Honestly I think this is partly Boney's fault for having all of the miscasts in this quest blow up massively. Like the various Shamans or that one Bright Magister. Where's all the slightly more tame miscasts that cause mad laughter or make you shit your pants?
Its the luck of the dice. Mathilde had a miscast which just turned all the grass on one hill monochrome for instance.
But all those guys are tossing Battle Magic around and well...Battle Magic does not shit around when the dice comes up a 1.
Doesn't information given to Mathilde fall under the umbrella of guild secrets?
From what I understand dwarfs count SKILLS and RECORDS separately.
Skills are inherently and intrinsically tied to their idea of Guilds, they expect you to teach an organization and keep it within the organization or teach it to allies. As a Grey Magister, teaching either a subordinate organization or teaching the Grey Order it shouldn't be a problem. If it was they'd say so, like when we asked what it'd take to learn about souls from the priests of Gazul, you'd need to swear oaths to basically join their order as an honorary member to be taught at all.
Records are either secret or not. If they're secret you wouldn't be allowed to copy it to begin with. If they're not secret, sure go nuts. So if we can buy a book for it we're probably allowed to sell the book on.
Do you know what being trained by a hero means? If it's a single action, that's a little expensive. If it's "Until we reach a certain level", that's a hell of a lot more attractive, and something I'd go for.
We have an example from Maxmillian learning smithing from a dwarf smith, and its expected to be a fairly long apprenticeship. Dwarfs like to do it properly so if you buy tutoring they're going to teach you until you reach a level they're satisfied will not shame them.
...which is a cautionary tale for getting Hero training without the skills(like, getting tutoring from Kragg without already Hero level proficiency in that area is wasting his time) because they're not going to accept aborting the training I think. And flunking out would disappoint them, potentially hurting Reputation.
Favours compound.
Say Belebro has 50 Dwarf Favour to call on. Durin has 10. Skaroki has 10. Mathilde has 15.
Well, those guys all have their own ideas about what to spend Favour on, including stashing it for a rainy day. But suppose Belebro authorizes three factories, Durin authorizes one, and Skaroki authorizes one.
5 factories pumping out munitions, siege weapons, gyrocopters et al is good.
8 is better.
I don't think thats how it works here. Belegar is a dwarf king, he doesn't
need to buy individual factories with favor, he only needs to buy the services of a relevant Clan or Guild to come over, and then spend regular coin for their services.
We literally just saw it here. Belegar cashes in his High King Favors right on screen for support, Thorgrim, despite how annoyed he is with this naive young brat, sign off on authorizing the Engineers Guild and the Gyrocopter Guild to open a branch in Karag Lhune.
Favors mean different things to different people.
Belegar probably only has to spend money to setup niter factories, if he even needs to do anything other than let them know theres a market ready for them where theres a lot of gunpowder being used on a daily basis AND a lot of shit. Because a Dwarfhold produces a lot of shit and its pure profit.
Extending that to the humans or halflings might cost some, because its Not Traditional, but since they're already right next door in a few months it probably won't cost much either.
I'm actually not sure if it'd cost more for dwarfs to do it for humans/halflings or for dwarfs to teach humans to do it for themselves.
I personally feel that we can get quite a bit of iinstruction without favors at all. Belegar would almost certainly be willing to help us round out our education in economics, Ulthar can teach us ranging, etc. And although hero-level instruction is super valuable, I'd prefer to spend our later favor income on that, because I'd like for Mathilde to commemorate this victory with something more solid, like a weapon and a tower.
Depends. They're very busy people and time spent teaching Mathilde is time they aren't spending elsewhere.
We could probably learn some economics from Belegar just by participating actively in council really.
Kragg probably would cost favors no matter what just to overcome his crankiness.
If we're not fast enough to ground the magic, we're not gonna somehow be rewarded with bonus time to do something else with it instead. It'd just explode.
Which is what I meant. If it explodes in an open area we'd probably be pretty hurt, but most of the force vents into open space.
If it explodes in an enclosed area we'd have to pray the belt is good enough.
That sounds like a weak explanation, particularly given that a bunch of the war machines that can be runed and are being runed are as new or newer than handguns. What's more, it doesn't explain at all why they don't rune another ranged weapon of the dwarfs, one which is definitely very old and traditional - crossbows.
In my opinion, what makes the most sense to me is that they can and do rune ranged weapons, it's just that there are no ranged units of high enough level to warrant rune weapons in the army book.
But the war machines aren't super new in principle? Specific designs may be new, but the dwarfs have a long tradition of siege engine runes, so its only one step further on runing them compared to the 3-4 steps it'd take for guns.
Do they rune cannon?
Genuinely unfamiliar enough to say.
