Warhammer Fantasy: Divided Loyalties - an Advisor's Quest
- Thread starter Boney
- Start date
- Fantasy Users' Choice!
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- Tags
- warhammer warhammer fantasy fantasy be gay do crimes (gay) female protagonist pansexual protagonist ck2 quest divided loyalties mountain vietnam ranald is real this is a dwarf quest (dwarfs) this is maybe an elf quest this is not a vampire quest this is not an empire quest try it and find out open voting
Voted best in category in the Users' Choice awards.
- Location
- Canada
[X] Comfort
[X] Order
Both seem nice to me.
Comfort is the closest to Glau's U-K8P series I think, or at least the starting point for something like it.
Making the place comfy and accessible to visiting academics or inquisitive Dragons is a smart decision to make early on in the planning stages, before you realize the halls need widening or something. Hmm, why are people backing away slowly? Did I say something wrong?
Order sounds good too. More utilitarian, but just make it an efficient source of knowledge and other stuff can be added around it with time, by whoever is interested.
I do like the theme of [] Preservation, but the lesson I take from Karaz-a-Karak is that their libraries are extremely secure and well-defended. Ragnarok-proofing a library to the extent that it survives the abandonment of the Karak itself is sensible to prevent the loss of knowledge, but frankly unsatisfying on a narrative level. "As secure as the rest of the Karak" is plenty enough for me.
[X] Order
Both seem nice to me.
Comfort is the closest to Glau's U-K8P series I think, or at least the starting point for something like it.
Making the place comfy and accessible to visiting academics or inquisitive Dragons is a smart decision to make early on in the planning stages, before you realize the halls need widening or something. Hmm, why are people backing away slowly? Did I say something wrong?
Order sounds good too. More utilitarian, but just make it an efficient source of knowledge and other stuff can be added around it with time, by whoever is interested.
I do like the theme of [] Preservation, but the lesson I take from Karaz-a-Karak is that their libraries are extremely secure and well-defended. Ragnarok-proofing a library to the extent that it survives the abandonment of the Karak itself is sensible to prevent the loss of knowledge, but frankly unsatisfying on a narrative level. "As secure as the rest of the Karak" is plenty enough for me.
Fayhem
Definitely not an escaped SCP
- Location
- At large
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Correct. Which is why a library that is focused on Preservation would offer a unique advantage in trying to get books from Verenans. We could offer a level of Preservation that they are literally physically incapable of achieving otherwise, because they don't have a Transcendent Boon from a dwarven king to work with.
I think this is a false assessment, for a couple reasons.
One, I think you are drastically underestimating the historical value of preserving at least certain original documents. The United States doesn't keep the original Constitution preserved because we weren't able to write down any other copies. In-universe, can you really not think of any scenarios where it could be valuable to e.g. produce the original Articles of Magic to prove that Magnus's original terms were preserved and hadn't been twisted by transcribers? I'm not sure if we actually still HAVE the original Articles of Magic for this specific example to be possible, but while that's a dramatic example it's not a unique one. For instance, being able to produce the original text of treaties might be/have been valuable as well.
Two, I think you are overestimating the ease of repeated transcription with perfect fidelity. Even when perfect transcription is theoretically possible, it's still not guaranteed. As always, there is a relevant xkcd. While having dwarves in charge definitely boosts the odds, presenting Preservation as a virtually valueless focus except in the event of outright apocalypse is absolutely false IMO.
To be blunt, this is ridiculously cocky. The original K8P fell despite being at the height of its power, armed with Golden Age runic knowledge, and filled with a population sufficient to fill every single mountain. The current K8P (though it does have the advantage of modern gunpowder weaponry... though Skaven weaponry has also evolved) doesn't have the population to entirely fill even one mountain, and the human mercs aren't exactly making up that whole difference.
We have seen repeated in-universe assessments that K8P's military advisors remain uneasy about the reclaimed Hold's security position ESPECIALLY vis-a-vis the Underway, even after the Okral's work. IIRC the assessment post-Okral is that the Hold's security position is considered adequate, but definitely NOT nigh-invincible as you have painted it.
Lastly, I'll note that Order (like all the other facets) isn't going to be utterly absent if it isn't chosen as the primary focus. It will still get a lesser bonus, and that bonus can be improved in time as well. So to my mind it makes sense to consider the differential between a mild/moderate bonus and a very good bonus for each facet.
The difference between a pretty good Order bonus and a really good Order bonus is the difference between a library that's pretty easy to use and a library that's really easy to use. That's certainly not nothing, to be fair. But it's a difference in degree, not a difference in kind.
Whereas, the difference between a library that is prepared to survive in the event of the mountain being invaded/occupied and a library that isn't is the difference between a library that survives and a library that doesn't. That difference is immense. And as I've argued above, a very strong Preservation bonus has a number of valuable effects even in a non-drastic scenario.
- Pronouns
- It/Its
Pretty sure were immune to all Dhar/Chaos corruption, not just physical ones
- Location
- Denial
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Even without a preservation focus we can still offer them a level of protection above what they can get elsewhere if that's what they want. That's the whole point of building the library in a dwarf hold. Also if we really want to attract cultists that's what holy will do We only need 71 more votes we can do it!
I feel like you are seriously underestimating the standard level of preservation here, I would expect the library to easily weather a brief occupation and the high value/secure vaults specifically to able to handle a much longer one even if the less important books are lost.
- Location
- Australia
The Belt burns up any dark energy that comes into contact with her, but it doesn't shield her mind from reacting to the way it normally does to the things she perceives.
Mopman43
Mountain-Hermit of Nitpeak
- Location
- Vermont
Well, not quite. The earthquake and everything was in -1500 IC, K8P fell in -513, and was only sieged by Skaven in -701.
NuclearConsensus
Herald of the Thorned One
- Location
- the Philippines
[X] Comfort
[X] Order
[X] Holy
[X] Order
[X] Holy
Mopman43
Mountain-Hermit of Nitpeak
- Location
- Vermont
Boney did say that the Belt would protect her from some of the intrusive thoughts she had in Sylvania, but it definitely doesn't protect her from the influence of Chaos.
In support of that, her encounter during the attack on the Kul encampment:
The Belt wasn't even a factor in her rolls, only her Piety and Windsage was.
After having a chat with the ever-knowledgeable Gazetteer, who works as a library scientist professionally and really helped me gain a greater perspective on just how much goes on behind the scenes, I came to a few additional conclusions that might be relevant for this vote.
The biggest thing about an organisational system, beyond just information access, is that it can be emulated. Pre-Dewey (which has its own myriad problems, but was a massive leap in standardisation), each library would have had its own way of doing things, with its own little idiosyncrasies and quirks devised as the librarian worked within their domain. If said librarian died without having trained an apprentice, you were very much out of luck if you wanted to find something within it. To get an idea of just how nightmarish navigating older sources without sufficient organisation is, Gaz recommended a video from CGP Grey - while not about library science itself, it certainly gets the immense frustration of the process across.
If an enterprising individual were looking to create a library at some point down the line, who would they look to to draw ideas from? The Verenans, probably, but more relevantly to us, the most prestigious library on the continent, the Great Library of Karak-8-Peaks, a world-renowned bastion of information and research. By the simple phenomenon of people taking notes from and looking to emulate the great and the successful, as people are wont to do, we've inadvertently made the lives of people that use the libraries that come after us easier.
Of course, when working with an institution on the scale that our library is likely to become, scale itself becomes a factor into how things should be organised and sorted(especially when the printing press gets out of whatever development hell it's currently mired in). We can take some cues from the British Library in that regard, who have one of the largest and most extensive collections of books, maps, manuscripts etc. on the planet, including a copy of every single book every published in the UK and Ireland (something referred to as legal deposit, something the Great Library is likely to look to emulate):
Source
There's a truly staggering amount of systems and structures that go into maintaining a modern major library, systems that are all-but-invisible to us as users - something that I feel leads to librarians being an incredibly underappreciated profession (you need a specialised Master's degree to become one for a reason!). Of course, Warhammer in the present time doesn't possess anything near the scale of modern scholarship, but when planning an institution designed to endure for millennia, we should keep in mind not only what it will be to us, but also what it will become after we're gone.
Ultimately, we tasked Belegar with building us 'A Great Library, made for and by all the good people of the world' - 'for the people' being perhaps the most important part of that statement. We want this to be the greatest library on the planet, and organisation and accessibility of information is at the very core of that mission, with everything else stemming from it. The platonic ideal of a library isn't just a vault of books standing until the end of time; it's a space where people come together in shared pursuit of knowledge and inspiration, a place for discussion and debate and trying to find information on That One Thing that really captures your fancy. A library isn't just the books it contains, but also the people that use it. To that end, we should hold the reason why they use it as our most central ethos - to access information.
What we're building here is unprecedent in Warhammer as it stands, and I'd like to do it right.
The biggest thing about an organisational system, beyond just information access, is that it can be emulated. Pre-Dewey (which has its own myriad problems, but was a massive leap in standardisation), each library would have had its own way of doing things, with its own little idiosyncrasies and quirks devised as the librarian worked within their domain. If said librarian died without having trained an apprentice, you were very much out of luck if you wanted to find something within it. To get an idea of just how nightmarish navigating older sources without sufficient organisation is, Gaz recommended a video from CGP Grey - while not about library science itself, it certainly gets the immense frustration of the process across.
If an enterprising individual were looking to create a library at some point down the line, who would they look to to draw ideas from? The Verenans, probably, but more relevantly to us, the most prestigious library on the continent, the Great Library of Karak-8-Peaks, a world-renowned bastion of information and research. By the simple phenomenon of people taking notes from and looking to emulate the great and the successful, as people are wont to do, we've inadvertently made the lives of people that use the libraries that come after us easier.
Of course, when working with an institution on the scale that our library is likely to become, scale itself becomes a factor into how things should be organised and sorted
Source
There's a truly staggering amount of systems and structures that go into maintaining a modern major library, systems that are all-but-invisible to us as users - something that I feel leads to librarians being an incredibly underappreciated profession (you need a specialised Master's degree to become one for a reason!). Of course, Warhammer in the present time doesn't possess anything near the scale of modern scholarship, but when planning an institution designed to endure for millennia, we should keep in mind not only what it will be to us, but also what it will become after we're gone.
Ultimately, we tasked Belegar with building us 'A Great Library, made for and by all the good people of the world' - 'for the people' being perhaps the most important part of that statement. We want this to be the greatest library on the planet, and organisation and accessibility of information is at the very core of that mission, with everything else stemming from it. The platonic ideal of a library isn't just a vault of books standing until the end of time; it's a space where people come together in shared pursuit of knowledge and inspiration, a place for discussion and debate and trying to find information on That One Thing that really captures your fancy. A library isn't just the books it contains, but also the people that use it. To that end, we should hold the reason why they use it as our most central ethos - to access information.
What we're building here is unprecedent in Warhammer as it stands, and I'd like to do it right.
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[x] Order
fictionfan
Please sir, may I have some Meows?
- Location
- Tempe, AZ
Is there an arcane mark that might have that effect?
Fayhem
Definitely not an escaped SCP
- Location
- At large
- Pronouns
- He/Him
My thought here is that the reason the Verenans don't dish out their books left and right already is because they have significant institutional/political reasons not to do so. When overcoming something like that, the difference between being able to make a reasonable case that we can offer more protection and being able to make an undeniable case that we can offer more protection is a salient one IMO.
Maybe? We're guesstimating on the degree of effects/benefits for all of these facets. I will note that a scenario where some Holds in K8P are occupied by an enemy longer-term while some remain in dwarven hands is absolutely still a plausible one. Until we got a bunch of oh-my-god lucky rolls in a row that led to us successfully retaking the whole lot of them that was looking to be the situation for the foreseeable future, after all.
And we did deliberately put our library in a mountain that didn't have anything much in it besides our library... which means that if K8P were put under a level of pressure where they had to pick and choose which Holds to hang onto, there's nothing to drive them towards our mountain NEEDING to be one of the ones kept besides our library. In that scenario, a library that could weather an enemy occupation nigh-indefinitely would honestly be a relief for the defenders, because the king wouldn't be wrestling between his dwarven need to fulfill the Boon he swore to provide and his king's obligation to defend his actual population as well as possible.
This is true! But it's also something that can be flipped on its head. In other words, an organizational system that was developed elsewhere could be emulated in K8P. You mention wanting to provide for the needs of future millennia. But unless literally nobody else in the Old World comes up with the systems necessary in those millennia (which I find highly unlikely), they could be copied in K8P from wherever they were developed. So at that point the difference between those systems being developed in K8P versus not is just the prestige factor of being the ones who get to hang our name on whatever system it is. Which is nice, but is not really a material difference.
Whereas, the difference between K8P's library having a major Preservation focus built in versus not is the difference between K8P's library having that level of Preservation focus versus not. Somebody else having a great Preservation setup (assuming anybody is ever capable of matching the level of commitment to that possible with a Transcendent Boon from a dwarf king) doesn't confer any particular advantage on K8P implementing the same.
I think one reason I voted for "Order" is I keep remembering something Boney wrote not that long ago, that the plural of "book" is not "library".
Anybody can buy a bunch of books. What makes a library is organization. The ability to know what you've got and where it is; that's what takes the skills of a librarian. Organization is what lets you see the broad sweep of a collection and where the gaps are. Organization is what lets you know how many copies of a volume you have and what the schedule is to have them recopied so that the knowledge is preserved. Organization is what lets you retain meta-records of books, knowing when they were published and what has been marked useful and what is outdated and when it's time to move volumes from the "cutting edge theory" section to the "historical curiosities" section.
I understand the reasoning to vote for Preservation, but Preservation is about making a fallout shelter for books. Comfort is about encouraging the formation of a college around the books. Holy helps get the library patronage, both mundane and supernatural. Capacity increases the density of information storage and grants the ability to archive more ephemeral sources like letters and newspapers. Security grants the ability to be a radioactive storage container for questionable and forbidden lore.
Each of these is a valuable secondary focus, an add-on to the base library function. But if you want a library-library, a place whose primary and secondary function is to be a library?
Order makes a library.
Anybody can buy a bunch of books. What makes a library is organization. The ability to know what you've got and where it is; that's what takes the skills of a librarian. Organization is what lets you see the broad sweep of a collection and where the gaps are. Organization is what lets you know how many copies of a volume you have and what the schedule is to have them recopied so that the knowledge is preserved. Organization is what lets you retain meta-records of books, knowing when they were published and what has been marked useful and what is outdated and when it's time to move volumes from the "cutting edge theory" section to the "historical curiosities" section.
I understand the reasoning to vote for Preservation, but Preservation is about making a fallout shelter for books. Comfort is about encouraging the formation of a college around the books. Holy helps get the library patronage, both mundane and supernatural. Capacity increases the density of information storage and grants the ability to archive more ephemeral sources like letters and newspapers. Security grants the ability to be a radioactive storage container for questionable and forbidden lore.
Each of these is a valuable secondary focus, an add-on to the base library function. But if you want a library-library, a place whose primary and secondary function is to be a library?
Order makes a library.
fictionfan
Please sir, may I have some Meows?
- Location
- Tempe, AZ
Personally when I vote for library focus I am focusing on library benefits that will happen within our lifetime. The benefits in the future are obviously great and all, but for the purposes of this quest they might as well not exist. Order and comfort are likely to give the greatest benefits in the short term and those benefits are likely to continue into the long term.
Wiadi
Uncompromising Radical Leftist
- Location
- Something Clever
- Pronouns
- She/Her
I wouldn't worry - it would be entirely traditional for orangutan acquisition to postdate the library's completion.
When you're envisioning a literal mountain of books, you really don't want to be reorganising it later down the line - it's a truly herculean task, likely to be put off due to sheer inertia if nothing else. The organisation and ability to access information is the most important thing about a library, and what separates it from a pile of books locked in a vault somewhere.
Library science is its own field of research IRL for a reason - it's incredibly complex, and every single librarian you'll ever meet has at minimum a Master's degree in it. In Warhammer, however, the field can't even be called in its infancy yet - in choosing order as our focus, we'd quite literally be pioneering and innovating the very field that makes modern libraries work, and also what will make our library utterly unique in the present time. The Verenans certainly aren't doing this, because they fundamentally don't care about people having access - in their creed, knowledge is to be preserved, not necessarily to be shared, as Boney has talked about so many times in the past.
[x] Order
[x] Comfort
[x] Comfort