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Warhammer Fantasy: Divided Loyalties - an Advisor's Quest

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I'd like to point out that we are not negotiating with the Druchii, we are negotiating with a Druchii.

The Druchii who arrived in Laurelorn are only tangentially representing their nation. Their main priority is to represent their specific sub-faction within Druchii politics in an attempt to gain some sort of advantage over their rivals back home.

The Dreadlord could pay us to sink that slaver fleet, and she'll still make a profit. She wants to use us in the Great Game to advance her own position, and betraying us has literally no benefit for her.

But it could benefit us a lot.
 
DragonParadox said:
They probably could, but imagine the effort it would take a Druchi to pretend to be Asur or Asrai, including a different language, different mannerisms, maybe even building up a history. Now imagine using all that effort to get the obscure book on Hoechaland they deed to finish their History of the Empire (Imperial) obscure collection. That is a lot of work for what is marginal gain. On the other hand getting the full +5 from Mathilde would be efficient.
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Aren't the Druuchi already known to infiltrate and sabotage Asur society in canon? Like, literally ingratiating themselves and hiding Cytharai spellwork under their beds?

And if they don't have plenty of Asur language experts that breaks my SoD something fierce. The Druuchi are competent and they are the same species. Hell, the language isn't even that different. This would be a much much smaller challenge for them than learning Queekish was for Mathilde.
 
I'm not really sure how selling the skaven information we have could be turned against the Empire.

Precisely what's the mechanism here, given the dark elves don't have the industry or cultural capacity to industrialise.
 
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I have to say it is a bit of a pity that we made our Waagh lecture so public that the Asur ambassador attended.

Otherwise we could have sold the anti-Waagh stuff to the Asur. Since they don't need the Skaven stuff we're a bit out of luck in terms of stuff we can sell them.


The Druchii dilemma is that whilst they are scummy we can sell them stuff. The Asur only really need us for the Waystones.
 
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Alratan said:
I'm not really sure how selling the skaven information we have could be turned against the Empire.

Precisely what's the mechanism here, given the dark elves don't have the industry or cultural capacity to industrialise.
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One-off bespoke Ratling guns are still a problem. Artisanal rubber masks for master assassins experimenting with poison gas as well.
 
Alratan said:
given the dark elves don't have the industry or cultural capacity to industrialise.
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Not everything we had was industrial. Do you want novel Dhar posions like the one throwing star we had in the hands of Druuchi?

Or worse we know they have connections to Skaven, what heppens they sell Skyre research to other clans and more clans becomes industrialised?
 
Rafin said:
Aren't the Druuchi already known to infiltrate and sabotage Asur society in canon? Like, literally ingratiating themselves and hiding Cytharai spellwork under their beds?

And if they don't have plenty of Asur language experts that breaks my SoD something fierce. The Druuchi are competent and they are the same species. Hell, the language isn't even that different. This would be a much much smaller challenge for them than learning Queekish was for Mathilde.
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They are, but it is neither common, easy nor comfortable for them. I am not saying they could not do it, but rather that the limited number of specialists who can do that kind of thing are not looking for obscure imperial books.
 
Zero Gravitas said:
Otherwise we could have sold the anti-Waagh stuff to the Asur. Since they don't need the Skaven stuff we're a bit out of luck in terms of stuff we can sell them.
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That one was co-opted by the Empire Diplomacy corps for their work in making the empire look good and they probably got some other favors as well. In return they probably gave collages some (empire) favors and colages paid us in collage favor.
 
I wonder how often Elven infiltrators defect to the other side. IRL spies from polities with opposed philosophies certainly did, but I might be missing reasons why this real world analogue doesn't apply to the Asur/Druchii conflict.
 
Rafin said:
I wonder how often Elven infiltrators defect to the other side. IRL spies from polities with opposed philosophies certainly did, but I might be missing reasons why this real world analogue doesn't apply to the Asur/Druchii conflict.
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In the Tyrion & Teclis novels a Druchii spy is genuinely tempted to just stop sending updates to Naggaroth and adopt his fake persona permanently because he'd grown fond of the life in Ulthuan. The only reason he didn't go through with it is that he thought Malekith had anticipated it and had watchers and contingencies in place if he tried to defect.
 
Rafin said:
One-off bespoke Ratling guns are still a problem. Artisanal rubber masks for master assassins experimenting with poison gas as well.
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The Dark Elves generally culturally disdain craft, Vaul is a disfavoured god reflecting the fact that crafting is a disfavoured activity. I don't think they focus on the kind of artisanal craft you're talking about. As a result they're unlikely to have the tools to make the tools for something like a ratling gun or the chemistry to process rubber into a gas mask.

Tasoli said:
Not everything we had was industrial. Do you want novel Dhar posions like the one throwing star we had in the hands of Druuchi?

Or worse we know they have connections to Skaven, what heppens they sell Skyre research to other clans and more clans becomes industrialised?
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Then we don't sell them the poison - although it's likely they already have better.

And selling Skyre secrets to other skaven clans is probably a god way to kick off more conflict within the skaven as Skyre suppresses potential rivals.

Also, the Druichi like the skaven no more than they like us. The skaven couldn't trust that the information wasn't sabotaged, and the Druichi are exceptionally unlikely to sell them something that would make them harder targets to raid.
 
Alratan said:
The Dark Elves generally culturally disdain craft, Vaul is a disfavoured god reflecting the fact that crafting is a disfavoured activity. I don't think they focus on the kind of artisanal craft you're talking about. As a result they're unlikely to have the tools to make the tools for something like a ratling gun or the chemistry to process rubber into a gas mask.
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Yet they still, somehow, have things not looted from someone else.
So obviously they have to have crafters, probably of lowborn status, if not outright slaves, but still skilled enough that highborn will want to use their products.
 
Thinking about ideas we could trade with the Druchii Sorceress:

-Spices and luxury goods: they're easy to obtain and would be very expensive in Naggaroth.

-Books about the enemies of men (Skaven, Orcs, Chaos etc.): not much to say, in general less of these is something the Empire wants.

-Queekish: if neither the dwarves nor the Asur could figure out Queekish in thousands of years I doubt the Druchii would have. I think we could get a massive price for it.

-Books about the Empire, Bretonnia, etc. (I mean common information, history, etc. (Leaving out coastal information and all that)): a bit riskier, but at the same time I really don't see how they'd be able to exploit said information in a meaningful way without expending massive resources. Because at the end of the day, we're still separated by an entire ocean very patrolled by the Asur.

-Ithilmar: we could buy a bunch of Ilthimar from the Empire and sell it to them at an extremely premium price. I don't think a single Ilthimar shipment would do much at the scale of a country as big as Naggaroth but I'd pretty much prefer to sell them to the Eonir even if we can only get money from them.

-AV: while it sounds like a bad idea, if we only sell them 1 or 2 gallons and no research I don't think they'd be able to do much with it. As in, for all AV is amazing they'd be starting said research tree from zero.


Something I also want to point out is this part:

Boney said:
Very few of the cuts your Empire is forever bleeding from come from Druchii blades. In fact, I believe that much more of your blood has been shed by the riders of the bastard steeds to the west in any one of the wars you've fought, than has been by all the Druchii Corsairs throughout history, and yet you ride to war alongside them when circumstances dictate you must.
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For all the Druchii are horrible people the truth is that the Empire has lost and was hurt more in almost any war, waaagh, etc. than against the Druchii through all of history. So no matter what we trade with them, I doubt it'd end up impacting the empire or nations of the old world negatively in a meaningful way.

Also something to point out is that we'd not really be making an exchange with Naggaroth, but with a single sorceress who is here behind Morathi's back. So considering that and how Druchii society works I think it's most likely the Druchii sorceresses or her mistress who is not Morathi use this to advance their own positions than to actually better Naggaroth as a whole.

Plus, we would get things in exchange too which could benefit the Empire: more books about Enemies of Men which could be put to use when the next Waaagh arrives or the next time the Skaven attack, or about Chaos just in time for the next Everchosen, books about shipbuilding and navigation for the Empire's navy, or about Lustria for the poor mayor of Swamp town or even about Chaos sorcery with the only purpose to learn how to counter it (which again kinda useful with an Everchosen around the corner).
 
Rafin said:
I wonder how often Elven infiltrators defect to the other side. IRL spies from polities with opposed philosophies certainly did, but I might be missing reasons why this real world analogue doesn't apply to the Asur/Druchii conflict.
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The entire philosophy and goal of the Druchii state is the enslavement of every single Asur, and their society is very dangerous for its own people. I think there are some Asur infiltrators who switch side, but imo the reverse happens more easily. Most people aren't keen to defect to the side who wants everyone you know dead and has attempted to genocide your people more than once. Oh, and Malekith nearly ended the world that one time.
 
reignonyrparade said:
Mathilde... is a spy. I do not just mean in the general sense of being in the grey order, she is literally spying on the eonir and kislev as the secondary function of the waystone project and as far as her superiors have mostly been concerned, as the primary function.

A significant aspect of spycraft is the cultivation of relationships. Sometimes those cultivated relationships are not going to be with the best people but you know what, if they were that wonderful they probably wouldn't be that worth spying on.

Like, I don't know if the empire in general has any sort of backdoor channel to the druchii but given their druchii expert is a guy who Was Enslaved There A Decade Or Two Ago the grey college sure as hell doesn't seem to, and that's an oversight we've got an easy opportunity to fix.
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Mathilde is a normal spy the same way James Bond is a spy: She doesn't spend months or years quietly infiltrating somewhere to report back information. She infiltrates gun sword-first, blows up the enemy base castle, then walks away with a new girl new allies in hand.

Mathilde can do understated spycraft, but she's much more suited to a more... dynamic approach.
 
mathymancer said:
The 1/2 ratio does seem quite low compared to every other figure I saw so far: 5, 6 and 11 from your source, and Boney's 50 to 1 weight ratio. Maybe the example you're using had great roads and/or unusually bad rivers?
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I checked that for you. All these numbers (5, 6 and 11 to 1 for the Roman Empire) seem to be calculated based on Diocletian's Edict of Maximum Prices. How they got these different numbers exactly I can't tell you, because I either couldn't access the source they cited or they just stated it as fact. One time they gave different numbers with the same source and stated "with slight recalculation". The Cambridge Companion to the Roman Economy argues that the "orthodox" view on roman transport misinterprets this source and that the calculations made based on it are not viable to compare prices (as a higher maximum might just mean that the variability is higher instead of the average and the edict might not even contain direct evidence for riverine prices at all).The 1:50 ratio is correct, although there are some disagreements with exact numbers (and this is partly dependent on technology and advances in breeding). Roughly 640kg-1 tonne per horse on land, and 30-50tonnes for river barges maximum. Carts on land had teams between 1-6 horses, 8 in very exceptional cases.

The source on medieval England (1/2) seems like the most solid one to my untrained eye, since they looked at a lot of accounts that the different Sheriffs gave, which means that we have access to a lot of statements from a long period of time, in which transport cost was clearly written down. The only potential problem I could spot was that it focused on grain only, so if there is for example a great price variance based on the density of the transported goods this study would miss it.

I found little mention of riverine infrastructure in the sources for roman transport costs, with some disagreements, but some argue that the "low" ratio in 18th century England (4,6-5 to 1, at a time we know that the English waterways are excellent) is because of the greatness of Turnpike roads. Wiki says that even at the greatest extent, only 1/5th of roads were under the turnpike system so I'm not sure how credible that is. Other sources I found agree that road transport was of comparable importance with riverine transport in England roughly in the 10th-15th century. One factor that hasn't been mentioned yet is that inland water transport often had to compete with other uses (mills and fishing nets for example ) which might have increased costs. England had seemingly no exceptional roads or terrible rivers in 13th-14th century, when the 1/2 ratio was calculated (Rivers somewhere between great and merely okay, depending on who you ask, the waterways had been improved since roman times but might have fallen in disrepair around this time).

I still find the argument that road transport remains closer to riverine one, until you build canals, locks and tow-ways, straighten and tame the rivers compelling. In the 13th-14th centuries many English rivers haven't been used at all to transport goods at all, and more have only been used seasonally. Most sources that gave ratios at all either based them on the edict (or similarly controversial sources) or on the 1/2 source I found at first.
 
MossPiglet said:
I still find the argument that road transport remains closer to riverine one, until you build canals, locks and tow-ways, straighten and tame the rivers compelling. In the 13th-14th centuries many English rivers haven't been used at all to transport goods at all, and more have only been used seasonally. Most sources that gave ratios at all either based them on the edict (or similarly controversial sources) or on the 1/2 source I found at first.
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Thanks for the detailed reply. There's a lot of things that could change the exact calculus in the context of the quest: the Great North Road is a dwarf road and therefore possibly a high quality road, but it might be poorly maintained and ~40 miles of the relevant route pass through a swamp. The Schaukel is a natural river but also not really because nothing in Laurelorn is truly natural, and the Eonir possibly don't use mills and nets which is relevant if that's part of what drives up riverine transport prices. I guess there's also the question of wheter or not to make the downstream/upstream distinction - yes, we eventually need to make the return trip as well, but it's quite possible that ships/carts leaving Tor Lithanel do so with a lighter load, depending on how the Eonir intend to pay and what they wish to trade.

If we do take your 1/2 figure as accurate we get that the ~200 miles of the Schaukel are comparable to ~100 miles of Road. With RoW placed over ~20 miles of swamp, which looking at the map is probably what's going to be happen, the potential route is:

Land route: ~100 miles road (Great North Road) + ~20 miles road (RoW) + ~80 miles river (Schaukel, downstream)

While the Salkalten sea route is something like:

Sea route: ~50 miles road (Forest of Shadows to Salkalten) + ~400 miles sea (Sea of Claws) + ~200 miles river (Schaukel, upstream)

So that's ~120 more miles by river, and ~70 less miles by road, and ~400 miles more by sea. That all adds up to... pretty much the same, if the 25-to-1 figure for sea transport is accurate. But obviously that's not taking into account piracy and banditry and taxes and tarrifs and a whole lot of details that we have no way of knowing.

So yeah. It depends on the exact distances that end up being involved and the exact details that Boney ends up using, but it seems to me that the two routes are probably/possibly more or less comparable.
 
ReImagined said:
The benefit of trade on the expedition was 'increase the odds of the expedition succeeding and keeping the group alive in hostile territory,' the significance of which I don't believe is matched in the proposed dark elf trade.

Could you clarify as to what exactly you want from the trade? Because my current grasp of it is something along the lines of 'more items on the research backlog and which we probably can't use legally,' which doesn't quite rate on the same scale.
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Ah yes, those things that were extremely and directly valuable to the expedition and it's survival at the time like, checks notes:
  • An Ghyran acorn of dubious providence but strong magic. - Helped the expedition enormously while sitting in Mathilde's backlog waiting to be examined.
  • Some Lustrian rubbings - Helped the expedition enormously while sitting in Mathilde's backlog waiting to be examined.
  • Johann's golden arm - The laser function was of course of great use during the expedition's instances of dangerous combat when it was... sitting in a wagon waiting to be examined.
Yes all those were of course of vital importance in 'increasing the odds of the expedition succeeding and keeping the group alive in hostile territory,' and not Mathilde and the thread's own packrat tendencies.

Now I'm sure I can see the next argument coming which is that while dropping 3000 gold on artefacts for Mathilde wasn't directly contributing to the success and survival of the expedition, the reason we went to Chaos Dwarf city in the first place was to get food for the expedition, which did. Therefore us dropping the extra gold was really incediental to the larger goal.

Well good news, because the point of any trading with the Druchii here is not trading with the Druchii. It's to demonstrate to Uluthan that there is potential for some larger deal to be struck between the Empire and the Druchii and they should hurry their asses up and drop a counter offer so we can drop the dark elves already.

Edit: I'm not even that bothered about taking any action making any trade with the druchii, especially given AP hell. I just find this line of argument silly.
 
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I was wiki-crawling (as you do), and apparently, Kraggs master was a dwarf by the name of Morek Furrowbrow. Unless the wiki is lying, and unless there are two prominent dwarf runesmiths of the exact same name, then he actually really is a link to golden age, because Morek Furrowbrow apprenticed under Ranuld Silverthumb, a Burudin Runelord that predated War of Vengeance.

Of course, this is all just linked to novels, but its still pretty cool imho.
 
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