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Warhammer Fantasy: Divided Loyalties - an Advisor's Quest

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It's not like that scenario had Sigmar recieve a steel hammer because his bronze sword didn't work. He was given Ghal Maraz, one of the most powerful artifacts that still remain in the world. It doesn't matter what he was using, the difference between before and after GM was given to him would be devastating.

Also, I should remind people that he was fighting a Black Orc. They're known to be the most armored and toughest Orcs, and they still know the basics of metal craft from the Chaos Dwarfs when they used to be their slaves. Their armor would be the best of the best for Greenskins.
 
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IronFist said:
I doubt it competes with whatever the dwarfs taught the tribes.
They might not have given them their best stuff, but I'm pretty sure it was an upgrade.

Also, do you have a source for that? I'm quite interested in medieval metallurgy
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Here is what I found.

Bronze has a Vickers hardness of 60–258. By contrast early (10th century) steel had a hardness of 140 to about 300 according to this source.Steels got better as you move from the tenth to the latter part of the middle ages. It took a long time for steel to beat out the best bronze you could make, but the worst early steel is still better than the worst bronze so on average you are probably better off with actual steel if you can make it

Cast iron is hands down worse then bronze though, the only reason you would use that is lack of alternatives.
 
The biggest issue with bronze, in my opinion, is that it is an alloy of copper and tin, where as iron just needs iron ore. It is very hard to be self sufficient with bronze weaponry, because you almost always have to trade for one or the other. With iron, however, no trading is needed, so it's much cheaper to produce.

One of the many reasons for the Bronze Age collapse was the complete breakdown of international trade routes due to increased piracy and war, driving the price of bronze upwards and crippling the nations and armies dependent upon it.
 
Nerdasaurus Rex said:
The biggest issue with bronze, in my opinion, is that it is an alloy of copper and tin, where as iron just needs iron ore. It is very hard to be self sufficient with bronze weaponry, because you almost always have to trade for one or the other. With iron, however, no trading is needed, so it's much cheaper to produce.

One of the many reasons for the Bronze Age collapse was the complete breakdown of international trade routes due to increased piracy and war, driving the price of bronze upwards and crippling the nations and armies dependent upon it.
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Iron does have other issues, however. It needs noticeably higher temperatures to melt (bronze melts at 900 - 1,000 C, iron needs over 1,500 C), and unless you can properly smelt it then you're going to be stuck with a ton of impurities in the metal (not impossible to deal with, but still very much not ideal). I'm also unsure of how heat treatment works for bronze, but I know it can be a painful thing to get right for iron/steel.
 
IronFist said:
Also, Sigmar was definitely a primarch :V
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I'm not going to lie, I hate that theory every time I see it posted.

Like, beyond the fact that connecting Fantasy to 40k doesn't particularly appeal to me, it doesn't make Sigmar more badass, it makes him less badass.

A human doing the things Sigmar did is tremendous, a Primarch doing them is unimpressive. If he's a Primarch, he's one the other ones are making fun of. "Oh, you didn't even unite the whole planet behind you? And you worked with xenos? Pathetic, really."
 
Mellowfellow said:
Does any lore-buffs know if there any cases of inter-species reproduction in WHF, specifically half-elves?
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Afaik, its not a thing in later editions (4th on).
In theory, with dwarfs, elves, humans, Halflings and ogres all being old one products, its not outlandish.
But I'm okay with it not being part of the setting.
Although, we could have explored the possibility by picking Kazador's sons instead of Panoramia.
 
Mellowfellow said:
Does any lore-buffs know if there any cases of inter-species reproduction in WHF, specifically half-elves?
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There's a half-elf in one of the novels, Gilead's Blood, which was apparently originally published in 2001, so not in the really odd early days of Warhammer.

Some of the material about the source of beastmen is also suggestive.

And then there are all the other chimeric creatures out there.
 
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Alratan said:
There's a half-elf in one of the novels, Gilead's Blood.

Some of the material about the source of beastmen is also suggestive.
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Generally, Warhammer doesn't really do the 'half' thing, outside of a few black library sneak-ins

and I consider that a good thing.

one of the things Warhammer fantasy does better than its counterparts is that it treats its 'fantasy races' as… different species. Not a weak allegory for Ethic/race relations.

Elf's and dwarfs and lizardmen are not 'blue face humans' in this setting, they have a different physiologically and biologically and have culturally distinct features that humans just would not.

And that's a good thing.

'half-humans' aren't good for that it the long run, it's a key feature of 'blue face humans' as a trope.
 
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Nerdasaurus Rex said:
One of the many reasons for the Bronze Age collapse was the complete breakdown of international trade routes due to increased piracy and war, driving the price of bronze upwards and crippling the nations and armies dependent upon it.
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Don't forget the sea people.

I wouldn't be surprised if their migration/mass invasion was the cause for many of the hordes of doom warriors tropes, as that is what they must have appeared to those they supplanted.
 
Nerdasaurus Rex said:
The biggest issue with bronze, in my opinion, is that it is an alloy of copper and tin, where as iron just needs iron ore. It is very hard to be self sufficient with bronze weaponry, because you almost always have to trade for one or the other. With iron, however, no trading is needed, so it's much cheaper to produce.

One of the many reasons for the Bronze Age collapse was the complete breakdown of international trade routes due to increased piracy and war, driving the price of bronze upwards and crippling the nations and armies dependent upon it.
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Burned_Cookie said:
Don't forget the sea people.

I wouldn't be surprised if their migration/mass invasion was the cause for many of the hordes of doom warriors tropes, as that is what they must have appeared to those they supplanted.
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We think

the truth is we aren't really sure what caused the Bronze age collapse because of the lack of universal evidence, just best guesses and being 80% sure that the 'sea people' fucked over the Egyptians, so probably everyone else while they were at it.
 
Jyn Ryvia said:
We think

the truth is we aren't really sure what caused the Bronze age collapse because of the lack of universal evidence, just best guesses and being 80% sure that the 'sea people' fucked over the Egyptians, so probably everyone else while they were at it.
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The Egyptians do claim that the sea people were fucking over everyone else, but given that they were doing so in the context of 'but we are awesome and we stopped them' it should perhaps be taken with a grain of salt. We know there was wide scale war and devastation focused on the coastal regions though so 'sea people' kind of make sense. There is no reason why they should actually be a real unitary tribe or people and not just a general symptom of everything going to hell and people picking up weapons to get food/land and other rexources

That said I do not think this is the ur example of barbarian invasions in fiction simply because the theory is so recent. Until two centuries ago we could not read the walls of Egyptian temples, or the script of unsent please of dead Levantine princes begging for aid. It's more likely that at least in the west we got the hordes of doom from the Fall of Western Rome.
 
Burned_Cookie said:
Don't forget the sea people.

I wouldn't be surprised if their migration/mass invasion was the cause for many of the hordes of doom warriors tropes, as that is what they must have appeared to those they supplanted.
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Oh yeah the Sea Peoples were a big-ish factor in the the bronze age collapse (as Jyn says, it's very unclear what did happen), but the horde of warriors thing is a relatively more recent thing—first established with the Huns and the fall of the Western Roman Empire, and then the Mongolian invasion in the medieval period.

The word "horde" itself comes from the Mongolian "ordos", meaning "palace-tent", and the territories and peoples ruled from a palace-tent. When the Mongols came west, they brought their "ordos" with them, which got corrupted into "hordes" and associated with their armies.

So through out the Middle Ages in Europe there was a big fear of strange warriors coming from the east to "destroy civilisation", which Tolkien drew upon and popularised within fantasy when he created his orcs for Lord of the Rings.

Jyn Ryvia said:
We think

the truth is we aren't really sure what caused the Bronze age collapse because of the lack of universal evidence, just best guesses and being 80% sure that the 'sea people' fucked over the Egyptians, so probably everyone else while they were at it.
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Hell, even the Egyptians weren't really certain—their records identify at least 5 or 6 different cultural groups that they collectively referred to as "the sea peoples". They also use the phrase "northerners from all lands".

The short version is that something happened, and it was very fast, very violent, and the Egyptians fought off numerous raiders who all came from the sea and then made victory monuments about it, but none of the other superpowers of the era survived.
 
What we know from tree rings, and other science stuff is that the world went through a 500 hundred year megadrought, massive earthquakes through the middle east, which on it own would devastate bronze age civilization, and would help cause the collapse of global trade, but the theory since as @Jyn Ryvia said we are missing most most of the puzzle pieces and are guessing work what happened, is that because of that all on outskirt of bronze age civilization, tribes fled from their land because of the drought and went into the bronze age civilization and alongside invaders invading your land burning your cities, you are starving to death, all this caused unrest most likely causing local revolts across the bronze age civilization since you are starving, your house being burnt down and your rulers are doing nothing about it. Which would have caused further devastation and lead to further collapse of many government. If anyone interested here some podcast, lecture and videos on the topic. link, link, link, and link

Also the egyptians consistently altered their records for their purpose of the state(propaganda about how great they were in the past or eliminating rivals from historical record exc) even their records say they were completely fucked if they hadn't fought them in the sea(side note thought to be the first naval battle in history)
 
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Woltaire said:
Also the egyptians consistently altered their records for their purpose of the state(propaganda about how great they were in the past or eliminating rivals from historical record exc) even their records say they were completely fucked if they hadn't fought them in the sea(side note thought to be the first naval battle in history)
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The Egyptians did fight the Sea People on land. Ramesses III beat them at the Battle of Djahy (at least if you're using the mortuary temple which also records the Battle of the Delta as a source). Meanwhile the first recorded (not first ever, but first one we can attest) naval battle predates the Bronze Age collapse by about a decade, when Šuppiluliuma II, King of the Hittites defeated the Cypriots and then burned their ships at sea.
 
deathofrats0808 said:
The Egyptians did fight the Sea People on land. Ramesses III beat them at the Battle of Djahy (at least if you're using the mortuary temple which also records the Battle of the Delta as a source). Meanwhile the first recorded (not first ever, but first one we can attest) naval battle predates the Bronze Age collapse by about a decade, when Šuppiluliuma II, King of the Hittites defeated the Cypriots and then burned their ships at sea.
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I stand corrected on battle of the delta being the first naval battle, but the battle of the delta was one of the early ones. I did not say the egyptians never fought the sea people on land, the battle of Djahy took place in modern day syria however the battle of the delta took place in egypt if they had lost egypt would have faced much destruction
 
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Jyn Ryvia said:
We think

the truth is we aren't really sure what caused the Bronze age collapse because of the lack of universal evidence, just best guesses and being 80% sure that the 'sea people' fucked over the Egyptians, so probably everyone else while they were at it.
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Fucking over the Egyptians as hard as they did is more than impressive enough, but yes, we sadly don't have nearly as much to go on as one might wish.

But enough about real history, this thread is about made up history and Mathildes place i. it.
 
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DragonParadox said:
GW on the Dark Elves:
Concerned Fan: Say GW how did the Druchi get a society with all this murder, slavery and treachery?
GW: The witch king did it to ensure he would never be overthrown
CF: He made treachery socially acceptable to make sure he is never betrayed?
GW: Yep, brilliant isn't it? *preens*
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That is actually how authoritarian states, not just modern ones but throughout history, deal with the possibility of internal coups yes. So many competing factions all fighting each other for dear leaders approval that they can never realistically act against the executive. Heck, its not just authoritarian states that do it. The USA, Uk and France all use the same trick. cf: the comically and infamously enormous number of alphabet soup agencies that the USA uses.
 
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Lupercal said:
That is actually how authoritarian states, not just modern ones but throughout history, deal with the possibility of internal coups yes. So many competing factions all fighting each other for dear leaders approval that they can never realistically act against the executive. Heck, its not just authoritarian states that do it. The USA, Uk and France all use the same trick. cf: the comically and infamously enormous number of alphabet soup agencies that the USA uses.
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Having competing institutions is one thing, enshrining murder and treachery as a social good is quite another. When is he last time someone became head of the CIA by having their predecessor publicly assassinated? That is what we are talking about with the Druchi as canon gives them to us. Their values as a society are anti-social.
 
DragonParadox said:
Having competing institutions is one thing, enshrining murder and treachery as a social good is quite another. When is he last time someone became head of the CIA by having their predecessor publicly assassinated? That is what we are talking about with the Druchi as canon gives them to us. Their values as a society are anti-social.
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That's just a sign the american system is superior though. Of course you don't hear about competent spooks killing incompetent ones - being good at quietly murdering people is a key job qualification in their field :p
 
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