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Warhammer Fantasy: Divided Loyalties - an Advisor's Quest

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Boney said:
"Have you ever been to sea?" he asks, in a voice with only the most battered shred of hope remaining in it. You get the impression he's asked that question quite a lot already, and received the same answer every time.
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Even though he's a Druchii corsair, and thus a slaver, I have to be a little sympathetic to this sailor being surrounded by a party's worth of people who've probably only been on the sea once in their lives (if ever), and that was the trip that took them here millennia ago.
 
"So I figured, but I had to try. Say, you ever encountered the other kind of Dwarves? The Stone Dwarves?"

You smile. "A time or two."
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Understatement of the millennium, there.


Also, I'd be open to 'buy' Waystone knowledge if they have any (as long as the price is reasonable and not perjudicial to the interests of the Empire/Karaz Ankor/Civilized Realms), but under no circumstances would I accept them into the Project. The political clusterfuck that would result would make almost anything we could ever get from that not worth it.
 
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Mathilde should really go chat with Grey Order folk who organized slave revolt in Naggaroth. And read up on Druchii. Or talk to Barak Varr Dawi about druchii vs high elves.

I'll grant dark elves that, they really are able to make a sales pitch.
 
Boney said:
'Uncle' Harathi - great-great uncle to Queen Marrisith, and also half-nephew to Malekith and therefore, you think... great-nephew-in-law to Morathi? In the current era he is an ancient and respected Grey Lord, but there was a time when he was little more than a child and a student of magic in Saphethion, the former capital of Saphery, and when the Civil War started he survived the civil war on the airborne streets, and then the transformation of the city into an enormous engine of war and the subsequent battles it fought in, and then the crash of the city into the Annulii Mountains during the Sundering, and then the long journey from the mountains back to civilization. And what awaited him at the end of all of that was banishment in all but name to Laurelorn, where his sister, Handmaiden to the Everqueen, was overseeing a research expedition to study the area. In time that Handmaiden became the first Queen of the Eonir and Harathi became one of the Grey Lords, but it seems that even large amounts of time are not reliable healers of emotional wounds among the Elves.
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So he'd be Maruviel's brother and the son of Morelion (Morelion being the son of Aenarion and Astarielle), the nephew of Everqueen Yvraine, half-nephew to Malekith as mentioned, and technically not related by blood to Morathi at all.

Huh, since the wiki page for Astarielle says it's Morelion's branch of the family (as opposed to Yvraine's) that has Tyrion and Teclis in it, assuming that can be trusted, I'm guessing Morelion had a third child who stayed in Ulthuan, because it seems quite unlikely Maruviel or Harathi would have children living in Ulthuan when they went to Laurelorn.
 
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Boney said:
You're told that the flags represent three of the six major city-states of Naggaroth: Ghrond, the headquarters of the order of Sorceresses and domain of the Queen Mother of the Druchii, Hag Graef, the city atop a sprawling network of mines and quarries that make it second only to the capital in wealth and power, and Clar Karond, the shipyard and breadbasket of Naggaroth. Notable by their absence are the other three flags: that the clutched moon of the capital Naggarond is missing, suggesting that this is either unofficial or a gambit of Queen Mother, rather than the King, and that the bloody heart of the Khainite stronghold of Har Ganeth and the harpy of the Corsair capital of Karond Kar are absent suggests that those present could be as reasonable as the Druchii are capable of being, since they left the fanatics and the slavers at home.
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So, does Mathilde not know about the Cult of Pleasure? Because I'd certainly expect her to consider that a factor if she did.

A gambit of someone with suspicious Chaos connections is not one we should be entertaining participating in even momentarily, especially not while in the middle of a project specifically designed to hurt Chaos in particular.
 
DragonParadox said:
Well I will give the dark elves this, they do temptation a lot better than Chaos for the strong willed. That said the reasons not to engage with them stand:
  1. We would be walking into a forest of thorns when it comes to the Dwarfs and Kiselv at the very least
  2. We have no way to verify what they tell us
  3. They are likely to ask for a price we would find distasteful, now or later.
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Bretonnia, too.
 
Good pitch, i will pay a hell of a lot for a black ark to visit marienburg.


Doesn't have to involve anyone else, just something between us and the captains and such.
 
Excellent and captivating update @Boney. Thank you very much. The look into the mindsets of these diverse set of characters and the complex web you wove using your construction of Druchii society is incredibly intriguing and interesting and I can't wait to unpack it.

What's worse than pure evil Druchii? Druchii that know how to frame things in such a manner as to appear reasonable. Phrasing their viewpoints in a utilitarian manner is an understanable view for a practical Dreadlord, and the use of debating techniques by the Druchii in this update is to be expected from masters of their craft who have honed manipulative techniques over the centuries. I could recognise the ways in which they crafted their narrative to frame themselves in a favorable light. They can't be seen as moral, so they appeal to Logos instead of Ethos, and they use Pathos by comparing their actions to Ulthuan's. Has Ulthuan done much for the Empire lately? No. Human memory is short, and there is no doubt that Ulthuan largely disregard the Old World. Using that as a leverage, they use conversational techniques to push from one goalpost to another.

When you justify one thing, it becomes easier to justify the next thing a step higher. And then you go higher and higher and higher such that you don't even remember the beginning. If you were presented with an atrocity immediately from the get go, you would resist it. But if you were acclimated to it and managed to reasonably justify it, it becomes easier to keep doing it. It's exactly the kind of slippery slope that propaganda creates to cause people to fall down the rabbit hole of harmful ideologies.

This update made me uncomfortable, and I think that's amazing for a writer to be able to do that. No wonder Boney felt he had to clarify his viewpoints don't necessarily align with the Druchii. They're very convincing, and he probably doesn't want people to think he believes the same things. I'm pretty sure getting into that mindset is exhausting.
 
While all of this update is outstanding, I'm gonna say that the Horathi - Myrhiel beef was pretty fucking hilarious :V
Thank Ranald for Windsage letting us see her nervousness.
 
Also a thought: the Druchii would keep to their side of the deal, sure...right up until they felt they had gotten their money's worth. Splitting Ulthuan's power between the Empire/Dwarfs and the island would create some very nice opportunities for them. And for elves, even an "alliance" that lasts a couple human lifespans is the equivalent of a smile and a handshake before you knife someone. Anything to do with elves should come with a disclaimer: This Person is Playing the Very, Very, Very Long Game.
 
Amazing portrayal of the Druchii. It can't be easy to work within the over the top evil caricature framework of the canon and still create something multilayered and tempting out of the Dark Elves, both to our protagonist and the readers.
 
Woltaire said:
is this a standing offer or perhaps something we can do for a couples months and then return home...
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A couple months of sailing with Druuchi may already reveal enough horrors to match a full army tour. Even if we know the destination is somewhere we don't care about, joining up with the slavers, torturers and death cultists is not worth it.
 
Boney said:
A lot of Dark Elves don't know about the Cult of Pleasure. Malekith outlawed it very early in Naggaroth's history, and officially it exists only in history books.
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Alright fair, but surely Morathi still has some kind of reputation that involves the powers of Chaos, if only because I'd not expect her to be shy about anything that isn't straight-up illegal.

Point is, this being Morathi's plot is literally more terrifying than if a formal envoy of Malekith showed up and straight up said they want to steal magic from Ulthuan. Because if they aren't here to fuck with Ulthuan then they are here to fuck with us.
 
Acolyte said:
Good pitch, i will pay a hell of a lot for a black ark to visit marienburg.
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What? No! Look the Marienburgers are assholes but a black ark is so utterly horrifying and overkill. We just want them to backoff and let us use the canal and merchant dwarf made that seem not unreasonable. Honestly using the Dark elves are smoozing us to twist Ulthuans arm into being less uptight dicks for a bit sounds like the best use of this.
 
I want to see our girl casually unmaking a dark elf sorceress's Dar with a simple twist of her own magic. The Salt created would provide trade goods for decades.
 
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VillaininGlasses said:
What? No! Look the Marienburgers are assholes but a black ark is so utterly horrifying and overkill. We just want them to backoff and let us use the canal and merchant dwarf made that seem not unreasonable. Honestly using the Dark elves are smoozing us to twist Ulthuans arm into being less uptight dicks for a bit sounds like the best use of this.
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Shouldn't have killed dwarves, its a fucking grudge for me.


And making ulthuan being more proactive to woo us is a good for us.
 
Boney said:
"My, my," the Grey Lord says, eyeing up a Sorceress with severely frayed composure, who is wearing what looks like the front and back quarters of a skirt and a metal bustier that must be absolutely freezing to what little of her it covers. "The dress codes Auntie Rathi enforces have changed dramatically since she taught me."
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My man has been practicing this burn for literally thousands of years. He must be so happy he finally got a chance to pull it out of his pocket.
Boney said:
I've had quite some time to hone my skills sense her last offering to me.
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*since

I must also confess I actually rather like Captain Maktig, even if I'm not optimistic how well that would survive detailed knowledge of all his activities at sea.

Some very, very interesting offers at hand here, I must say.
 
This could actually be good for the Dwarfs. The Druchii hate the Asur so their probably willing to recover stolen Dwarf property that the Asur are keeping. Don't the Asur still have that cloak made of Dwarf beards that they shaved off Dwarfs that existence in Asur hands brings shame to the Dawi.

That said the Druchii are probably going to be willing to lend us a hand in taking control of our own piece of the waystone network from the Asur, because of spite.

We have common goals here.

Edit.

Cloak of Beards, that's what its called.
 
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I honestly can't say I care much for Druchii help with Marienburg. We're fully capable of dealing with these upstarts on our own, thank you very much.
The promise of magical secrets, however...
Well, we've never been able to say no to that. And if they share the Waystone passphrases, that's an immense good for the Old World.
 
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