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Hmm, wonder if maybe the Dwarves and Panoramia could whip up some sort of oil to spread over weapons as a sort of bootleg Flaming Attack? Like those fellas in Game of Thrones that worship the Lord of Light.

 
-Caldera: Above, it's Grobi town, hopefully somewhat depleted from the fighting, but still probably swarming. Below, it's Clan Mors. Maybe if we're lucky Clan Mors will try to jump the Greenskins up above (Clan Mors tends to be rather aggressive and their leader's actually advocating to go exterminate the surface-dwellers now IIRC), but let's not count on it. The Caldera underway seems to connect to pretty much every other peak, so that's a lot of space that needs covering.
Caldera doesn't need one big push. Its in range of artillery and Anvil of Boom from the Citadel
 
Caldera doesn't need one big push. Its in range of artillery and Anvil of Boom from the Citadel
Yeah, but that doesn't let us really use the Throng of Karak Azul. Given Kazador's words, they're coming with a big a force as they can manage, so they won't be able to stick around for that long before having to return home. Granted, Thorek's probably got another Anvil of Doom to hammer them with, but we'd like to make use of both the whole Throng and Kazador's leadership (literally killed or drove off every Greenskin tribe near his hold.)

Well, at least, the part of the Throng that isn't former Eight Peaks Clans won't be sticking around for long anyway.
 
The way I see it, there are three possibilities as to Troll Peak's leadership. First, an abominably strong troll like the one from Trollslaye, just a plain alpha beast. Second, an unusually intelligent warpgut who got a nat 100 on his mutation table, probably nowhere near Throgg's level but enough to be concerning. Finally, some 3rd party creature that's managed to bully the trolls intosubmission, unlikely but not impossible, a wildcard.
The bad scenario for Kvinn-Wyr is if Moulder Skaven or something similar take over without us knowing. While they may see greenskins as their food, that doesn't mean ALL our hostiles are snack on sight.
Yeah, one of the things I've been worrying about, about Kvinn-Wyr... is if somebody is able to rile up the Trolls somehow.

Specifically, I'm wondering if somebody can use the ol' "dangle food in front of their faces" trick and lead them into our expedition.

Or maybe the Skaven are working on a plot to get access to all that Warpstone. Maybe they're going to steal it like it's a cartoon; by tunneling right under the big Warpstone rock, sawing away the floor around it, and it drops into the pit. And then the Trolls are riled up -- their big important foodstone-thing is gone! And they boil up out of the pit and go for the nearest concentration of food.

Of course, the problem with worries and paranoia though is that... it's worries and paranoia. It's not always productive and oracular.

It could just be a fantastically deadly place that nobody wants to poke. And neither do they have a way of productively poking it, of agitating in such a way that it will aggro on everybody (while they skedaddle).
 
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The problem is Karagril also has a route to Karak Drazh, also known as Black Crag. If that passageway can be sealed off, it might be the best potential target. But if not, just advancing on it risks us having to fend off assaults from whoever holds the largest Greenskin stronghold in the World's Edge Mountains.
On the other hand, if they're going after us through the Underway, they aren't cutting off our supply lines overland.
 
While I do not often post, I feel the need to toss a few words in:

oddment. Blubber. antidisestablishmentarianism. thank you.


in all seriousness, I too oft forget to give the type of credit authors deserve to them. So thank you, @BoneyM, for the amazing writing, that has actually (as someone who knew near-zero about Warhammer Fantasy, save what videos on Total War Warhammer 2 I saw) to keep going back to the wiki and even doing a full dive into the lores on each of the winds and colleges of magic, just to best understand this quest and Mathilde's actions and reasonings. She is not exactly a good person, in the traditional sense, but she does a lot of good. I will admit that while I am loving the dwarven arc, I am looking forward to her returning to a slightly bigger-picture peacetime (as much as Warhammer gets) role, of which you did an excellent job doing while still keeping it strongly character focused. Thank you for all this work!
 
Yeah, one of the things I've been worrying about, about Kvinn-Wyr... is if somebody is able to rile up the Trolls somehow.

Specifically, I'm wondering if somebody can use the ol' "dangle food in front of their faces" trick and lead them into our expedition.

Or maybe the Skaven are working on a plot to get access to all that Warpstone. Maybe they're going to steal it like it's a cartoon; by tunneling right under the big Warpstone rock, sawing away the floor around it, and it drops into the pit. And then the Trolls are riled up -- their big important foodstone-thing is gone! And they boil up out of the pit and go for the nearest concentration of food.

Of course, the problem with worries and paranoia though is that... it's worries and paranoia. It's not always productive and oracular.

It could just be a fantastically deadly place that nobody wants to poke. And neither do they have a way of productively poking it, of agitating in such a way that it will aggro on everybody (while they skedaddle).
If the Trolls go out we'll at least have artillery and ranged fighter killing a lot of them before they hit the troops.

It will be bad, particularly without Flame Cannons, but still a lot better than tunnelfighting would go.
 
So, brief thought:

Warhammer in general suffers from being a setting designed for wargames rather than logistical (not logical) consistency- I've ranted in other threads about the abomination that is Battletech's vision of trade and economics... In Warhammer, it seems that the 'enemies' are tougher, stronger, more numerous, and reproduce faster, and their needs for support infrastructure and farming are largely hand-waved away. I mean, large-scale coordination and organized division of labor are critical to any population concentrations larger than a few hundred- setting the orcs up as 'just fight and kill and WAAAAAAGHHHH!!!!' *should* mean that they can't organize a supply train and hordes starve within days.

Or skaven, or norscan chaos worshippers: any real city or company that runs along halfway similar lines self-destructs quickly and hard. See Sears, and that was only setting the divisions against each other.

So it works well when armies are conjured out of point buys and the background is designed to support the idea that corrupted evil armies of superhuman threats exist in every direction to fight; less well when you need calories and trainers and years to grow decent soldiers. And less well when all the enemies are just flat out more dangerous AND numerous than humans.

So, there's really not much point in trying to make descriptions of greenskin numbers, attitude, equipment, and organization all line up: Canon is massively unsustainable but makes for cool battles. If we want to pretend we are dealing with more realistic opponents, something needs to be noncanon.
 
labor are critical to any population concentrations larger than a few hundred- setting the orcs up as 'just fight and kill and WAAAAAAGHHHH!!!!' *should* mean that they can't organize a supply train and hordes starve within days.
Thing is Orcs are there own supply chain they are literally an army that can feed itself more the bigger it gets.

Also Orcs do build and are somewhat organized inherently so thats not really an issue
 
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So, brief thought:

Warhammer in general suffers from being a setting designed for wargames rather than logistical (not logical) consistency- I've ranted in other threads about the abomination that is Battletech's vision of trade and economics... In Warhammer, it seems that the 'enemies' are tougher, stronger, more numerous, and reproduce faster, and their needs for support infrastructure and farming are largely hand-waved away. I mean, large-scale coordination and organized division of labor are critical to any population concentrations larger than a few hundred- setting the orcs up as 'just fight and kill and WAAAAAAGHHHH!!!!' *should* mean that they can't organize a supply train and hordes starve within days.

Or skaven, or norscan chaos worshippers: any real city or company that runs along halfway similar lines self-destructs quickly and hard. See Sears, and that was only setting the divisions against each other.

So it works well when armies are conjured out of point buys and the background is designed to support the idea that corrupted evil armies of superhuman threats exist in every direction to fight; less well when you need calories and trainers and years to grow decent soldiers. And less well when all the enemies are just flat out more dangerous AND numerous than humans.

So, there's really not much point in trying to make descriptions of greenskin numbers, attitude, equipment, and organization all line up: Canon is massively unsustainable but makes for cool battles. If we want to pretend we are dealing with more realistic opponents, something needs to be noncanon.
In general yes, that is the case of the state of "enemies of existence" so to speak. Evil forces. They are like that.

It's a little complicated on how exactly the forces of good manage to hold the line, but at it's core, it's based on two thing: discipline, and in-fighting.

Especially the latter. Orcs, Skaven, Beastmen, Chaos followers? Honestly they spend as much time fighting each other, including other factions and their own kind, as they do the forces of order. Really, Dwarves and Elves and humans have conflicts with each other, including their own kind, but besides the terrible War of the Beard there isn't really any major, major stuff. Moreover, mankind especially is not like ours. They're grimmer, this constant death thing is something the masses are used to and have adapted to. And there are hints, occasionally, of man in WHF being a bit stronger on average than our own.

For every thousand men, Dwarves and Elves killed by Greenskins or Skaven or Chaos punks, ten times that are killed by their own and some more by other evil factions inhabiting their wastelands. Moreover, even without the in-fighting as races the evil forces are far less united even than mankind, which still exists in multiple different states.
 
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norscan chaos worshippers
Norscan Chaos worshippers actually have a functional society. They have government, and farms, they trade and fish. They worship non-Chaos gods. The raiding and attacking the southern lands is largely a way to rapidly reduce the population and/or get enough food when there are more Norscans than food. Full Chaos Warriors, as well as the Khurgan and Hung, are guilty of the whole 'we don't care about logistics' thing though.
 
...right. Well I have a lore question. I keep reading refrences in various threads how dwarfs need decades to build something to their specifications, but at the same time I read how dwarfs build things rapidly. Am I just misreading one of the two options or is there just inconsistency?
In-quest reference to Dawi fortification speed, this was the morning after taking Karak Lhune.
Durin?"
"The East Gates are about as fortified as we can expect them to be without a good century of work," he reports, as all eyes turn to where the innermost defences can be seen.
So Dawi can get 'good and solid' gates up and fortified overnight, then spend a century 'perfecting' them, proper like.
 
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Or maybe the Skaven are working on a plot to get access to all that Warpstone.
That place is so ripe for Skaven exploitation I'm amazed it's not covered in bells. However, Titus didn't seem to find any evidence of rats while he was there so either the trolls are doing a real good job of eating the evidence or the surrounding routes were inaccessible to the Skaven. Considering Karag Lhune, Karag Nar, and the Citadel were in greenskin possessin that seems likely.

O' course, with the Reclemation throwing a wrench into the local politics, the Skaven are bound to retaliate sooner or later. We know Mors has significant holdings here and Gnawdwell will be no fun to butt heads against even if he doesn't have his personal attack rathound.

We also know Moulder's around but not to what extent. They're one of the premier arms dealers in all Skavendom, it makes sense for them to have representatives here but whether it just a small skittermart or an actual branch office is hard to judge.
 
What about quarrels?
More complicated and expensive per shot. Generally you're talking about some kind of incendiary accelerant which is triggered on impact or just tie a burning rag around the head and deal with the bolt being super inaccurate/shorter ranged like archers do.

Yeah, but that doesn't let us really use the Throng of Karak Azul. Given Kazador's words, they're coming with a big a force as they can manage, so they won't be able to stick around for that long before having to return home. Granted, Thorek's probably got another Anvil of Doom to hammer them with, but we'd like to make use of both the whole Throng and Kazador's leadership (literally killed or drove off every Greenskin tribe near his hold.)

Well, at least, the part of the Throng that isn't former Eight Peaks Clans won't be sticking around for long anyway.
In that case my preference would probably be to take Grobi Town, use Karak Azul forces to clear out the underside and start picking off the Underway branches there.

Yeah, one of the things I've been worrying about, about Kvinn-Wyr... is if somebody is able to rile up the Trolls somehow.

Specifically, I'm wondering if somebody can use the ol' "dangle food in front of their faces" trick and lead them into our expedition.

Or maybe the Skaven are working on a plot to get access to all that Warpstone. Maybe they're going to steal it like it's a cartoon; by tunneling right under the big Warpstone rock, sawing away the floor around it, and it drops into the pit. And then the Trolls are riled up -- their big important foodstone-thing is gone! And they boil up out of the pit and go for the nearest concentration of food.

Of course, the problem with worries and paranoia though is that... it's worries and paranoia. It's not always productive and oracular.

It could just be a fantastically deadly place that nobody wants to poke. And neither do they have a way of productively poking it, of agitating in such a way that it will aggro on everybody (while they skedaddle).
Naw, if they get the trolls pouring out thats GOOD! Trolls are easy to deal with when charging across the open field.

Bad would be hungry trolls pouring into the Underway.
...I THINK we might be able to wrangle writing to the Bright College for some Journeymen for Kvinn-Wyr.
 
So, brief thought:

Warhammer in general suffers from being a setting designed for wargames rather than logistical (not logical) consistency- I've ranted in other threads about the abomination that is Battletech's vision of trade and economics... In Warhammer, it seems that the 'enemies' are tougher, stronger, more numerous, and reproduce faster, and their needs for support infrastructure and farming are largely hand-waved away. I mean, large-scale coordination and organized division of labor are critical to any population concentrations larger than a few hundred- setting the orcs up as 'just fight and kill and WAAAAAAGHHHH!!!!' *should* mean that they can't organize a supply train and hordes starve within days.

Or skaven, or norscan chaos worshippers: any real city or company that runs along halfway similar lines self-destructs quickly and hard. See Sears, and that was only setting the divisions against each other.

So it works well when armies are conjured out of point buys and the background is designed to support the idea that corrupted evil armies of superhuman threats exist in every direction to fight; less well when you need calories and trainers and years to grow decent soldiers. And less well when all the enemies are just flat out more dangerous AND numerous than humans.

So, there's really not much point in trying to make descriptions of greenskin numbers, attitude, equipment, and organization all line up: Canon is massively unsustainable but makes for cool battles. If we want to pretend we are dealing with more realistic opponents, something needs to be noncanon.
I don't think Orks are a good example of this. They basically create their own ecosystem as they move along, and coordination is probably in good parts literal (Waagh-)magic.
Norsca and Skaven, I kinda agree. That's questionable on the basis of food production alone. Chaos, well, that's magic again, and who knows how many actually need to eat.
 
Norscan Chaos worshippers actually have a functional society. They have government, and farms, they trade and fish. They worship non-Chaos gods. The raiding and attacking the southern lands is largely a way to rapidly reduce the population and/or get enough food when there are more Norscans than food. Full Chaos Warriors, as well as the Khurgan and Hung, are guilty of the whole 'we don't care about logistics' thing though.
There's also the disparity between Southern and Northern Norscans. The southern ones are more likely to see the Chaos Gods as powerful beings to be appeased so they don't make your life worse, not worshiped or loved. They also sometimes trade with the south, including the Empire. The northern ones are the hardcore fanatics and raiders.
 
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