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Warhammer Fantasy: Divided Loyalties - an Advisor's Quest

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Derpmind said:
We should do the opposite. Get one of the EC of Nordland's family to marry someone high up in Laurelorn's nobility, then have the EC title pass along to an elf. Therefore making Nordland part of Laurelorn. I forsee no complications from this arrangement.
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Adoption may be easier to pull. Find a dying old noble whose life can be extended with high magic treating the symptoms of old age, and make them a deal that's very hard to refuse.

pucflek said:
I mean, i don't think Laurelorn can shyv Marienburg in the gut like that? Like, they don't have new world goods. They don't trade with Ulthuan. Trading with Laurelorn elves doesn't meaningfully hinder Mariengburg trade with Asur, except maybe undercutting Elf-Chic fashion crazes i suppose.

Wilhelmina's canals will hurt Marienburg thought.
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Yeah, the big deal with the Ulthuan trade isn't, I think, just the direct trade with Ulthuan, it's access to Lothern's markets, which is the global entrepot where goods from the entire world are exchanged, Lustria, the Southlands, Kuresh, Nippon, Cathay, and other places we don't hear about. It's about being a node in the high elves' global trading network and so having access to all the goods that flow through it.
Andres said:
Does the Elector Count of the Moot have a Runefang?
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There isn't an Elector Count of the Moot.
 
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Andres said:
I think I remember Boney saying that Laurelorn trade would undercut Marienburg's monopoly on elven goods.
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Yeah, maybe, partly, but logically speaking, Laurelorn export goods cannot be the same as Asur goods, because they don't have access to the same resources to make the same stuff and the same population to make them in necessary quantity.

There is a hundred thousand elves in Laurelorn, thats nowhere near enough for supply in the first place.

I am not gonna talk about quality because we don't know what direction did Laurelorn craft take since their separation.

But like, yeah sure, as i said, it might undercut the elf-chic fashion stuff (with humans bragging about owning exclusive elf-made thing with no care where they were made), but Asur and Laurelorni goods probably won't have complete overlap. Magical tools? Probably! Exotic wines? Maybe? But Annuli ciders and Lothern wines are certainly going to be different beasts to whatever Laurelorn makes. Exotic Leathers? Laurelorn has no access to that, or any of the new world stuff that Asur purportedly import to Marienburg.

So maybe i am underestimating it (i almost certainly am) but it really won't hurt the Asur market that much, because Laurelorn and Asur are two entirely separate realms with two entirely separate resource bases that are thousands of miles apart and diverged culturally over four thousand years ago.

There will be some undercutting, but it just won't hit that hard, unless i am underestimating literally all the humans who buy Asur goods and they really don't care what it is that they are buying as long as there is a disclaimer "made by an elf" and no concern if they buy a carpet, or a sword, or a bottle of wine as long as its elf made and they can display it in their house.
 
@picklepikkl any chance we can add Trade books to the out of pocket list? We may end up expanding the EIC into Laurelorn next turn. Additional information on Eonir markets may end up paying for itself.
 
The Empire has two Princes, two Dukes, three Counts, two Barons, a Chancellor, and an Elder with Electoral privileges, which are typically signalled by the prefix 'Grand' when there's risk of confusion with holders of similar-sounding but less privileged titles.
 
pucflek said:
I am not gonna talk about quality because we don't know what direction did Laurelorn craft take since their separation.
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Unless they lost literally all knowledge and skill then it's better than anything humans can make. It's not like the Druchii, where literally everything is turned to cruel and evil ends. Dwarf and Elf crafts are just better than humans. Dwarfs because of sheer practice, standards and secrets. Elves on the other hand canonically use magic pretty freely. I don't mean Mages, I mean just on systematic level, where craft-specific spells Teclis never bothered to teach the Colleges (or perhaps never even bothered to learn himself) are used to produce goods of such quality that humans fundamentally cannot replicate them. When it comes to fabric, art, wine, everything human nobles use to lord status and do their little games of one-upmanship? The elves have better, no matter what group they are. And things going off on their own direction or using unique resources is even better. Reducing the desire for novelty in the aristocratic class to the term 'Elf-chic' is just... yeah no. They already fund caravans across the known and unknown world for stuff made by humans. Political pressure to secure a supply of Laurelorn goods would be done without a thought.
 
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Shane_357 said:
Unless they lost literally all knowledge and skill then it's better than anything humans can make. It's not like the Druchii, where literally everything is turned to cruel and evil ends. Dwarf and Elf crafts are just better than humans. Dwarfs because of sheer practice, standards and secrets. Elves on the other hand canonically use magic pretty freely. I don't mean Mages, I mean just on systematic level, where craft-specific spells Teclis never bothered to teach the Colleges (or perhaps never even bothered to learn himself) are used to produce goods of such quality that humans fundamentally cannot replicate them. When it comes to fabric, art, wine, everything nobles use to lord status and do their little games of one-upmanship? The elves have better, no matter what group they are.
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Yeah i don't care thought, because we are not comparing Elf to Human craft, but Laurelorn to Ulthuan craft.

That there will be some people buying the Laurelorn goods that overlap with Ulthuan goods solely because they want the rep of owing something elf-made is a given, the question is how much of a market that kind of person represents.

So yeah, technically speaking, Monopoly is over, for some of the goods, but its probably not as much of a hit as that makes it sound like.
 
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Man, I'm so curious as to what the Elves do with Ulric, God of War, Winter and Wolves. I know it's kind of been glossed over since the Waystone stuff started, but that's the kind of socio-religious worldbuilding that is so endemic of this quest. It's something we never really think about in the context of Warhammer but then it pops up and we're all like "wait what, this opens up so much interesting speculation".
 
pucflek said:
Yeah i don't care thought, because we are not comparing Elf to Human craft, but Laurelorn to Ulthuan craft.

That there will be some people buying the Laurelorn goods that overlap with Ulthuan goods solely because they want the rep of owing something elf-made is a given, the question is how much of a market that kind of person represents.

So yeah, technically speaking, Monopoly is over, for some of the goods, but its probably not as much of a hit as that makes it sound like.
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Except the Ulthuan-Mareinberg route has more brokers. The Asur crafter, the Asur merchant who moved it to Marienburg, the Marienburg merchant who bought it and whoever moved it to the Empire. Laurelorn, if open for trade, is somewhere a merchant can go, buy from a crafter and come back from and sell straight to the noble. The difference in price should be considerable.
 
Shane_357 said:
Except the Ulthuan-Mareinberg route has more brokers. The Asur crafter, the Asur merchant who moved it to Marienburg, the Marienburg merchant who bought it and whoever moved it to the Empire. Laurelorn, if open for trade, is somewhere a merchant can go, buy from a crafter and come back from and sell straight to the noble. The difference in price should be considerable.
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Sure, that still only affects a part of the provided Asur market, and we don't know how big a part it is. I am of the opinion that it has to be minor part due to sheer difference between size of Ulthuan and Laurelorn, their natural resources, and access to other parts of the world.
 
To the elves, Ulric might be how you feel that time when you're going camping around the fire in the woods getting away from the hustle and bustle of the city and you find some bastard has fly tipped the area and you want to break out the torches and pitchforks and go medieval on them rather than call in the police.

The bastards in question being beastmen, greenskins, and assorted chaos marauders.

Ulric is a god of self-reliance in the face of adversity as much or more than he is of war, and I think that's possibly some of what they'd take away from him. In that aspect he fits with Laurelorn as a civilization under long term, slow siege, particularly for the forest born. Kurnous still has a role there, as the god of hunting and the wilderness, but Ulric fits a part of the mindset Laurelorn's situation encourages in a way he doesn't for the Asrai or Asur so it makes sense for that attitude to be expressed as a whole god rather than merely as a small aspect of one.
 
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I don't think the elves know either.
What they do know that here's a local god of war and survival, and they could use one of those.
And he comes with an influential cult and an imperial province willing to stand by them for now, so that's cool (because winter, it's a pun, and fully intended).
 
pucflek said:
Sure, that still only affects a part of the market, and we don't know how big a part it is. I am of the opinion that it has to be minor part due to sheer difference between size of Ulthuan and Laurelorn, their natural resources, and access to other parts of the world.
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My opinion is that it is much higher. Too much can't be transported by boat, and some things would be concealed for fear of it falling into the hands of the Druchii.
 
Shane_357 said:
My opinion is that it is much higher. Too much can't be transported by boat, and some things would be concealed for fear of it falling into the hands of the Druchii.
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Ships and boats are so vastly better at transporting things that it may well be cheaper to ship goods from Ulthuan (if they're made on the shores of the Inner Sea) than carry them overland out of Laurelorn. It would be Mareinberg's cut that would be the problem.
 
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Shane_357 said:
My opinion is that it is much higher. Too much can't be transported by boat, and some things would be concealed for fear of it falling into the hands of the Druchii.
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What, exactly, cannot be transported by a boat? I kinda want to hear that, that should be good.

I am not going to argue about how much of the market is or isn't replaceable by goods from Laurelorn, because thats my personal conjencture, but i do think its relatively good guess.
 
Rumour in Tor Lithanel is that the Cult of Ereth Khial is being considered for being cut from the Pantheonic Mandala to make room for Ulric, but that means that Nethu would likely be going too and there'd be room for one more new God.
 
pucflek said:
Sure, that still only affects a part of the provided Asur market, and we don't know how big a part it is. I am of the opinion that it has to be minor part due to sheer difference between size of Ulthuan and Laurelorn, their natural resources, and access to other parts of the world.
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Economics. The current rates are monopoly rates. The simple existence of comparable goods at non monopoly rates will hit the big traders hard.
 
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