It is weird. My impression of the whole War of Vengeance is that it went from zero to 'kill them all on sight' very quickly. Like, 'false surrender doesn't make sense because both sides policy was genocide'.
Warhammer Fantasy: Divided Loyalties - an Advisor's Quest
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Sir_Travelsalot
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...How does that even work? Wasn't Alarielle's unique trait as Everqueen precisely that she didn't just stay on Ulthuan and instead went out and fought among armies in between her official duties as Everqueen? And why would the ritual have to be done in Ind of all places?
Codex
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Dwarfs didn't want genocide. The instant Gotrek killed Caledor and took his crown the war ended because vengenace was had, despite the war having gone on for 300 years and lots of horrible stuff happening in that time. The Dwarfs didn't even want to destroy every settlement. Sith'Rionnisac's siege was abandoned and the only reason the Elves left was Caradryel calling them back. The Dwarfs would have been perfectly content if Caledor came up to Gotrek and recieved judgement, but Caledor didn't want that.
There's some magical site called the Towers of the Sun in Ind that are used for a magical ritual during an eclipse to push back Morrisleb..
Some dwarves didn't want genocide. Others seem to have been happy exterminating elven colonies even before war was officially declared. It could well be that the dwarves of Karaz-a-Karak a long way from most elven colonies were much less aggressive than those in some of the front line holds who saw advantages to removing local rivals with whom they had pre-existing issues.
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Codex
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That's from the War of Vengeance novels, which keep being brought up despite being a step below 8th edition in canonicity, which never mentions the elven colony razing before the war started.
So? Just because it's not mentioned in one source isn't evidence that it didn't happen, only that it's not mentioned in that source and almost nothing more, unless it specifically says it didn't happen.
Codex
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The fact that it's mentioned in a source whose canonicity for the purpose of this quest is dubious means that whether it is to be accepted as factual is up in the air. Unless Boney mentions for certain whether he's using that info from the novel, I'll remain unconvinced over whether it actually happened.
Sir_Travelsalot
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Fair enough, but that still leaves the question of how the Everqueens are supposed to go there every ten years to squat down on a rock, when Alarielle was noted as being the first Everqueen in recorded history to ever venture beyond Ulthuan.
Mopman43
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Is that noted anywhere?
Codex
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It's a good thing then that we're operating in Boney's universe, which is reasonably more consistent. We can narrow down possibilities by checking sources in accordance with his canonicity tier list, but it does mean that we will eventually run afoul of contradictions and problems that can only be solved by direct GM intervention.
I do prefer untangling what we can by ourselves rather than invoking the GM to solve some of the issues with canonicity, especially when it's not particularly relevant to the story at hand.
Also, like Boney said, it is kind of fun untangling the setting to make a coherent situation. I can see the appeal, even if it's frustrating at times.
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Personally, I find the idea of killing people over the humiliation of diplomats to be a vast over-reaction. Basically, so what if a beard was shaved? It's a cultural humiliation, but lesser than torture or death. But because war was declared over it a ton of civilian populations got dragged on and wiped out.
I know Warhammer is very much about the anthropomophizing of entire races into the persons of their leaders, but the War of the Beard got a lot of people killed because their leaders chose pride over their citizen's lives.
I know Warhammer is very much about the anthropomophizing of entire races into the persons of their leaders, but the War of the Beard got a lot of people killed because their leaders chose pride over their citizen's lives.
Codex
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The war started because a Dwarven caravan was waylaid and almost everyone in there was killed. A diplomat was sent to have the Asur explian themselves since the survivors noted Elves attacked, and they refused to explain, shaved the ambassador and told Gotrek to grovel and beg. The diplomat turned into a slayer and found his doom in the war, so the shaving was basically an elaborate way of causing him to commit ritualistic suicide.
Beards, to dwarfs, are like body parts. Shaving their beard is considered mutilation, like someone slicing off an Elf's ears. It's like saying "why are they so mad that the diplomat they sent to solve a problem with a caravan of traders being attacked coming back humiliated and mutilated with no solution presenting itself?". The Dwarfs demanded compensation and the Elves refused, so they went to war so they could get Caledor's head as revenge. Caledor refused to come over by himself to recieve judgement and mobilised his army in response to the Dwarfs.
Was it an overreaction? Yeah. But it's an understandable one. I'm not going to say the Dwarfs are blameless, but I definitely think Caledor II was an absolute disgrace and definitely deserves more of the blame for the War.
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Honestly that is less about anthropamorphising peoples as their leaders and more about warhammer apeing both historical and mythological wars of the real world to build authanticity for its world.
The diplomats where there because Malekith had launched false flag attacks killing dwarfs which in turn caused many holds to cease trade with the Asur.
Basically the situation was tense - before WWI levels of tense - shaving the ambassador's beard was the spark not the cause.
Diplomats in real life history have almost universally been considered sacrosanct, by vastly different cultures and in different time periods.
Harming a diplomat, essentially mutilating them (remember, dwarfs are not short humans, but a completely different species), is a perfectly valid cause for war.
The Phoenix King has shown by his actions that he can't be reasoned with and that he doesn't consider himself bound by usual customs and morality, all the while basically issuing a threat.
That Ulthuan is a trading partner (and an ally?) only makes things worse, especially since dwarfs were appealing for harm previously done.
A polity that knowingly does such a thing, is sending a hell of a message. Both IC and OOC, Phoenix Court should know better.
deathofrats0808
Don’t think of it as dying; just as leaving early
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Except calling it the War of Vengeance implicitly accepts the dwarfs were correct. And that's a viewpoint that almost certainly barely exists at all within the Elves. So I believe they Elves should ahve some other way of referring to it, even if it's less well known than the War of the Beard.
Small but important correction, the ambassador did not invite the Asur to explain, they demanded immediate recompense. In some versions of the story, they even swear (on their beard) to not leave the Court without said weregild. Oath or no, that was catastrophically stupid. You can't go around demanding things from sovereigns like that. It guaranteed that Caledor would refuse. He'd have to. The exceptionally poor treatment of the ambassador afterwards is all on the Asur, but the Dwarfs didn't exactly go about the whole thing well.
And, as noted above, in some versions of the story some dwarves had started genociding elven colonies before the dwarven ambassador arrived and demanded weregild, which would make it much worse. Of course, not all sources mention this, but not all sources go into such detail.
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Again:
Tier 3 says reasonably safe to assume it's canon assuming the QM doesn't say otherwise. Tier 4 says canonish and the details are likely to end up varying if used.
Canonish is good enough here. Details may vary, but this isn't really just a detail. Or maybe it is. It certainly makes it a lot more understandable if the dwarves also weren't a unified hive mind and also had elements that jumped on the excuse to settle their own perceived scores in a way that complicated diplomacy.
There's also a couple of interesting notes from Grudgelore, which gives the dwarven version of events, which is basically what you describe. One says:
"Note that elven chronicles dffer widely from the events as outlined here"
another says:
"The exact wording here is doubtful having been translated twice, from elvish to dwarven to Reikspeil. Much of the original meaning and subtly may have been lost. In addition the translation from elvish must be considered suspect, and perhaps 'massaged' by the High King for propaganda purposes."
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The way Boney portrays Dwarves, they don't jump straight to slaughter and they won't jump to genocide over trade caravans. They ask for compensation first, and failing that they declare a grudge and set out to deal with said grudge. They aren't the unreasonable war mongers of canon, and even canon didn't portray them as genocide happy warriors until the War of Vengenace novel. It doesn't "make sense" that Dwarfs would jump to genocide, even to settle scores, because that's just not how they do things in DL. There can be a couple bad actors sure, but in that case the High King would definitely punish them and wouldn't sanction such activities. The Dwarfs have a semi-reasonable society that's survived for thousands of years, 2000 of which involved an alliance with the Elves, and jumping to genocide is not a reasonable recourse for how they are presented in DL as a polity.
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It makes sense that some hotheads might go out to seek vengeance for grudges independently, and that things can get out of hand when you sack a village or town, even if you didn't initially intend to. It's not as if, according to Grudgelore, there hadn't been small wars between individual elven colonies and dwarf holds before. It says:
"Before the War of Vengeance, the nobles of both races dealt with each other in a more civilized fashion and in military disputes clemency had usually been shown and ransoms exchanged for hostages."
Note that this talks about nobles treating each other in a civilized fashion, and ransoms and hostages implicitly for them. It doesn't say that civilians were treated similarly.
And given slow communications, after conflict had broken out and it was a total war situation, it may have been impolitic to acknowledge what had happened before as the dwarves needed to present a unified front, and those same hot heads may have been the most aggressive and committed forces available.
The dwarves don't need to be saints to have survived, they can just be people, and people can do very bad things and cover it up when it's politic or psycologically comfortable to do so
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deathofrats0808
Don’t think of it as dying; just as leaving early
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For sensible explanations of the War, I always favour Malekith stirring up extra trouble. Stuff like him arranging it so the Dwarfen ambassador was inexperienced with Elves, and that the Phoenix Court was alive with rumours of Dwarfs slaughtering Elves for no cause, and the Phoenix Crown being directly implicated in the attack rather than just the Asur as a whole. Then you take all that, throw in Caledor II, a young, glory-hungry warrior King, the stubbornness of the Dwarfs meaning they would never back down and you get the absolute mess that is the war.
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Boney once offered this take on the War of Vengeance:
But I expect that if the origin of the War of Vengeance ever appears in DL, it will be with Boney's trademark nuances.
cokerpilot
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