Warhammer Fantasy: Divided Loyalties - an Advisor's Quest

[SCO]

Since the god of Intrigue is Tzeentch and this doesn't spread beyond dwarfdom i'm inclined to tell so it isn't a secret known to gods and orks (which don't care) only to screw with the bastard

[X] Tell Belegar and Kragg

Your stupid secret is no longer a secret you damn chicken.

 

[ctulhuslp]

No, it's better to never learn, share the vision with the College for some favor and walk away, secure in the knwoelge that the dwarfs are not in any way going to learn Grey College secrets, like who might have told them about the Chaos Dwarfs.

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Either College knows how much of a pain point it is, meaning they probably know quite enough about Chaos Dwarfs for info to be only of moderate value to them.
Or they don't know how dwarves feel about it, meaning potential for diplomatic fallout is still there.

In fact, if anything, I am firmly opposed to Mathilde telling College about it without her IC knowing how much of a pain it is for dwarfs. Just so that in the weird case College is not aware, she can package the "WARNING: DO NOT MENTION IT TO DWARFS, IT'S MORE OF A SORE SPOT THAN ELVES" on the infodump.

Dwarfs not knowing who did it would not absolve Mathilde of guilt in any potential diplomatic incident that follows.

 

[Alratan]

Fair enough. But it'd still be our responsibility this happened, and that's...a kind of diplomatic incident that puts hypothetical fallout of Johan's actions to shame, quite likely? Or at least it has such potential.
And Mathilde has approximately zero clue how much of a diplomatic minefield she is in with such a secret.

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Fortunately the Grey College knows how to keep secrets. It's their job. See the Conspiracy of Silence.

Since the god of Intrigue is Tzeentch and this doesn't spread beyond dwarfdom i'm inclined to tell so it isn't a secret known to gods only to screw with the bastard

[X] Tell Belegar and Kragg

Your stupid secret is no longer a secret you damn chicken.

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Just as planned...

 

[Zaratustra]

I mean, yeah it sucks we got possessed by Mork, but as they can clearly tell, we're perfectly fine. The fact that we fed his energy to our God is just icing on the cake that is Matilada's stance of 'Fuck Mork and also Gork'.

As for the Chaos Dwarf Thing? Honestly, I would like to learn that IC, and I do think its important for the dwarves to know that the Black Orcs are a Tzeentchian Plot to divide the Greenskin Gods.

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No they cant tell actualy, this is kind unprecedent and dwarves are blind to magic, so they realy can't get much.

Guys, can we Please not hide the truth from Belegar and Kragg? Given the way he's looking at us I'm betting Kragg already knows more than we said, and hiding this from him might make him rather exceptionally unhappy with us for the rest of forever. And no that's not hyperbole, Kragg holds All the grudges.

Belegar at least Deserves to know what actually happened. The Black Orks tried to use Karak Eight Peaks as the staging ground for there divine hijacking attempt, and even though we killed the Shaman responsible there is still a very real chance this could happen again.

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Go reread the update, we already told them of how is was an heretical greesking ritual and breaking that caused the whole attack, so what more do you even expect to talk about ?

Also if Kragg knew anything he would have talke about it, he is to old to not speak his mind.

 

[noliar]

If we were to ask Kragg how he dealt with some magical emergency, would he tell us? Fuck no.

Not to mention, Kragg is the conservative runelord - gambling with magic is something he holds in deep, deep contempt. If we tell him that, faced with all that power, we gave up on our training and, despite having no priestly lore, called on our god to sort it out instead, he'll find it grotesquely irresponsible. That we lucked out will carry no weight at all. Saying that the power was beyond our ability to handle with proper technique and we had to take the risk might mitigate it a little at the cost of lowering his regard for our competence still further. That the god we involved was the shifty and despicable Ranald makes it all worse.

 

[Darik29]

Kragg the Grimm is not level headed. He is full of spite, anger, and disapproval and I'm convinced that those are the only emotions he feels.

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Are you forgetting the Lack or spite towards Mathilde so far? While yes, his mere presence makes the Winds of Magic cry in the corner in fear, and he is indeed the most curmudgeon of curmudgeons, he isn't utterly insane.

He's a Dwarf. And the only things he really respects are the glories of the past. And the screaming deaths of every race he hates, but that's normal for dwarves as old as him.

Telling him that the Dawn-Zharr are responsible for the creation of the Black Orks might just earn an entire new Grudge written in the Damaz Kron. And how by our actions we literally Stole power from both Mork and Gork, and gave it to our own god because it was the only method we believed wouldn't end up destroying the mountain And letting us survive the process.

We struck a blow against the gods of one of the most hated races of all Dawn kind. The very Gods.

And if we tell this to Kragg and Belegar in confidence, we may get see that most impossible of things.

A genuine Smile on the face of Kragg the Grim.

 

[Alectai]

If a Chaos God wants to screw someone in particular, they don't need something true to do it.

So that's a bad argument

 

[Alratan]

Either College knows how much of a pain point it is, meaning they probably know quite enough about Chaos Dwarfs for info to be only of moderate value to them.
Or they don't know how dwarves feel about it, meaning potential for diplomatic fallout is still there.

In fact, if anything, I am firmly opposed to Mathilde telling College about it without her IC knowing how much of a pain it is for dwarfs. Just so that in the weird case College is not aware, she can package the "WARNING: DO NOT MENTION IT TO DWARFS, IT'S MORE OF A SORE SPOT THAN ELVES" on the infodump.

Dwarfs not knowing who did it would not absolve Mathilde of guilt in any potential diplomatic incident that follows.

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Chaos dwarves have been part of the armies attacking the Empire in the past, crewing their artillery. Dwarves can fall to the chaos gods and be cultists just like any other sapient creature. OOC we know there's a dwarven chaos cult to Slaanesh as Karak Azgal. Knowing that dwarves can go very bad isn't going to be a surprise. Mathild can't tell than about the Dawi-Zharr as an organised society, which is the big issue for the dwarves. Some of the details are interesting and potentially useful to the Grey College, and might help develop their overall greenskin lore.

 

[ctulhuslp]

Whatever conclusion he comes to, I doubt it will be worse than possession by Mork and knowledge of Chaos Dwarfs.

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1. It was not straight up possession; again, we accidentally hijacked the story of his chosen, it was not him simply possessing us like some puppet which was minding its business.
2. I always trust Kragg to be pessimistic about world, humans and wizards in particular.

If we were to ask Kragg how he dealt with some magical emergency, would he tell us? Fuck no.

Not to mention, Kragg is the conservative runelord - gambling with magic is something he holds in deep, deep contempt. If we tell him that, faced with all that power, we gave up on our training and, despite having no priestly lore, called on our god to sort it out instead, he'll find it grotesquely irresponsible. That we lucked out will carry no weight at all. Saying that the power was beyond our ability to handle with proper technique and we had to take the risk might mitigate it a little at the cost of lowering his regard for our competence still further. That the god we involved was the shifty and despicable Ranald makes it all worse.

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I doubt that Mathilde going "It was beyond me so instead of being arrogant derp I let god handle god power levels" would actually be viewed as a bad thing.
And that very much was a huge part of rationale, remember? I think Kragg can respect or at least understand trusting god more than fickle wizard bullshit. It's not like he is atheist or whatever, you know?
"Let gods help me with god bullshit" is absolutely reasonable.

Chaos dwarves have been part of the armies attacking the Empire in the past, crewing their artillery. Dwarves can fall to the chaos gods and be cultists just like any other sapient creature. Knowing that dwarves can go very bad isn't going to be a surprise. Mathild can't tell than about the Dawi-Zharr as an organised society, which is the big issue for the dwarves.

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Does Mathilde know she can't tell it?
And if she does not, literally what better person to learn from than Belegar who actually trusts us?

 

[DarkLight140]

I can't find a reference to magic nto manifesting until the teens. Realms of Sorcery refers to ten year old apprentices as if that's normal.

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I've pulled out Realms of Sorcery here and there is a lot of variation in its implications. Two primary data points I've found pretty quickly:

• Witch hunters are legally required to turn over any magic user of age twenty-five or less not guilty of demon worship, witchcraft, or abominable acts over to the Colleges, presumably instead of executing them (Realms of Sorcery page 66). Presumably this sets an upper limit for what the Colleges consider a reasonable age to start an apprenticeship. Awkwardly, "witchcraft" is later defined as "using non-College magic" so this makes all magic users guilty of witchcraft and subject to execution instead of being turned over to the Colleges, but presumably this is not how this is supposed to function.
• "Most people who become apprentices do so in their youth, between the ages of ten and their early-to-mid twenties, for two reasons: youngsters tend to be submitted to Collegiate authorities as soon as they begin to manifest any strange powers and because learning how to effectively and safely use magic is a long, slow process." (Realms of Sorcery page 73). I had interpreted this to mean that magical manifestation actually happened in that age range, with ten presumably being on the very low side and the early-to-mid twenties being on the very high side.

I haven't found any explicit age references to children younger than ten although it does spend a lot of time talking about "children" instead of "youths" or similar terms which might be expected to be used for older individuals when talking about those new to their magic. If we assume the 10-to-25 range is a normal distribution for the age of first inadvertent magical manifestation then we're looking at most new apprentices being in their late teens as I thought, but we might well not actually have enough solid information to make that assumption.

 

[Undead-Spaceman]

[X] Remain silent
[X] Yes to shenanigans

I'm pretty ambivalent to everything else.

 

[Briefvoice]

[X] Remain silent.

[X] 'Make sure the ale hasn't gone bad' with Skaroki
[X] 'Make sure the ale hasn't gone bad' with Durin
[X] 'Make sure the ale hasn't gone bad' with Johann

[X] Drinking

[X] Gambling

[X] Play with a giant wolf

[X] No to Shenanigans

 

[Alratan]

Does Mathilde know she can't tell it?
And if she does not, literally what better person to learn from than Belegar who actually trusts us?

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If the Grey College knows, we haven't stumbled across that hidden memory packet. The big deal is that mentioning having visions while Mork assumed direct control of Mathilde because she was doing something sneaky at the wrong place at the wrong time is a very, very bad thing as far as the dwarves are concerned. Not just for Mathilde, but for all wizards, if the dwarves think that they generally have a backdoor in their soul that evil gods can use to glove puppet them in circumstances relevant to that gods' portfolio.

The dwarves won't now how exceptional that situation has to be, just that as it has happened before, it can happen again. Mathilde doesn't even know how exceptional it has to be, so she can't exactly offer much defence. Particularly as daemonic possession can result from Miscasts.

I haven't found any explicit age references to children younger than ten although it does spend a lot of time talking about "children" instead of "youths" or similar terms which might be expected to be used for older individuals when talking about those new to their magic. If we assume the 10-to-25 range is a normal distribution for the age of first inadvertent magical manifestation then we're looking at most new apprentices being in their late teens as I thought, but we might well not actually have enough solid information to make that assumption.

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Given the way corruption works it could easily be a t shaped distribution with a peak close to ten and then a long tail towards twenty five as older people are increasingly likely to be so corrupt they're too risky to teach.

 

[Karugus]

I can't imagine how it would be relevant to be honest. What are they supossed to do, send a letter to their mad kin to stop with the sorcerous experimentation?

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Maybe get them actually acknowledging the shit load of grudges the Dawi Zharr have earned rather than ignore them as much as possible? Them creating the Black Orcs is a huge fucking deal for the Dwarfs, because suddenly they're partially culpable for all the shit Greenskins have done

 

[DragonParadox]

Maybe get them actually acknowledging the shit load of grudges the Dawi Zharr have earned rather than ignore them as much as possible? Them creating the Black Orcs is a huge fucking deal for the Dwarfs, because suddenly they're partially culpable for all the shit Greenskins have done

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The dwarfs are not willfully ignoring their debased cousins, they just can't project power meaninfully in the depths of the Dark Lands.

 

[NeonLights]

1. It was not straight up possession; again, we accidentally hijacked the story of his chosen, it was not him simply possessing us like some puppet which was minding its business.

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Then let me rephrase it: let's not tell them that Mork was acting through Mathilde and influencing her mind and actions. It technically wasn't puppetry, but they will care little for that distinction.

 

[Kornet]

So the talk about our Jade journeywoman's age got me thinking. What is the average age for someone to be promoted to magister?

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Late twenties - early thirties, I believe. There was an answer from BoneyM way back, but I can't be bothered to find it.

 

[Karugus]

The dwarfs are not willfully ignoring their debased cousins, they just can't project power meaninfully in the depths of the Dark Lands.

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Yeah sure, which is why speaking of the Dawi Zharr is a major taboo that any outsider will be considered shamed for. And even if the Dwarfs do openly acknowledge the Dawi Zharr as the huge source of shame and grudges it is- by refusing to tell them about the origins of Black Orcs we are preventing the Dwarfs from acknowledging a grudge, that they have been wronged.

We'd be essentially aiding and abetting the commitance of a grudge. If it ever comes out it would be a huge betrayal of trust.

 

[Alratan]

Maybe get them actually acknowledging the shit load of grudges the Dawi Zharr have earned rather than ignore them as much as possible? Them creating the Black Orcs is a huge fucking deal for the Dwarfs, because suddenly they're partially culpable for all the shit Greenskins have done

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That would be a bad thing. The Chaos Dwarves currently ignore their distant kin, assuming they're living fossils doomed to eventual extinction thanks to their refusal to get with the program and embrace change. If the Dwarves start poking them to try to resolve grudges, that's likely to change, with bad results for everyone.

It's not as if the Chaos Dwarves are that much of a problem. They hurt the Big Four more than they help them by blocking the expansion of the Chaos Wastes into the Darklands, and nearly all the victims of their cruelty are the greenskins they enslave to work their factories. They spend most of their time plotting to kill each other and on even madder engineering than regular dwarves.

The dwarfs are not willfully ignoring their debased cousins, they just can't project power meaninfully in the depths of the Dark Lands.

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I believe they do actually. They don't open that section of the Book of Grudges and have crossed out those clans from the genealogies.

Yeah sure, which is why speaking of the Dawi Zharr is a major taboo that any outsider will be considered shamed for. And even if the Dwarfs do openly acknowledge the Dawi Zharr as the huge source of shame and grudges it is- by refusing to tell them about the origins of Black Orcs we are preventing the Dwarfs from acknowledging a grudge, that they have been wronged.

We'd be essentially aiding and abetting the commitance of a grudge. If it ever comes out it would be a huge betrayal of trust.

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I'm not sure how or even if that grudge would apply. The creation of free willed black orcs was an accident, as was their release, and the chaos dwarves were victims of a greater powers plots anyway.

 

[Zysek]

[X] Remain silent.

I believe telling anyone - much less ultra conservative, magic hating Kragg the Grim - you've been possessed in Warhammer is a recipe for disaster. For now it seems the votes for revealing it all are around 15 ahead, but perhaps some people in other time zones will vote later and change the final result.

 

[BurnNote]

It's impossible to tame an arcane mark, they are part of the bearer's soul.

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Permanently making it go away, yeah. Making it do what we want it to? Don't think so. I'm damn sure we've got WOG that at least making it sit still for a while is possible. It came up in the context of infiltration and whether it can reveal us, and the bottomline was that it's not an issue in an Ork base, but it can be in general, and we can train to fix that.

I don't see why we can't built on that afterwards.

 

[DragonParadox]

Yeah sure, which is why speaking of the Dawi Zharr is a major taboo that any outsider will be considered shamed for. And even if the Dwarfs do openly acknowledge the Dawi Zharr as the huge source of shame and grudges it is- by refusing to tell them about the origins of Black Orcs we are preventing the Dwarfs from acknowledging a grudge, that they have been wronged.

We'd be essentially aiding and abetting the commitance of a grudge. If it ever comes out it would be a huge betrayal of trust.

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1. Whether or not they talk about the Chaos dwarfs with outsiders makes the dwarfs no more capable to mark an army into the Dark Lands
2. How on earth could it come out that we had a vision from a greenskin god. The means by which we got that information is practically inconceivable so unless the dwarfs have a spy in the Grey College the information simply has no way to get back to them.

 

[Dakini]

[X] Tell Belegar and Kragg.

[X] Yes to Shenanigans

 

[Boney]

What I've been running with is that the typical magical awakening happens during puberty, and almost all within the ranges of 10-25. Apprenticeship is typically around a decade, Journeying five to ten years. Most who reach Magister would do so between 30 and 50. Those reaching ranks beyond this are by definition exceptional, so that's where the norms end. Mathilde's comparative youth for her ranks are mostly down to her early awakening. The Realm of Sorcery book said the minimum age to be a Journeyman was late twenties, but this is silly when apprenticeships starting at 10 isn't unknown, so I've ignored it.


The arch-conservative Dwarven opinion on humans in general and wizards in particular:
Humans are useful. They live where there's no good proper mountains and grow inferior grain for Dwarves to buy. If they didn't, some superior Dwarven grain would need to be made into bread instead of ale.
Wizards are how humans do magic. Of course they don't do it properly with runes. If they did things properly, they wouldn't be humans, they'd be Dwarves.
None of this exceeds typical background levels of disapproval.

 

[Alratan]

Whether or not they talk about the Chaos dwarfs with outsiders makes the dwarfs no more capable to mark an army into the Dark Lands

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Part of the problem is that this doesn't mean they didn't try. Relief expeditions were launched to Karak Dum, even though it's inside the Chaos Wastes. That will just result in lots of dead dwarves for nothing.