Warhammer Fantasy: Divided Loyalties - an Advisor's Quest

[Jyn Ryvia]

[ ] [LIBRARY] Library of Mournings
[ ] Books on Manners and Etiquette
[ ] Books on History

prep for the coming elve talks, I don't expect Mathy to use Elven manners and Etiquette, but it might be useful to be able to notice subtle actions when the elves won't expect us to know what they mean. (wont work and the queens people as they will know mathy is looking up the books, but why would they tell others the humans know that if you point your left foot away from someone when talking it means to everyone else that your not actually interested? )

playing ignorant can often be a powerful weapon.

 

[Sir_Travelsalot]

I want to note that Ulric is in fact worshipped in northern Bretonnia as well. I think there's even a noble house known for venerating him more than the Lady.

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See, I'd believe that about Manann, since I'm pretty sure that is also the case for Bordeleaux and the northern regions of Bretonnia are all coastal, but Ulric I'm rather more doubtful about. Even Shallya I would believe, given that Couronne is the site of the single biggest temple of Shallya in the entire Old World and a popular destination for Shallyan pilgrimages, not to mention the recurring Bretonnian heresy of claiming the Lady of the Lake to be a servant of Shallya.

Can you post a citation for this extensive Ulric worship?

 

[Jyn Ryvia]

I feel like buying books is such big waste that sometimes I wish we had otherways to spend money.

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we get books for free now.

some people still try to to pay for even more books (and I disagree with that), But why complain about the free books?

 

[DragonParadox]

[ ] [LIBRARY] Library of Mournings
[ ] Books on Manners and Etiquette
[ ] Books on History

prep for the coming elve talks, I don't expect Mathy to use Elven manners and Etiquette, but it might be useful to be able to notice subtle actions when the elves won't expect us to know what they mean. (wont work and the queens people as they will know mathy is looking up the books, but why would they tell others the humans know that if you point your left foot away from someone when talking it means to everyone else that your not actually interested? )

playing ignorant can often be a powerful weapon.

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I do not think history is a valid category. One would have to specify the history of what.

More broadly though guys are we sure we want Athel Loren now? Are we planning to visit the land of daemons, trees and daemon trees soon and if so in what manner? The Asrai are rather famous for being touchy about visitors, the kind of touchy that reaches out and touches one's spleen with arrows. I do not think a few books on how to deal with them is going to solve that, especially since the dwarf books are most likely to be How to Smash Fey by Jorek Tree-killer. At the very least I think we should wait until we have an in with Bretonia and use their contacts.

 

[Tobtorp]

I do not think history is a valid category. One would have to specify the history of what.

More broadly though guys are we sure we want Athel Loren now? Are we planning to visit the land of daemons, trees and daemon trees soon and if so in what manner? The Asrai are rather famous for being touchy about visitors, the kind of touchy that reaches out and touches one's spleen with arrows. I do not think a few books on how to deal with them is going to solve that, especially since the dwarf books are most likely to be How to Smash Fey by Jorek Tree-killer. At the very least I think we should wait until we have an in with Bretonia and use their contacts.

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Their still sitting on one of the more important Leylines and we fought one of their gribbles so having a basic understanding would not hurt. Though i would like druchii books more tbh.

 

[DragonParadox]

Their still sitting on one of the more important Leylines and we fought one of their gribbles so having a basic understanding would not hurt. Though i would like druchii books more tbh.

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And they have been sitting on that leyline for four thousand years, the same spleen-seeking arrows that make diplomacy problematic are also very good at warding off trouble. I think we are fine to leave them off for a few turns.

 

[mathymancer]

More broadly though guys are we sure we want Athel Loren now? Are we planning to visit the land of daemons, trees and daemon trees soon and if so in what manner? The Asrai are rather famous for being touchy about visitors, the kind of touchy that reaches out and touches one's spleen with arrows. I do not think a few books on how to deal with them is going to solve that, especially since the dwarf books are most likely to be How to Smash Fey by Jorek Tree-killer. At the very least I think we should wait until we have an in with Bretonia and use their contacts.

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No, I don't think we should talk to Athel Loren, but if we look into Bugman's nexus (and I think we should) we are probably going to talk about Athel Loren, because Karak Norn was intimately involved in the Bugman's nexus thing and Mathilde suspects they manipulated their leylines so that their nexus won't feed magic into Athel Loren. Being better informed on the subject could help us avoid putting our foot in our mouth when dealing with Karak Norn, who we've been told are kind of weirdos, so they might be difficult to deal with.

 

[Jyn Ryvia]

I do not think history is a valid category. One would have to specify the history of what.

More broadly though guys are we sure we want Athel Loren now? Are we planning to visit the land of daemons, trees and daemon trees soon and if so in what manner? The Asrai are rather famous for being touchy about visitors, the kind of touchy that reaches out and touches one's spleen with arrows. I do not think a few books on how to deal with them is going to solve that, especially since the dwarf books are most likely to be How to Smash Fey by Jorek Tree-killer. At the very least I think we should wait until we have an in with Bretonia and use their contacts.

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[ ] [LIBRARY] Library of Mournings
[ ] Books on Manners and Etiquette
[ ] Books on Hoeth- The god of knowledge, learning and wisdom

Continue the collection, then? plus, we are probably talking to one of the houses that contacted to them in the future.

Its the Manners and Etiqutte books that I think will be helpful, its a dip bonus for when we go to meetings, and we do a lot of those.

 

[DragonParadox]

No, I don't think we should talk to Athel Loren, but if we look into Bugman's nexus (and I think we should) we are probably going to talk about Athel Loren, because Karak Norn was intimately involved in the Bugman's nexus thing and Mathilde suspects they manipulated their leylines so that their nexus won't feed magic into Athel Loren. Being better informed on the subject could help us avoid putting our foot in our mouth when dealing with Karak Norn, who we've been told are kind of weirdos, so they might be difficult to deal with.

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This seems... tenuous to say the least. I do not think much about the wood elves manipulation of ley lines would have made it into the writings of other nation. To the extent that diplomacy exists it is with the elves, to the extent that war is done it is with the borders of the forest. The eldritch mysteries of the deep woods and how the magical lines may relate to the Brewery are, I think, unlikely to be tucked between the account of that one time a hunting party came out of the forest to randomly kill beastmen and the recipe for elf-cap mushrooms boiled in beer they liked so much.

 

[Black.Horus]

I prefer to not have anything to do with Warhammer Vietnam unless we have Ikit Claw on our side.

 

[Rafin]

In this context, 'luxury rune' doesn't mean 'any rune that can be used to make live more comfortable in some way'. It means runes invented specifically for the purpose of making high-value consumer goods with no military applications.

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So out of my examples, only Mathilde's bathroom runes would apply then.

Mathilde dismissed the possibility of exporting human-smelted ingots to the Elves right from the start, that's why her plan is for ore that the Elves could smelt themselves to their own standards.

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I'm thinking along the lines that even the time where Elves will be interested in Human guns will be limited. And limited only insofar as the Dwarves themselves are reluctant to sell to Elves. There might be profits to be made for the Empire, but those will be short term profits, in the large scheme of things.

Source? Offhand I don't recall that in Knights of the Grail.

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I went looking but I can't find it. It might have been an unreliable source too. Sorry. Closest I remember is someone talking about it in a YouTube video, but a quick search through my history didn't help.

I guess I retract what I said.

 

[Tobtorp]

Dwarves themselves are reluctant to sell to Elves.

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I really doubt the dwarves will be comfortable enough with the elves to sell them their guns for a few centuries if not millennia. Guns are very much a dwarven priority and these Elgi haven't yet proven their trustworthiness.

 

[DragonParadox]

[ ] [LIBRARY] Library of Mournings
[ ] Books on Manners and Etiquette
[ ] Books on Hoeth- The god of knowledge, learning and wisdom

Continue the collection, then? plus, we are probably talking to one of the houses that contacted to them in the future.

Its the Manners and Etiqutte books that I think will be helpful, its a dip bonus for when we go to meetings, and we do a lot of those.

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Sounds reasonable.

 

[Boney]

So out of my examples, only Mathilde's bathroom runes would apply then.

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Any military that thinks moving and heating water is an unnecessary luxury is going to have an astoundingly bad time.

 

[Parabola]

Re:Books, I will re-emphasize my desire to get Strygos books. Boney confirmed a while back that there should be a full +5 from both Imperial and Dwarves books on it, making it a decent choice for writing its coin book next.

For library purposes, Dwarves have both, Imperial only Strygos - you can find books on Tylos in the Empire but it's all derived or translated from Tilean books.

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I definitely support the idea of getting Backfill on Social Sciences on the next turn, though - there's many polities and people that we could use more background on.

 

[Valmond]

So out of my examples, only Mathilde's bathroom runes would apply then.

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I dunno, runes to heat things sound like awesome for lot of military applications.

 

[mathymancer]

This seems... tenuous to say the least. I do not think much about the wood elves manipulation of ley lines would have made it into the writings of other nation. To the extent that diplomacy exists it is with the elves, to the extent that war is done it is with the borders of the forest. The eldritch mysteries of the deep woods and how the magical lines may relate to the Brewery are, I think, unlikely to be tucked between the account of that one time a hunting party came out of the forest to randomly kill beastmen and the recipe for elf-cap mushrooms boiled in beer they liked so much.

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You misunderstand. The dwarves of Karak Norn are the ones that manipulated the leylines - or so Mathilde suspects. Originally the flow went from Bugman's to Karak Norn to Athel Loren, and at some point Karak Norn changed that (Karak Norn flows into Bugman's now). It's very likely that discussing this with them will involve discussing Athel Loren, and records of their relations with Athel Loren could be helpful because this might be a touchy subject - see the bolded part of the quote below.

"Good question, one I've been digging into myself. And what I've found is that they didn't." You point to Wissenland. "Bugman's Brewery, built on the site of the Dwarven settlement of Kazad Thar by members of Karak Norn's royal family. My suspicion is that this was once part of an alternate route for magic to flow, from there to Karak Norn to the Elven settlement within Athel Loren. But the reputation of the Asrai in this modern era suggests they are no longer the sort to leave immense magical power untouched. So feeding them the magical runoff from most of a continent could be... problematic." There's murmurs of agreement from your audience. "For this reason, I suspect the Dwarves of Karak Norn might have removed this possibility millennia ago, most likely during the War of the Ancients."

"You haven't asked them?" the Emperor asks.

"Not yet," you reply. "It's a minefield of taboo subjects, so should only be approached with great forethought and delicacy."

"And Karak Norn are an odd bunch, even by Dwarven standards," Graf Otto adds.

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[DragonParadox]

Re:Books, I will re-emphasize my desire to get Strygos books. Boney confirmed a while back that there should be a full +5 from both Imperial and Dwarves books on it, making it a decent choice for writing the coin book next.



I definitely support the idea of getting Backfill on Social Sciences on the next turn, though - there's many polities and people that we could use more background on.

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Making marginally better coin books is worth maybe 1-2 CF. I realize that people may want them for other than mechanical reasons but given all the other options with the potential of significantly more long term use I feel it has to be said.

You misunderstand. The dwarves of Karak Norn are the ones that manipulated the leylines - or so Mathilde suspects. Originally the flow went from Bugman's to Karak Norn to Athel Loren, and at some point Karak Norn changed that (Karak Norn flows into Bugman's now). It's very likely that discussing this with them will involve discussing Athel Loren, and records of their relations with Athel Loren could be helpful because this might be a touchy subject - see the bolded part of the quote below.

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The imperial books would be useless from that perspective then, they are not going to hold perspectives of elf-dwarf interactions. We could just get the dwarf books for money and use the Barak Var slot for something else.

 

[picklepikkl]

we get books for free now.

some people still try to to pay for even more books (and I disagree with that), But why complain about the free books?

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Wait, wasn't buying Druuchi books out of pocket last turn your idea? Have you reversed course since then? That's fine, of course, I'm just surprised.

I would like to make another plug for Ulthuan books as the third topic; it's worth less cash than other options (only 300gc) but if we think we might need to do politics with Ulthuan in the near future, forewarned is forearmed. Though if we think it's not going to happen this coming turn, then the fact that it's a partially complete topic makes it likely to get picked up in a Backfill action.

I don't think a Library of Mournings purchase is a good use of our Library vote. We really want those Metallurgy books for the Capstone research, and the Library of Mournings only gives us 500gc worth of books at max. It's useful for if we are low on cash and really really want Eonir books on a specific topic, but I don't think that's true now. We already have Eonir Extensive+Esoteric for their own society and history: that's what The Eonir of Laurelorn topic represents. If we have to do politics with them, we're as prepared from books as we can reasonably get. The main avenue of improvement would be to take another Lovely Laurelorn action to rank up our Eonir Diplomacy skill to Advanced, but that's a turnplan thing and not a purchase round thing.

 

[xamaplak]

Luxury Runes... So Thorek rediscovered the Runes of taste-enhancing, cookies-never-crumbling and milk-cooling? Dangerous.

 

[mathymancer]

The imperial books would be useless from that perspective then, they are not going to hold perspectives of elf-dwarf interactions. We could just get the dwarf books for money and use the Barak Var slot for something else.

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Full dwarf books on Athel Loren are 250 gold, which is a bit too rich for my blood. Books also exist for more than one turn - we will probably eventually want to look into Athel Loren more deeply, and we would eventually want to talk to Bretonnia which will involve Athel Loren (aside from the general importance of Athel Loren to Bretonnia, they expicitly came up as something the Damsels will need to consider before joining the project). I think a Barak Varr purchase right now is good because it can get us Bretonnia and Metallurgy, both of which could be useful as soon as next turn, and for a third slot I don't think there's any other subject that beats Athel Loren on importance to the next turn.

 

[Valmond]

I'm kinda struggling to figure out a rune that i can't, somehow, turn into military purposes.

 

[Parabola]

Making marginally better coin books is worth maybe 1-2 CF. I realize that people may want them for other than mechanical reasons but given all the other options with the potential of significantly more long term use I feel it has to be said.

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I mean, sure, but I'm not thinking with CF efficiency in mind, since the Orbflex will need to be delayed anyway - I'm thinking of how it's more efficient to use Barak Varr to get topics that we know have +5 on both Dwarf and Imperial sources, and then use Backfill on Social Sciences, because it might fill out topics that don't have +5 in them without 'losing' any budget, on top of partially-filled topics like Ulthuan and the like.

While we're at it, I'm also inclined to pick up Imperial Druchii out-of-pocket, since Dwarves have basically nothing on them.

 

[Jyn Ryvia]

Wait, wasn't buying Druuchi books out of pocket last turn your idea? Have you reversed course since then? That's fine, of course, I'm just surprised.

I would like to make another plug for Ulthuan books as the third topic; it's worth less cash than other options (only 300gc) but if we think we might need to do politics with Ulthuan in the near future, forewarned is forearmed. Though if we think it's not going to happen this coming turn, then the fact that it's a partially complete topic makes it likely to get picked up in a Backfill action.

I don't think a Library of Mournings purchase is a good use of our Library vote. We really want those Metallurgy books for the Capstone research, and the Library of Mournings only gives us 500gc worth of books at max. It's useful for if we are low on cash and really really want Eonir books on a specific topic, but I don't think that's true now. We already have Eonir Extensive+Esoteric for their own society and history: that's what The Eonir of Laurelorn topic represents. If we have to do politics with them, we're as prepared from books as we can reasonably get. The main avenue of improvement would be to take another Lovely Laurelorn action to rank up our Eonir Diplomacy skill to Advanced, but that's a turnplan thing and not a purchase round thing.

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I meant in general buying books out of pocket, the
Druuchi books make sense in context that we expect the Druchii to be an issue in The near future. (Also I forgot)

also 'the library of morning give less books' is a really bad way to look at the library actions that the thread is stuck on.

Ya, it's less books, but it's the only why to get some topics. and we can't 'buy' them, only through the deal.

How relevant a topic is to the current issues is much more important then what gets the most books.

 

[picklepikkl]

Ya, it's less books, but it's the only why to get some topics. and we can't 'buy' them, only through the deal.

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No, we can buy them out of pocket. We've done so in the past, even, check the purchase round for T37. What that represents in the fiction of the setting is hiring members of the city's bored underemployed populace to scribe for us, rather than buying from merchants, but we can do it.

I agree that it's a good use if we need the Eonir perspective on something urgently, but I haven't seen any arguments for what specific topics of theirs are more pressing than a +10 to Metallurgy for the Capstone research.