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Warhammer Fantasy: Divided Loyalties - an Advisor's Quest

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Boney said:
It is not easy to live with a landmine in your own brain, to know that there is an area of thought that any step in can spiral you into a hopeless, useless state when you are needed. The way to deal with that is... well, it's to get therapy, but in the grim darkness of any time period before like thirty years ago, the way to deal with that is to rope off areas inside your head that you absolutely do not go into at any time for any reason, and do your best to live outside of that boundary. When Thorgrim inherited the throne and the crown almost two centuries ago he forced himself into that miserable mindspace to confront the extinction of his race and the inevitable failure of every hope and dream he'd ever had, not just once, but however many times it took to break the stubbornness of the Dwarviest Dwarf that the entire Dwarven race could find.
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The entire post is very profound and meaningful, and I cannot say how much this resonates with me. Having come off two months of in patient therapy at a psychiatric ward, I can confidently say that getting better is really hard. Incredibly fucking hard. There were days when I just didn't want to do anything at all. What pushed me to get better was outside factors forcing me to acknowledge the fact that I was on a downward spiral, and that to escape from it I did practically everything I could to place tape over the edges and hope the feelings don't come back.

But they always do. At the end you're just delaying the inevitable confrontation with whatever was tearing at you one way or another. There were moments in which I hated being at a ward and being told how I could do better or be better, but that was just a part of me that detested that I could ever become a better person. I learned to not give that voice any attention, but I had the love and support and care and understanding of so many people to push me through. Much of which came from this very thread, even if people don't know the specifics.

My point is. It's very hard to get into a better headspace. Especially when you've been wallowing in it in isolation for years. People who suffer often don't want to inflict it on others, and I've found that isolation is a level of peace that gives you comfort. But it also forces you to confront all that you've done and couldn've done and should've done etc. etc.

Thorgrim doesn't have the comfort and luxury to seek a therapist or go online to shitpost on an online forum to escape his misery. He's stuck with it, and he needs to keep moving on to help his people. He can't afford to break down, and I find my heart does ache for him for that.

PS: I'm fine now, so no one should be worried about me. It's incredibly funny to me that the thing that stuck out to me most from all that therapy is internalising the idea that when I wake up and don't feel like doing anything, I want to go to the bathroom. If I can go to the bathroom to take care of my physical needs, then I can get dressed and go eat. If I can go eat I can go brush my teeth. If I can brush my teeth and I'm already clothed then I can work out. And so on and so on. It was really helpful. Always give yourself little goals. It helps out.
 
Thorgrim may not have the support structure to address his issues, but he does have a socially accepted way to vent and a clear and direct goal to Keep Things Okay
 
I think when the time comes we should help with the retaking of the Karak. Because with Thorgrim now having hope he will do whatever is needed to retake it. No matter how many dawi lives need to die to retake that mountain he will kill. Mathilde can help in ways other dawi can not.
 
I like our "surprise! New karak" method so far, are there any other old holds we can look at ninja-ing and turning on? Maybe we even drag the rest of the Waystone project in on an adventure to explore how karak waystones work without interfering with any dwarves.
 
It'll never happen, but it would be deeply amusing to me if Thorgrim, being unable to share any information about the KA's waystone network, did the one possible workaround: declared Mathilde his heir.
 
Glau said:
I like our "surprise! New karak" method so far, are there any other old holds we can look at ninja-ing and turning on? Maybe we even drag the rest of the Waystone project in on an adventure to explore how karak waystones work without interfering with any dwarves.
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None that wouldn't take decades building forces and population to actually have any hope of retaking it. K8P has taken most of the Karaz Ankor's spare resources and even then it's still barely considered stable by Dwarven standards, and that's thanks to all the humans and halflings. There are some smaller ones, but that's what Thorgrim is doing. All the resources available are being mustered for the Silverspear expedition, which is taking at least a decade to take off.

I'm just guessing, but after Silverspear and Mad Dog Pass are secured, the next goal would likely be Mount Gunbad, because it neighbours Silverspear and therefore an obstacle to trade. After that I can see allocating resources to Karak Kadrin to clear out the Greenskins on the eastern end of Peak Pass. And these are the smaller ones. Taking back something major like Karak Ungor or Karak Drazh would be such an undertaking that I'd imagine it'd take a century to muster enough force to occupy it.
 
Glau said:
I like our "surprise! New karak" method so far, are there any other old holds we can look at ninja-ing and turning on? Maybe we even drag the rest of the Waystone project in on an adventure to explore how karak waystones work without interfering with any dwarves.
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Zorn, that one likely does not have a Waystone connection, but they are dawi. Other than that maybe if we dig down far enough to find some remnant of the Norse dwarfs. I'm not sure how we would do the latter.
 
DragonParadox said:
Zorn,
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I've been watching a lot of Jerma lately, so I had to think for a little while to realise what Zorn you were talking about.
DragonParadox said:
that one likely does not have a Waystone connection, but they are dawi. Other than that maybe if we dig down far enough to find some remnant of the Norse dwarfs. I'm not sure how we would do the latter.
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Thorek is likely to get there eventually after plundering all the lost holds in local areas. The eventually has to be emphasised though. Could be a century or so before he feels prepared to venture into the Southlands or Norsca. Not exactly the easiest trips.
 
Glau said:
I like our "surprise! New karak" method so far, are there any other old holds we can look at ninja-ing and turning on? Maybe we even drag the rest of the Waystone project in on an adventure to explore how karak waystones work without interfering with any dwarves.
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If you think that Mathilde has good odds against Neferata and the Lahmian Sisterhood at the center of their power, the Silver Pinnacle is probably the theoretically-easiest to take in one fell swoop.

Karag Dron (Thunder Mountain) if Thorgrim can activate the Tectonic Shackle of Thungni and chain the volcano again, depending on if the dragon that took it is still in there.

If they manage to take Silverspear, Mount Gunbad might be the best next target, it lies between Karak Kadrin, Zhufbar, and Karaz-a-Karak.

Black Crag is right next to K8P, but it's a hell of a fortress.
 
Codex said:
None that wouldn't take decades building forces and population to actually have any hope of retaking it. K8P has taken most of the Karaz Ankor's spare resources and even then it's still barely considered stable by Dwarven standards, and that's thanks to all the humans and halflings. There are some smaller ones, but that's what Thorgrim is doing. All the resources available are being mustered for the Silverspear expedition, which is taking at least a decade to take off.
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There's also the fact that well, there's no point retaking a Hold if they can't well, hold it.

Why spend time and treasure to retake a hold if numbers means it'll be given up in a few centuries?
 
Glau said:
I like our "surprise! New karak" method so far, are there any other old holds we can look at ninja-ing and turning on? Maybe we even drag the rest of the Waystone project in on an adventure to explore how karak waystones work without interfering with any dwarves.
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When it comes to the Waystone Project, my first thought is no Karak at all. Instead, finding or building spare junctions (and the language for proper control requests) to, very carefully, shunt some amount of energy from other parts of the system into the Dwarven network and observe what comes of it.
 
In about 20-30 years from now the slayer engineer Malakai Makaisson will build the airship The Spirit of Grungni. In canon he took it north to reach Dum, but we've made that a touch redundant.

I say we take it south instead, to Karak Zorn. We'll completely bypass the dangers of the badlands, the desert, and the jungles in the relative safety of a hydrogen balloon made by a barely sane engineer.

What could go wrong?
 
The post has been deleted, but somebody suggested that Neferata was specced more towards social powers than combat.

If we're going by 5th edition tabletop, then absent magic items, Neferata is a better duelist than Vlad, as she has the exact same statline but also a Lahmian power to give her Always Strikes First.

As far as I can tell she's geared towards dueling characters in her entry- she can turn one character she kills into a vampire thrall, has a personal spell suited to killing characters (D6+2 Strength 5 hits), her weapon drains the fighting ability of models she wounds (only even possibly useful against characters and monsters, given other units die in one hit), and can send her cat Bastet to curse units to have -1 leadership and reroll successful armor saves.
 
Mopman43 said:
If we're going by 5th edition tabletop, then absent magic items, Neferata is a better duelist than Vlad, as she has the exact same statline but also a Lahmian power to give her Always Strikes First.
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End Times gave her stats and they were the same as 5th Edition. Still a better duelist than Vlad with a higher weapon skill and always strikes first.
 
Boney said:
The line between language and dialect isn't really linguistic, it's geopolitical. That there's four Eltharins and two Khazalids is not because of some inherent property of those different tongues, it's because those are the linguistic branches with distinct armies that would object to you calling them mere dialects.
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So English and Dutch, rather than English and Scots?
 
Would anyone even have to conquer a Karak, when it's held by Greenskins for example? They don't do anything with Waystones, may not even notice the Karak functions as one.
Sneak in with the equivalent of the K8P crown and reactivate it, and done: more power flowing to the Throne.
 
Romv said:
Would anyone even have to conquer a Karak, when it's held by Greenskins for example? They don't do anything with Waystones, may not even notice the Karak functions as one.
Sneak in with the equivalent of the K8P crown and reactivate it, and done: more power flowing to the Throne.
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The fact that the many Karaks conquered by Greenskins aren't sending power to the Throne already suggests there's a reason that wouldn't work.
 
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