence in the Seed being able to re-attach Johann's arm, what's to stop Mathilde from doing the same for herself?

I don't know if we'd want to, but it seems like an option.
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It would totally cramp her style... all tacky, golden and bright.

Otoh, Johann is already fashionably Golden.

Also, she's not a dubiously sane transhumanist?
 
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King Arthur said:
I'm sure someone already thought of and asked about this, but it's a big thread .... can we throw actions into this to try and make it happen in a less turbulent fashion?

You know, see if there's some carrot and/or reasoning we can use in addition/instead of the stick of pressure?
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Mathilde is a grey wizard. I sort of assumed that subtle, soft diplomacy was the default approach she'd take with this.
 
TalonofAnathrax said:
Edit : @Alratan, I like your take.
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Thank you. The way I see it, there's something up with Thorek's timeline, whether or not the details I posted about the foundation of Grungni's Tower before Middenheim are accurate.

For the dwarves to go to settle amongst humans there must have been settled humans. Humans in the northern Old World didn't settle down from at least seasonal nomadism until around fifteen hundred years after the Time of Woe began. Around the time or as they did so the Empire was founded by Sigmar and uplifted by the Karaz Ankor, who we're going around teaching them to work iron and steel and build in cities and roads in stone, and write, and such like.

Firstly, what was Karaz Ghumzul doing for those fifteen centuries. They were the neighbours of Laurelorn, for somewhat under five hundred years they were neighbours of the Belthani, and for something less than another five hundred years they were neighbours of the northern proto-Imperial tribes. At least initially they were apparently spared the battles with the elves, and during the Time of Woe would have been spared the worst of the skaven (see below), and would have been hit later and less hard by the greenskin migration from the east, simply because of the geography. What may they have been up to during that period, both internally and with those neighbours during that stretch of time?

Another consideration, according to the maps we have the skaven didn't have tunnels stretching to the Middle Mountains until after 1000IC, so would have had to go overland to reach them, which would have severely limited the forces they could deploy.

So, conspiracy theory time. Let's say Karaz Ghumzul fell during the Imperial era, as Thorek rather suggests. This was the period of the early Empire known as the Drive to the Frontiers, when they tried to conquer, expel, or eliminate just about everyone in their path. Human tribes such as the Fennones were conquered or driven out like the Norsii, the greenskins and beastmen eliminated as their forests were felled and the elves of Laurelorn were fought with but survived when their forests weren't.

If Karaz Ghumzul still existed during their period it would have probably still been considered a renegade, traitorous province by the Karaz Ankor, and so possibly fair game to their allies in the Emperor of Man. Is it possible that it was the Empire that defeated Ghumzul, and handed the defeated population back to the Karaz Ankor, possibly while the secondary settlements under Middenheim switched sides/surrendered early on realising their position was untenable?

That's something that could have easily been erased from history as a shameful episode for both the Empire and the Karaz Ankor.

After all, who else could have defeated Karaz Ghumzul if it survived into the era of the Empire triumphant. The skaven couldn't reach them without marching overland through the Empire, and the Empire had the beastmen and greenskins beaten…

In the unlikely event this is true, Thorek would quite possibly be unaware of it, and we could be stumbling into a political minefield, or remains of a minefield, just as bad as the Dum debacle.

Also, if Karaz Ghumzul is a Golden Age hold, is it a potential Waystone on the dwarven network? Depending on how old the dwarven settlement of Grungni's Tower is, is Middenheim? Even if not, it would be an obvious candidate to make into a regular Waystone, so it might be worth a look. The Cult of Ulric and their Eternal Flame might be connected to it if so.
 
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[X] [ARM] Amputee
Can we find an amputee who is prepared to take the risk, who we are prepared to risk and who will be a lifelong asset if the arm turns out good? It's a tight set of constraints but the Empire generates a lot of amputees and we have broad contacts. An ex-elite soldier of Stirland perhaps.
[X] [THOREK] Both
We have plenty of cards that can be played on Middenheim.
I am fine with Thorek's agenda - him shaking the secrets tree might even benefit the project directly.
 
[X] [THOREK] Both
[X] [ARM] Disassemble

yeah this will probably suck for the Runesmith guild but personally speaking Im more than willing to pay the price of a schism to have Thorek as a major ally for the Waystone Project
 
DragonParadox said:
And would that someone else be of any use to Mathilde? We did pay 1000 Gold for the thing, I would rather not see it ride off in to the sunset on the shoulder of a random knight if we can help it.
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Meh. Money is just numbers that go up and down. In this case it would simply be converted into College Favor for the paper and [insert martial order here] Favor for the actual cyborg warrior we provided.
 
Zero Gravitas said:
Hmm... Apprentices can copy their Masters - which would make no sense if single runes can only be used once (how would that even be enforced across the Karaz Ankor? It isn't like Runesmiths from Vlag coordinated with Runesmiths from Azul years ahead on what runes their apprentices make so they don't accidentally make the same rune twice - at the time when they didn't have the copters).

If we take the idea that Runesmiths can't make more than 1 item with a Rune but can copy stuff as Apprentices then we open the possibility for Apprentices to churn lots of low level identical stuff - each apprentice can only use a rune or combo once but they can copy their master) with Masters and Runelords actually producing unique masterpieces.

That'd incentivise keeping a large swarm of apprentices around a master - which is incidentally the model Thorek uses (also pretty sure he's keeping his apprentices on for longer since if I remember they're supposed to be almost as good as some full Runesmiths from other holds).
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I think you could read the rule of pride to say that apprentices are fully exempt, so that while a graduated runesmith can't even duplicate an item with a single rune, an apprentice can make any duplicates they want.

The 'easy' answer would then be to declare that standards have slipped since Thungni's day, and that almost every living Runesmith is still only an apprentice by traditional standards (Bok may give some evidence for that view), and in their own pride and hubris have mistakenly been thinking the Rune of Pride applies to them when they're not worthy of it.

Under this model, you'd pick up the perpetual apprentice model from the Colleges (and possibly the runepokers' relaxed recruitment standards) and most members of Guild of Runesmiths would spend all or most of their time as apprentices. Only the most talented researchers would be 'promoted' and so be subject to the Rune of Pride.

If demotion within a guild without going Slayer is a thing in dwarf society, this might be possible to pair with Thorek dealing with the Dum debacle, shaming his opponents into accepting their demotion back to the ranks.

As a side note, I'll have to look it up, but I think I've seen mention that Thorek isn't the only Runelord in Karak Azul. He may be the most prominent, but he has peers there. I wonder if they're on the same page as him. I dimly reflect this in the context of Anvils of Power, saying that not only do multiple Runelords have them in Azul, but so do some particularly elderly and skilled regular Runesmiths, but they just use them for crafting and don't take them onto the battlefield.

If this is the case, and Thorek does have his peers from Azul on side, he may be in a stronger position within the guild/cult than we realise, if other holds have fewer runelords.

Edit: tl;dr: there aren't too few Runesmiths, there are too many, there just aren't enough runesmiths with a lower case.
 
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Rafin said:
Meh. Money is just numbers that go up and down. In this case it would simply be converted into College Favor for the paper and [insert martial order here] Favor for the actual cyborg warrior we provided.
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And what makes you think we will happen to have use for the favor of a martial order that happens to have a one armed warrior willing to make use of a strange and unknown artifact?
 
Another way of looking at it is that the problem with the Runesmiths Guild is that it's coextant with the Cult of Thungni. That isn't true for any of the other Guilds and Cults. The Guild of Metalsmiths would be similarly crippled if they had to abide by the strictures of the Cult of Smednir, including only ever using tools you crafted yourself, as every one of them would have to bootstrap all their workshops from the ground up which would be incredibly slow and inefficient and end up with them using less good tools. Just because, I imagine, Smednir had to bootstrap himself from the ground up and his priests do the same as an act of homage should not mean that regular dwarven metalsmiths can't stand on His and his successors shoulders to improve their craft*.

For whatever reason, until the emergence of the runepokers, runesmithing has remained proprietary to the Cult.

It's not a problem if the priests of the Cult of Thungni will only ever craft novel combinations of runes if said priests aren't the only runesmiths. Those priests can focus on the sacred search for new runes while secular runesmiths can get on with practicing their craft. The structures of the Cult say that you should only ever teach other runesmiths or carefully chosen apprentices runes. I don't think they say that those dwarves have to be fellow members of the Cult of Thungni. That's been assumed so far, but that feels like the kind of thing that can be massaged in extremis. After all, the runepokers are demonstrably smithing runes, but aren't (as far as we know) Cultists of Thungni.

* in general, I think the dwaves should more often take the attitude that some of the things their Ancestors did was so they didn't have to, rather than the opposite.
 
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My own assumption re: the Rule of Pride would be that yes, you should not intentionally go out and copy somebody else's work but if you and some other runesmith by coincidence or happenstance should just so happen to strike the same runes, eh whatever. With considerably more stringency on the runes you have already done.
 
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