Warhammer Fantasy: Divided Loyalties - an Advisor's Quest

[Neshuakadal]

Why not? the reaction is likely to be exothermic and thus would heat the wood, making the fire spread much faster.
Not only that, but it adds an additional hazard, the fire drives the grobi out, and they keep burning (from the shadow) once outside, so no easy evacuation or countermeasures.
Just fire would likely result in less grobi casualties, easier to control fires, and probably less fire in general.

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This delves into the question of what is happening to a substance under the effect of burning shadow. Very clearly the substance is changing somehow otherwise why would it melt and why would it be painful.

So the wood in this case is slowly changing as a magical process is inflicted on it. Is the end product of that change flammable? Is a mixture of wood and end product flammable?

What I am confident in saying is that whatever is happening with the wood means that we should question what properties the wood has during the process.

This would be an exciting experiment to do. However I don't think we should doing that experiment in a battlefield. All burning shadows adds to the wood right now is questions. And more questions are not what we need right now.

 

[EVA-Saiyajin]

Honestly, I'd prefer it if as far as the town was concerned said fires started spontaneously—us lobbing shit at them is an attack, and they'll move heaven and earth to strike back at an attacker.

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Mm, that requires the fires to be spontaneous. And they can't exactly move heaven and earth to strike back if
A. They're burning like they were covered in acid
B. There is a fortress between them and said attacker

This delves into the question of what is happening to a substance under the effect of burning shadow. Very clearly the substance is changing somehow otherwise why would it melt and why would it be painful.

So the wood in this case is slowly changing as a magical process is inflicted on it. Is the end product of that change flammable? Is a mixture of wood and end product flammable?

What I am confident in saying is that whatever is happening with the wood means that we should question what properties the wood has during the process.

This would be an exciting experiment to do. However I don't think we should doing that experiment in a battlefield. All burning shadows adds to the wood right now is questions. And more questions are not what we need right now.

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Fortunately, burning the wood is not a priority. Burning any greenskin in the shadow or that wanders into it to see why his fellows are burning is.

 

[TotallyNotEvil]

Buy an army.

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No point, and we wouldn't be that rich even in the best case.

It's like the whole Knightly Order thing: we will have to answer pointed questions as to why, exactly, we have an army, spend favor, spend a shitton of money and time, etc.

Basically, whenever we need an army, someone whose business is actually having one should be on hand. Because, whenever we need an army, it's certain that someone else in a position to provide one will also be interested in doing the stomping we'd be using it for.

Only a state, or groups with the income of a state, can maintain an army.

Look at it this way: Stirland had an army of 35 thousand. If it cost the Elector Count a gold per soldier to maintain it, on average, even a 100g per share will only mean we can foot their basic maintenance bill for a turn.

And it's the smallest, shittiest army in the Empire.

But we are still a filthy witch and therefore not to be trusted with more power or favour than necessary.

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Again, not like that. She doesn't want us near for reasons of "may suddenly explode into daemons". We've wielded power for almost a decade under her father, to his glowing praise.

It makes us less trustworthy in the sense that, in her eyes, we might suffer sudden existential failure and take everyone around with us, through no fault of our own. Not that we are moraly weak.

 

[deathofrats0808]

She is rapidly losing the ability to tell us no.

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Not really. We chose to become a knight and therefore technically owe her allegiance. She can order us to do stuff, and as long as it's not treason to the Empire, we are bound by our oaths to obey. Plus that part where she can sell the titles to the Haunted Hills to literally anyone she wants. She could sell them all to Talabecland if she wanted, stupid though that'd be.

Again, not like that. She doesn't want us near for reasons of "may suddenly explode into daemons". We've wielded power for almost a decade under her father, to his glowing praise.

It makes us less trustworthy in the sense that, in her eyes, we might suffer sudden existential failure and take everyone around with us, through no fault of our own. Not that we are moraly weak.

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Actually I interpreted her kicking us off the council as more to do with the inherent dangers of magic that don't result in exploding daemons, ie. that she was worried that we'd be corrupted. That seems more likely to me, because as you say, she knew we had close to a decade of wielding magic, and never got anyone killed through a miscast. I don't think we ever got WoGM about it either way though, so maybe you're right.

 

[TotallyNotEvil]

Honestly, I'd prefer it if as far as the town was concerned said fires started spontaneously—us lobbing shit at them is an attack, and they'll move heaven and earth to strike back at an attacker.

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Why vote for a plan that has Mathilde going down and torching things, then?

Burning Shadows has us safer than just walking around Grobi Town with a torch in hand.

It's the "act like a wizard and sit behind the rest of the army, throwing magical death".

 

[das_slash]

This delves into the question of what is happening to a substance under the effect of burning shadow. Very clearly the substance is changing somehow otherwise why would it melt and why would it be painful.

So the wood in this case is slowly changing as a magical process is inflicted on it. Is the end product of that change flammable? Is a mixture of wood and end product flammable?

What I am confident in saying is that whatever is happening with the wood means that we should question what properties the wood has during the process.

This would be an exciting experiment to do. However I don't think we should doing that experiment in a battlefield. All burning shadows adds to the wood right now is questions. And more questions are not what we need right now.

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Based on the name and what we are told, the answer to hose questions is likely to be "Who knows? but it really helps right here".
Assuming its some kind of magical non burning material has no evidence for it, assuming it would result in the same thing as using normal acid is the logical conclusion.

 

[Alliterate]

"Literally give it all to the College" just pushes every button I have wrong, so what do we do with it, assuming we have a few tens of thousands of gold?

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<SmaugMathilde/>

 

[Neshuakadal]

Nah, it's just that the plan that focuses entirely on burning shouldn't really have too much more fire than the one that already uses what's the more efficient, by orders of magnitude, method.

Barring extreme luck, everything but the catapults is a side-show, when it comes to fire.

Meanwhile, we have the option to cast a Citadel-wide trench of death over Grobi Town, but I suppose that's too cool for Mathilde...

Nah, she laments that we are a filthy witch, because we seem to otherwise be a decent person.

How many more arguments do you want?

It's delaying it by about half a day, given it's already past noon. The human troops should by all rights benefit from it, given the frantic pace of high-intensity conflict and that they just did some major fighting the day before.

The only arguments I've seen as to why that's bad is saying that mercenaries will up and leave while we are in the middle of nowhere, surrounded on all sides by goblins, orcs and skaven. Because... reasons?

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So the actions of any other inhabitants of K8P don't concern you? I can see why you are so comfortable waiting 18 hours then.

The complaints about the mercs are a fairly weak argument. That doesn't change the fact that other armies are at work here and moving fast prevents them from exploiting our success.

Trying to drown the argument by finding the weakest concerns about that argument and then holding those up as the entire argument is not going to get the argument to go away.

 

[zxzx24]

No point, and we wouldn't be that rich even in the best case.

It's like the whole Knightly Order thing: we will have to answer pointed questions as to why, exactly, we have an army, spend favor, spend a shitton of money and time, etc.

Basically, whenever we need an army, someone whose business is actually having one should be on hand. Because, whenever we need an army, it's certain that someone else in a position to provide one will also be interested in doing the stomping we'd be using it for.

Only a state, or groups with the income of a state, can maintain an army.

Look at it this way: Stirland had an army of 35 thousand. If it cost the Elector Count a gold per soldier to maintain it, on average, even a 100g per share will only mean we can foot their basic maintenance bill for a turn.

And it's the smallest, shittiest army in the Empire.

Again, not like that. She doesn't want us near for reasons of "may suddenly explode into daemons". We've wielded power for almost a decade under her father, to his glowing praise.

It makes us less trustworthy in the sense that, in her eyes, we might suffer sudden existential failure and take everyone around with us, through no fault of our own. Not that we are moraly weak.

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Throw it all into a really pimping research lab?

 

[Chlof]

[x] Plan Light Everything On Fire And Kill Things

 

[das_slash]

Throw it all into a really pimping research lab?

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Is that Tithe-deductible?
We are making so much money that we might need to look into the most popular vow of poverty evasion schemes and combining them.

 

[TotallyNotEvil]

<SmaugMathilde/>

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Honestly, essentially treating K8P as a venture to invest in sounds pretty good.

Get a few Gs for personal stuff, such as building a swanky fortified stone manor in our state, and a swanky fortified stone manor in K8P (maybe buy/rent for a century the Observatory from Skarogi?), buy the swankiest rifle in all of Karaz Ankor, etc.

And invest the rest in enventually owning some tiny shares of the wealth of K8P.

So the actions of any other inhabitants of K8P don't concern you? I can see why you are so comfortable waiting 18 hours then.

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In this particular instance? Not really, no. What do you realistic expect to happen?

Any infighting benefits us.

The complaints about the mercs are a fairly weak argument. That doesn't change the fact that other armies are at work here and moving fast prevents them from exploiting our success

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It's the main reason being bandied about, from reading the discussion.

 

[Katahiraga]

The way to improve burning shadows plan is to make the goblin's think the fire started spontaneously, with a couple of infighting orks.

The catapults should not throw stuff not unless, the greenskibs are planning to reinforce the citadel's , therefore secrecy is no longer a issue.

The fire should be delayed somehow until the burning shadows have been cast in the citadel, and if we are lucky they won't noticed the citadel has fallen until it's too late





Why isn't anyone in plan burn everything using a potent burning shadows spell to blockade the gate? There is no reason not to include the use of magic, otherwise what's the point of being a witch.

 

[Sinsystems]

On the subject of buying armed forces, I think any such investments should go into improving the armed guards at our estate.

For instance the people who will be fighting off any attackers and catching thieves while we are gone.

Plus in a pinch they can be tapped as a military force.

 

[Neshuakadal]

Based on the name and what we are told, the answer to hose questions is likely to be "Who knows? but it really helps right here".
Assuming its some kind of magical non burning material has no evidence for it, assuming it would result in the same thing as using normal acid is the logical conclusion.

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What type is a normal acid though. What acids effect and they do to the material is as diverse as the acids and what they effect.

Normal acids, to my knowledge, act by stripping apart molecules by acting as a more attractive option. So burning shadow is likely stripping things apart at a molecular level. Fire does much the same thing. Using heat to release chemical energy to release more heat.

If burning shadow rips things apart at a molecular level than the chemical energy would leave as well since the molecul holding it is gone. Since burning shadows is not adding another substance, that I know of, for the now free atoms to connect to and form new molecules no chemical energy can be stored in the now free floating atoms. This would severally hurt fires ability to spread as both burning shadow and fire are breaking apart molecules yet only fire seems to be generating heat from it. The burning part of burning shadows seems to be from how it feels to be under it's affect not from any heat it generates.

 

[WorldSlayer]

On the subject of buying armed forces, I think any such investments should go into improving the armed guards at our estate.

For instance the people who will be fighting off any attackers and catching thieves while we are gone.

Plus in a pinch they can be tapped as a military force.

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I can see how goat herders have many enemies that require a potent military force. But for those poor voters without our insight perhaps you could explain a bit more.

 

[TotallyNotEvil]

The way to improve burning shadows plan is to make the goblin's think the fire started spontaneously, with a couple of infighting orks.

The catapults should not throw stuff not unless, the greenskibs are planning to reinforce the citadel's , therefore secrecy is no longer a issue.

The fire should be delayed somehow until the burning shadows have been cast in the citadel, and if we are lucky they won't noticed the citadel has fallen until it's too late

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Sounds like far more trouble than it's worth.

I seriously don't believe how stupidly hard it is to convince people on a plan that is beyond awesome, that makes use of a once-in-quest opportunity, and is the most effective to boot.

On the subject of buying armed forces, I think any such investments should go into improving the armed guards at our estate.

For instance the people who will be fighting off any attackers and catching thieves while we are gone.

Plus in a pinch they can be tapped as a military force.

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That... Really shouldn't make a dent.

However, while any large-scale armed forces are too rich for even our jackpot-enriched blood, finding Twenty Good Men from the best mercs in the army to take back home as our fief's guard and totally not our personal strike force sounds pretty good.

Finding some WS/BS/S/T 4 lads, get them heavy armor, greatsword (or pistol and sword), horse with barding and there you go. We can even entertain some of the "enchant arms and armor for your own forces" idea, maybe make some ulgu-kebabs.

 

[ShyPerson]

Hay look! The first post has been gilded.

 

[deathofrats0808]

On the subject of buying armed forces, I think any such investments should go into improving the armed guards at our estate.

For instance the people who will be fighting off any attackers and catching thieves while we are gone.

Plus in a pinch they can be tapped as a military force.

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We have those? There's nothing really saying we do, although it'd be a tad odd if we didn't. Actually, did we ever build ourselves somewhere to live on our estate? I don't remember.

 

[Sinsystems]

We have those? There's nothing really saying we do, although it'd be a tad odd if we didn't. Actually, did we ever build ourselves somewhere to live on our estate? I don't remember.

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I'd imagine that there are some basic peasant guard or something but nothing special, miltia at best. But if we are going to invest in the estate it is probably a good idea to improve the guard as we don't want someone attacking and destroying all our work.

 

[Neshuakadal]

Honestly, essentially treating K8P as a venture to invest in sounds pretty good.

Get a few Gs for personal stuff, such as building a swanky fortified stone manor in our state, and a swanky fortified stone manor in K8P (maybe buy/rent for a century the Observatory from Skarogi?), buy the swankiest rifle in all of Karaz Ankor, etc.

And invest the rest in enventually owning some tiny shares of the wealth of K8P.

In this particular instance? Not really, no. What do you realistic expect to happen?

Any infighting benefits us.

It's the main reason being bandied about, from reading the discussion.

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Then you must have missed me discussing this fear fairly early on. So let's go over it again.

If skaven take the citadel than our entire plan against the orcs is shot.

If one of the other tribes of the other Karags move with force into the caldera that will force the goblins to flee to the safety of the citadel which is the one thing we are trying to prevent with these plans.

If any of the other armies move against the forces we badly weaken at the battle of Karag Nar it is true they will weaken each other. But we don't care about that. The overall strength of the different tribes is irrelevant as long as the citadel itself remains weak.

I believe we so badly hurt the goblins and orcs of the caldera that they can not withstand a dedicated attack from any of the other armies. When those goblins and orcs loose they will seek protection in the only place their enemies can't reach them. The citadel.

There is also the problem of the skaven seizing the citadel from under ground which would make all of these plans dead in the water. We might be able to contest the skaven attack if we discover it is happening soon enough but that will just make it a three way meat grinder and we want to avoid meat grinders.

 

[DarkLight140]

Not really. We chose to become a knight and therefore technically owe her allegiance. She can order us to do stuff, and as long as it's not treason to the Empire, we are bound by our oaths to obey.

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This is not how feudal oaths work. Typically a feudal overlord can call upon knights for specific amounts of military service per year or (in some systems) specific amounts of money per year, paid instead of military service at the knight's option. She can't ask us to do anything other than military service via any kind of feudal obligation, and even then there's a good chance that we could toss her like 20g (or whatever the estimated cost of a mercenary knight's service is, should be approximately the annual profits of our fief before any of our improvements or slightly less since it was estimated able to support a normal knight and that's why it was issued to Mathilde upon her knighthood) instead of showing up and it would be a complete fulfillment of our legal responsibilities.

She definitely does not have "can order anything short of treason to the Empire and we must obey" authority over Mathilde, or over any of her vassals.

 

[Alliterate]

The only arguments I've seen as to why that's bad is saying that mercenaries will up and leave while we are in the middle of nowhere, surrounded on all sides by goblins, orcs and skaven. Because... reasons?

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Not up and leave, unless things get very ugly. Although I will note there are Barak Var food convoys heading up and down the well-guarded pass daily now.
But "reconsider whether they actually want to fight any more, for an expanded Expedition goal, and instead demand their already well deserved payment."

Finding some WS/BS/S/T 4 lads, get them heavy armor, greatsword (or pistol and sword), horse with barding and there you go. We can even entertain some of the "enchant arms and armor for your own forces" idea, maybe make some ulgu-kebabs.

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There's nothing in particular to guard at our fief. Rocks and goats.

 

[EVA-Saiyajin]

I have to head to bed.

I have one request: upon receiving the information from the GM, please be open minded and willing to change based on viability. I favor what works, that is all.

Goodnight

 

[TotallyNotEvil]

@Neshuakadal things would have to wrong at pretty much every turn for us to not to be able to exploit any of those scenarios.

But "reconsider whether they actually want to fight any more, for an expanded Expedition goal, and instead demand their already well deserved payment."

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Sounds extremely unlikely. These folks are high on victory, and they will be flat out told that the Expedition ends, and thus they will be paid, when we take the Citadel in, oh, twelve hours.

I'd expect that sort of attitude on mercs with exhausted, demoralized mercs with delayed payments. The opposite of what we have.

There's nothing in particular to guard at our fief. Rocks and goats.

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It's the totally-not-a-personal-hit-squad idea.

Part of the appeal is them partially retiring there, too.