Warhammer Fantasy: Divided Loyalties - an Advisor's Quest

Glau · Sep 25, 2022

I think the thing that strikes me out of all of this is how little difference there actually is between the elves.

Dark elves ARE high elves, from the same root culture and society, about ten generations removed. (So, without the leadership trying to push things, about as much cultural drift as between England and America.) So the roots of everything people hate about dark elves are right there in high elves as well- the willingness to kill first and talk never, the reluctance to treat anyone who dies in under two hundred years as really a person, all of it. The mention of the same fates awaiting those who met asur patrols and druchii corsairs is illustrative here- it points to a minor difference in how attitudes evolved, not any fundemental differences.

The fact that the two at the top are bugfuck nuts and also invincible makes this almost a hostage situation for the population under them- it doesn't matter what the actual culture is or was or if the population was/is ok with the way things are now because disagreeing will get you murdered.

But ultimately, it points to the idea that the reason we can't trust or deal with the dark elves is their leadership, not anything inherent about them as people. Which is a different situation than "every dark elf will dick us over for giggles while drinking infant blood".

We can't deal with them while any deal can be overridden by the top, true. We need to cut away the slavery, raiding, and witch covens if we want to normalize relations.

But most of them are just going to be people. Which, ethically, demands we treat them as people and not as incarnation of evil #6.

So what I want out of this most is that info on the locations and timings of the raider fleets. I view the destruction of slavers as a nice win-win to aim for, while the exchange of lore is a game I don't even think we'll know if we lost, and the idea of bringing a black ark to marienburg is bad even if they are hostile.

The opportunity here isn't too play against morathi for lore, or to leverage malekith against ulithan, because both of those have blowback way bigger than the value they provide. The opportunity here is to play druchii cities against eachother and better everyone else's position by making them worse off, with no one to point fingers at except eachother.

That, and figure out how to accept and process defectors, who might start showing up if there's a place that they can go to get away from their leadership without grovelling to ulithan.

16 characters · Sep 25, 2022

Re: Grey Lords. Thank you very much for the clarification @Boney, apologies if I was in any way being dumb or disruptive about the whole thing.
So presumably that means they don't have/have had laboratories for binding souls hidden deep in the woods, which is a relief actually. Presumably, that also means in this quest their spirit hosts are volunteers rather than additional victims which I think would be implied otherwise.

For my sanity and the rest of the threads I'll just have to mentally compartmentalize these guys as significantly different characters who could be mistaken for each other. A la many characters between FMA 03 and Brotherhood.

It's probably not even the only time this has happened in the quest although i'm struggling to think of other examples.

EDIT: Skaven Numerology comes close, you wrote that so well and so convincingly I have to remind myself when engaging in other threads that it's not actually a G.W 'canon' Skaven thing that they do outside of this Quest.

Shine · Sep 25, 2022

Glau said:
~~Snip~~

….…?.
I've never heard of the HE feeding other elves and slaves the Khaine, or heading out every season on their score of Black Arks, or deciding that it's a good joke to make a man wear the flayed face of his dead wife and flaunt said poor man about as a conversation piece, or brutalising their war beasts and dragons into submission, or trying to end the world. They both have some similar flaws, but one clearly takes it to the wild, incredible excess, while the other is going extinct because they refuse to stop fighting Chaos, or at least stop fighting Chaos in a way that sees them bleed immensely and alone for it.

I agree that Malekith and Morathi are definitely should bear the blame for the current state of DE society and culture, but the average DE is not an unwilling hostage. They're no more intrinsically evil than the Skaven (probably less so because Horned Rat nonsense), but I still wouldn't trust them with anything or treat them as I would representatives from the Order factions for reasons fairly obvious.

DE society as a whole is some of the worst scum in Warhammer, and hand crafted by Malekith to be exactly that. Although you're right in that the individual DE is not necessarily aligned with such, the great majority are, or otherwise it would not be a society. Even if Malekith and Morathi dropped dead tomorrow, the DE would not change significantly in their evils for centuries at least, although they would pose far less of a threat with the whole civil war thing.

So unless the DE prove their non-alignment with the vast majority of their kin first (which is not an impossible feat, although it is a dangerous one), I fundamentally distrust them, and everything they do, and everything they say, and hold everything they collectively stand for in disdain. People they may be, but so are chaos tribes, skaven, chaos dwarves, etc- their shared cultures are rotten to the core.

Do agree we should try to deceive the DE though.

AsuraAtlas · Sep 25, 2022

Shine said:
deciding that it's a good joke to make a man wear the flayed face of his dead wife and flaunt said poor man about as a conversation piece

I do think trying to help or even be friendly with the Dark Elves in any meaningful capacity is morally reprehensible, but it is worth noting that Boney has explicitly toned them down for the quest. IIRC he's compared them to Vikings and Romans in terms of atrocities so we should keep that in mind.

Woltaire · Sep 25, 2022

AsuraAtlas said:
I do think trying to help or even be friendly with the Dark Elves in any meaningful capacity is morally reprehensible, but it is worth noting that Boney has explicitly toned them down for the quest. IIRC he's compared them to Vikings and Romans in terms of atrocities so we should keep that in mind.

I don't think he has iirc that been other people making that comparison

Orbmorb · Sep 25, 2022

Imugi said:
A devout Ranaldian wouldn't have bought goods at Uzkulak.

A perfectly spherical Ranaldian in a frictionless vacuum wouldn't have bought goods at Uzkulak

Hunter531 · Sep 25, 2022

Raydom said:
It's all a gamble and i want waystones lore and actual recreation of them and if the codes are absolutely neccesery, I know Ulthuan won't give them to us as Boney repeatedly said they want us to fuck of and will send Teclis back to the colleges to cancel our project which while probably a W I want waystones dammit gamble with druch codes I go.

I don't think that we actually need Druchii codes in order to get the Waystone Project past the perfection finish line. I actually think I have a way to use guess and check without angering Caledor Dragontamer. Step 1, complete all the other stuff needed for recreating Waystones. This is ambitious, to say the least, but it sounds like you want to do all this anyways. Step 2, build one. Step 3, try to connect it to the network through trial and error. I suspect ol' Dragontamer will be significantly less annoyed if we demonstrate that we are trying to rebuild the network. Bonus points if we research another transmission method to make it even more obvious what we are doing.

Or we could just accept being somewhat imperfect and use a different way to move magic, my preference being rivers. Perfect is the enemy of the good and all that jazz.

Glau · Sep 25, 2022

Shine said:
I've never heard of the HE feeding other elves and slaves the Khaine, or heading out every season on their score of Black Arks, or deciding that it's a good joke to make a man wear the flayed face of his dead wife and flaunt said poor man about as a conversation piece, or brutalising their war beasts and dragons into submission, or trying to end the world.

And, I suspect, Mathilde has only heard about such things from the asur, who are trying as hard as they can to make everyone hate the druchii.

There's six thousand years of attrocities and propeganda about the attrocities going on, all of it from unreliable narrators. And given that we know WHF canon is not reliably true in this thread, and we know that if dark elf society were actually like that on a consistent basis it would have fallen over in ruins thousands of years ago, we are left with a need to gather information IN CHARACTER before making these kinds of blanket statements.

Shine said:
DE society as a whole is some of the worst scum in Warhammer, and hand crafted by Malekith to be exactly that.

This is exactly the kind of blanket statement that I dislike, as it seems to exist to justify the murder of those described.

I don't think we know enough about how dark elves work yet. We know there are raiders and slavers, crazy evil rulers and city-fortresses, and that they and the high elves will take any opportunity to make the other look evil and themselves look good.

But. We don't know nearly enough about dark elf society to condemn all of them. We don't know what their economy looks like, or even roughly how many dark elves there are. I'm unwilling to get behind the idea that an entire people is evil because their leaders are.

Shine · Sep 25, 2022

Glau said:
~~~Snip~~

My sources for 90% of these are the HE and DE 8th edition army books, and until Boney directly contradicts those they are fair canon, not a biased assumption. Even scaled down to not constantly be doing it to a suicidal degree, no one here can deny the DE regularly unleash extraordinary horrors on anyone with a coastline.
The other 10% is what I have read from other Warhammer deep lore people on here who promise they use other materials I do not have access to, like the BL novels, but that's not really the main thrust here.

Ergo, it seems fair to me to proclaim that dark elf society is utterly shit for all the free, non dark elf peoples of the world, and until we see DE society functioning in quest and not some of their most subtle and charming faces to the outside world, I am not sure why we should believe otherwise.

The DE are not intrinsically evil, and there are defectors, and it's not fair that any adult DE we encounter I will advise to treat with extremely deep suspicion, but I'm not advising that for no reason.

AsuraAtlas · Sep 25, 2022

Woltaire said:
I don't think he has iirc that been other people making that comparison

After a quick 5 minute search they've been compared to Romans here:

Boney said:
The easiest way to fix things is to just posit that the average Druchii isn't a sadistic murder-fiend in the same way that the average Roman citizen wasn't a Caligula or a Crassus. They pay their taxes and love their kids and go to edgy church and like to see some bloodsport at the arena every now and then and their extended family pools funds to buy a slave to sacrifice to mollify the Gods once a year or so.

It's possible the Viking comparison is just a wild game of telephone, though. I definitely remember other people saying Boney made the comparison, but I cant find it so I'd appreciate if someone else could give a definitive answer on whether it's fake news lol.

Glau · Sep 25, 2022

I do think there is a very large difference between how raiding cultures treat the people they raided and how they treat each other. It's the loss of this distinction that makes the dark elves unsustainable and unbelievable.

Shine · Sep 25, 2022

Glau said:
I do think there is a very large difference between how raiding cultures treat the people they raided and how they treat each other. It's the loss of this distinction that makes the dark elves unsustainable and unbelievable.

I'm not denying that they obviously must treat the Untermensch and Inferior Traitor Elves a magnitude worse than their fellow DE.
They still, by the DE army book, do not place a very high regard on each other's lives if their continued existence is inconvenient, which is really saying something for how they generally treat everyone else given the upper hand.

And even if they did treat their DE fellows with great generosity.. we are not the DE. We are the Untermensch. I still, absolutely, would not trust them.

Glau · Sep 25, 2022

Shine said:
They still, by the DE army book, do not place a very high regard on each other's lives if their continued existence is inconvenient, which is really saying something for how they generally treat everyone else given the upper hand.

Given the number of qualifiers in that statement, that could mean anything from "people who alienate their entire unit are allowed to die on enemy blades" to "more people die on the way home from a successful raid to the knives of those looking for promotions than to enemy action".

One of those is sustainable. One is not.

Which is why I am doubtful that the non-army-unit dark elf majority are as you suggest. You cannot raise food or kids under those conditions. You cannot keep people as slaves alive long enough to do anything with even mild levels of cruelty and naggaroth's climate. Cruelty is self destructive, both personally and most especially for a society. You need at very least to aim the cruelty at a non-critical "other", or else you will eat yourself alive.

So. Either the army books are lying/massively exaggerating to be edgy, or the civilization collapsed thousands of years ago.

GW doesn't worry about things like "feeding armies" or "replacing population". Boney does.

Angelform · Sep 25, 2022

Glau said:
Dark elves ARE high elves, from the same root culture and society, about ten generations removed. (So, without the leadership trying to push things, about as much cultural drift as between England and America.)

Given the elves of Laurelorn and of Athel Loren also diverged from the exact same root culture at the exact same time I do not feel your logic is supported by the available evidence.

Glau said:
And, I suspect, Mathilde has only heard about such things from the asur, who are trying as hard as they can to make everyone hate the druchii.

The Asur haven't been feeding propaganda to the Old World. They had zero contact with anyone on the continent until a couple of centuries ago and even now don't pay it much attention.

The Druchii have a monstrous reputation because the Druchii spent millennia raiding the shores of the Old World for slaves and the various locals are annoyed about it.

Glau · Sep 25, 2022

But, once again, drawing conclusions about who they are to eachother or to their allies from the way they treat the people they raid is kinda dumb.

What I am trying to do is emphasize the difference between "the druchii have done awful things" and "the druchii are intrinsically awful". One of those is true.

And re: Athel Loren- that's two of three major elf powers that look like they are pretty evil. I think ulithan is the exception, and examining why they aren't evil is more instructive than examining why the others are.

Shine · Sep 25, 2022

Glau said:
So. Either the army books are lying/massively exaggerating to be edgy, or the civilization collapsed thousands of years ago.

A. The Dark Elves regularly scheme and betray each other to bolster their own positions. They will not do it when fighting an external enemy, but their native homes are rife with lethal intrigue, unlike the Asur version of merely humiliating intrigue sometimes.

B. You quite evidently can raise your kids in a society where it is accepted that you will regulalry betray their peers and neighbours. Their treachery obviously does not mean they do it all the time. The fact that they've accepted it as part of life means they still do it, compared to others, a lot.

C. We have literal evidence that Morathi probably magically screwed over a subordinate she trusted enough to send to negotiate, even if in a minor fashion.

D. We are the Untermensch. They will have no compunctions in betraying us specifically as soon as they find it convenient.

Glau said:
What I am trying to do is emphasize the difference between "the druchii have done awful things" and "the druchii are intrinsically awful". One of those is true.

I completely agree no sea elf on either side is intrinsically evil.
But it is overwhelmingly likely that any adult dark elf we meet should not be trusted with anything, and if they succeed in DE society they likely have done and will keep doing things we find abhorrent.
That is their culture.

lancelot · Sep 25, 2022

StormySky said:
Most of those groups aren't relevant right now. Since High and Dark Elves should be public subjects, we'll ignore purchase restrictions for now. We can buy Imperial, Dwarven, Eonir, and Bretonnian (up to Extensive) books. However, the Eonir don't know enough to have books on Asur or Druchii (they do know stuff, but it's too fragmentary and outdated to be useful). The Dwarves don't know enough about the Druchii either.

The Druchii weren't relevant a turn ago, and now we're talking to several mid-high ranked members with little to no idea of the truth behind them. I don't know about you but I'm not much interested in getting caught flat footed with another surprise when the cost of knowledge is chump change at this point.

Jyn Ryvia · Sep 25, 2022

Glau said:
Given the number of qualifiers in that statement, that could mean anything from "people who alienate their entire unit are allowed to die on enemy blades" to "more people die on the way home from a successful raid to the knives of those looking for promotions than to enemy action".

One of those is sustainable. One is not.

Which is why I am doubtful that the non-army-unit dark elf majority are as you suggest. You cannot raise food or kids under those conditions. You cannot keep people as slaves alive long enough to do anything with even mild levels of cruelty and naggaroth's climate. Cruelty is self destructive, both personally and most especially for a society. You need at very least to aim the cruelty at a non-critical "other", or else you will eat yourself alive.

So. Either the army books are lying/massively exaggerating to be edgy, or the civilization collapsed thousands of years ago.

GW doesn't worry about things like "feeding armies" or "replacing population". Boney does.

Boney said:
The easiest way to fix things is to just posit that the average Druchii isn't a sadistic murder-fiend in the same way that the average Roman citizen wasn't a Caligula or a Crassus. They pay their taxes and love their kids and go to edgy church and like to see some bloodsport at the arena every now and then and their extended family pools funds to buy a slave to sacrifice to mollify the Gods once a year or so.

I think it needs to be remembered that while the average dark elf isn't as bad as the top brass, it's still a brutal culture.

lets not over-defend. just because the average dark elf isn't murdering left and right and torturing babies, doesn't mean the average dark elf has a problem with slavery, sentient sacrifice, blood sport and brutal conquest and raiding.

god, the dark elves really are just the Romans with edge, aren't they?

edit: tho, fair is fair, the average Empire citizen doesn't really have a problem with much of that either as long as its them doing the blood sport and brutal conquest and raiding.

Raiseth · Sep 25, 2022

Orbmorb said:
A perfectly spherical Ranaldian in a frictionless vacuum wouldn't have bought goods at Uzkulak

Moreover, a perfectly spherical Ranaldian in a frictionless vacuum would have burned the whole mountain to the ground through the memetic powers of cheating and stealing, unopposed by any outside influence or physical laws.

StormySky · Sep 25, 2022

lancelot said:
The Druchii weren't relivent a turn ago, and now we're talking to several mid-high ranked members with little to no idea of the truth behind them. I don't know about you but I'm not much interested in getting caught flat footed with another surprise when the cost of knowledge is chump change at this point.

We already have some books on Ogres, and Nehekara is a consideration for future book purchases, but I don't think we can even buy books about Lizardmen, Cathay, Ind, and Nippon, since none of our current contacts know enough about them either.

Well, maybe some of that will change if we set up the right trade deals with the Druchii, but, well, Druchii.

Glau · Sep 25, 2022

Shine said:
B. You quite evidently can raise your kids in a society where it is accepted that you will regulalry betray their peers and neighbours. Their treachery obviously does not mean they do it all the time. The fact that they've accepted it as part of life means they still do it, compared to others, a lot.

I know it's possible to talk about and write stories about. I deny that it is possible in reality.

Shine said:
D. We are the Untermensch. They will have no compunctions in betraying us specifically as soon as they find it convenient.

This is, again, an unjustifiablely blanket statement. I have no doubt morathi and malekith think like this. But I think saying that no other dark elf could ever regard anyone else as a full person is you taking the worst and leveling literally every other dark elf down to it.

I agree that you are accurately describing everyone in military or magical authority. I disagree that the rest of the society must then also necessarily be like that.

Shine said:
But it is overwhelmingly likely that any adult dark elf we meet should not be trusted with anything, and if they succeed in DE society they likely have done and will keep doing things we find abhorrent.

This i will agree with. If they are in any significant position of authority, they got there and stayed by demonstrating a willingness to do things that are awful.

Jyn Ryvia said:
god, the dark elves really are just the Romans with edge, aren't they?

And I think this might be the take I most agree with. Nice summation.

veekie · Sep 25, 2022

Digesting the diplomatic goals here, subgroups detailed where enough info is available for an informed guess:
-Naggaroth

Primary goals here are to disrupt Ulthuan, the specifics don't matter for them, but do to us, since while we have negative interest in seeing Ulthuan collapse, we want to disrupt Ulthuan where they are dictating Imperial policy.
They would like to establish primacy over Laurelorn, but don't have any realistic means to do so.
They would probably like to have access to strategic information on the Waystone network, but nobody is dumb enough to tell them about the project, much less being read in. Expect them to be poking and prying at what kind of lore we're looking for.

--Ghrond

Primary goals here are getting their hands on some additional knowledge on magic, which, while not inherently for nefarious means, would inevitably be used for something terrible at some point. Why?
Because as we've already established in this scene, within Ghrond, knowledge is power, the Sorceress here is relatively young and facing the problem of being unable to get any trusted/reliable means to further develop her power within Ghrond without committing herself too much to one power.
As such, offers of knowledge that Ghrond already knows may still be accepted, as long as it is knowledge that this sorceress lacks herself.
With the caveat that we probably want theory more than technique, as there are fairly good odds that techniques would be deliberately limited...and the counter caveat that we could probably chiselfingers our way into something usable regardless.
We're probably not going to be getting anything of the flavor of One Fatal Flaw, even the demonstrated sabotage is essentially just building in gatekeeping for advancement.

--Har Graef

Disruption of their rivals in Karond Kar(which might change, because they're all rivals to each other, but who is a bigger rival varies). Opening diplomatic doors with Laurelorn and the Empire. Disruption of Ulthuan's naval interests, over and above the broader Naggaroth interest.
They want trade in military intelligence, something which the Grey Order could find substantial benefit in, but can't really be a trusted source.
If we could I'd probably want to kick this upstairs, Mathilde's personal intelligence network is ill suited to using the information, and much of what she has to offer would relate to Imperial or Karaz Ankor interests, which is evidently not a good plan.

We can use this, they'd use us, just don't fall into the trap of thinking they're friendly...well nothing new for Grey Order Paranoia.

--Clar Karond

Reading the update over, there is a chilling moment where I realize we've had an entire scene where he learned a lot about us by storytelling our adventures, while we learned little beyond that he had some naval combat with dwarf vessels before(and evidently won or drew, since he's still here).
We don't know anything of him or his faction beyond the recruiting offer.

-Empire

Minimize foreign interference in Imperial matters. Gain tangible and practical returns. Avoid starting a war with a superpower.

--Feudal Imperial

Getting the Asur to stay out of the Marienburg Situation as the major goal.
Reduce or counter Druchii raiding as a minor goal - as already established, theres not actually much for them TO raid.

--Colleges

Getting their hands on more arcane lore, Waystone knowledge is great, but more of anything is good even if it goes into the Restricted section.

-Laurelorn

Recognition as an independent polity. The Asur, the Asrai and the Druchii want them subordinated, and they're only going to get independence if at least two of them agree that they do not want the other to get it....or if Laurelorn got their hands on a lot of practical, usable power.

--Laurelorn Nobility

Improve their House standings within Laurelorn. Which pretty much just means they need to 'win' and that people recognize that they won.

--Grey Lords

Its just the one guy, but its evident he's here to T-pose at Sorceresses to be smug and superior. It actually sounds like he'd be useful when bargaining with Sorceresses, just the fundamental advantage of bargaining while this academic is hell bent on proving he knows more than the Sorceress..

-Ulthuan

Maintain status quo and disrupt Druchii operations should be primary goals. This puts them opposed to Laurelorn in that they prefer that Laurelorn submits to them, opposed to the Empire in that they prefer to maintain the Marienburg state of operations, and opposed to the Waystone project in that they don't trust any outsiders with knowing anything about the Waystone Network.

Nothing bad about it, just that when their goal is the status quo, our attempts to change the status quo in our favor is naturally opposed to their interests.

The entire diplomatic scene is to more or less force them to actually bargain rather than dictate/execute without explanation, as soon as they find out. Because the last thing they want to do is drive everyone into their rivals' hands.

Raiseth · Sep 25, 2022

Mmm. So, like, my penultimate opinion on the question, after several days of consideration

The dark elves sent literally the most palatable ( to the Eonir more so than Mathilde, obviously ) representatives of their faction on this diplomatic expedition, and I still can't in good faith advocate for any kind of deal with them, lol.

First, and perhaps most important for me from a roleplayer's perspective, is because not an insignificant amount of Mathilde's motivation to consider accepting any of their proposals stems from desire for revenge against Marienburg. Jokes about grudges and terminal dwarven infection aside, that's not who I would like Mathilde to be. I would like for Mathilde's perspective to be primarily affected by what actions, pragmatic or otherwise, would benefit to her loved ones, her employers, and the people she feels kinship to, in no particular order.

And as I said, opening diplomatic channels with Naggaroth just doesn't feel worth it to me for the Empire at large.

They can ( maybe ) stop raiding the coastlines, ( maybe ) collaborate with the Colleges on magic, nevermind that their primary specialization is True Dhar which is considered anathema to them as an institution, maybe they have enough lore not connected to it, and ( maybe ) help the Empire in the looming trade war or maybe literally war against Marienburg.

The downsides are mostly the breakdown of the relationship between the Empire and Ulthuan, their subsequent retaliation, whatever form it takes, and the strengthening or Naggaroth itself, which brings them just a little closer to, in the worst case, destroying Ulthuan and dooming the planet, because Malekith is a pungent metalclad asshole I wouldn't trust to not fuck everything up forever for everyone just because someone stepped on his humongous ego a few thousand years ago.

Second, I just don't like the potential for cooperation with a kingdom of sadistic slavers, sue me.

Third, I, uh, don't really believe longterm cooperation is even possible? Militaristic elements of both factions with a common goal to take Marienburg and Ulthuan down a peg aside, there are just as many elements who would be vehemently against any kind of alliance. This would mean if we were to be serious about the idea, Mathilde would have to spend her political influence on promoting a goal I find unpalatable and not particularly beneficial, with the whole thing likely breaking down in the future sometime anyway, and that's the best potential outcome to me, with the worst, again, Naggaroth getting empowered and winning. ( which is, End Times wankery aside, is probably unrealistic )

Also, like, again, Malekith is the dude who first forged the alliance between elves and dwarves and later on sent his people disguised as Asur to kill and terrorize dwarves in order to instigate a war between the two empires and weaken them. Somehow, he doesn't strike me as particularly trustworthy.

That said, yeah, all that above, I might be amenable to a one-time deal if Mathilde is the only one buying and paying, or if the relationship never evolves to involve the two states at large. Basically, dealing with Naggaroth at large is a bad idea to me, dealing with one of their clans so that they use their improved standing to continue squabbling with the rest of them from a slightly advantageous position might alleviate at least some of my concerns. Though not all of them, since I don't really expect any clan as a whole to be token heroic orcs in their society, that sounds like they would have gotten ganged up on and cannibalized, maybe literally, but probably not, by the rest of them.

AsuraAtlas · Sep 25, 2022

Glau said:
I have no doubt morathi and malekith think like this. But I think saying that no other dark elf could ever regard anyone else as a full person is you taking the worst and leveling literally every other dark elf down to it.

I agree that you are accurately describing everyone in military or magical authority. I disagree that the rest of the society must then also necessarily be like that.

While the notion that civilian Druuchi are more redeemable is theoretically true, the Dark Elves live in a fascist and supremacist society. They would have been raised to see certain groups as inferior, and raised to believe certain things should be done to those inferior to them. And I think it's fair to assume your average Dark Elf would absolutely be an inherently worse person because of the society they were born in, considering the historical precedent of being raised in such supremacist societies.

The viewpoint of your average Druuchi would be incredibly hard to shake without a huge amount of effort put into deprogramming them, and I think it's unfair to say those efforts could be accomplished with simple diplomacy from the Empire.

Shine · Sep 25, 2022

Glau said:
I know it's possible to talk about and write stories about. I deny that it is possible in reality.

This is, again, an unjustifiablely blanket statement. I have no doubt morathi and malekith think like this. But I think saying that no other dark elf could ever regard anyone else as a full person is you taking the worst and leveling literally every other dark elf down to it.

I agree that you are accurately describing everyone in military or magical authority. I disagree that the rest of the society must then also necessarily be like that.

The second I point you again to the DE Army book, which cheerfully and enthusiastically proclaims that Dark Elves fully believe they are the Master Race who will crush all their wayward cousins and bring everyone else into the fold as slaves. Because this attitude is not at all counter to their functioning as a world superpower, given their primary interactions with other people is raiding, disguising themselves as generic elves and buying vittles, or bargaining with powers as unscrupulous as they are, I assume that DE generally have a very low opinion of humans as portrayed.

For the first, although there is no IRL equivalent to the Druuchi and the obvious supernaturally stabilizing effects the immortal hyper competent (sometimes) dictators have on their society, for a culture rife with corruption and betrayal still limping on I unhappily refer you to the USSR, the Ancient Chinese court, the Roman Republic past its peak, and other deeply depressing sorts. Obviously all these cultures came to an end, because we are mortal and even more so when the political system is falling down on us, but even at their lowest points they didn't manage to drive their populations to extinction.

Warhammer Fantasy: Divided Loyalties - an Advisor's Quest

Sick and tired of being Sick and Tired

Completely worth it

I Find Your Lack of Memes Disturbing

I Find Your Lack of Memes Disturbing