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Warhammer Fantasy: Divided Loyalties - an Advisor's Quest

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I have an idea.
What if we use Ulgu magic to grab one of 'those who dwell beyond' and bind it to our soul? Our shadow wizard street cred would get bigger if we did that.
 
Andres said:
I have an idea.
What if we use Ulgu magic to grab one of 'those who dwell beyond' and bind it to our soul? Our shadow wizard street cred would get bigger if we did that.
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I am fairly sure members of the Grey College that dwell in the liminal realm Pit of Shades opens to would not appreciate being bound to our soul, even if it would, technically, raise our shadow wizard cred.
 
agumentic said:
I am fairly sure members of the Grey College that dwell in the liminal realm Pit of Shades opens to would not appreciate being bound to our soul, even if it would, technically, raise our shadow wizard cred.
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Artemis1992 said:
Boney has reinterpreted the spell, pretty sure the wailing is just the sound of air being drawn into an extremly thin hole in reality.
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Or maybe Mathilde just never was on wailing duty since she is rarely present in the College. Permanent residents all know that about one day a month you need to go to the liminal realm and be ready to wail in case someone casts Pit of Shades.
 
My hope is that at some point we get to interact more the the Dark Elves. But with the potential re-emergence of Teclis, milk in hand, I'm not sure we have much time to perform that action before enough elves in high places start to take notice and cut off the option forever.
 
Parabola said:
I wonder if there's any way to only shorten the pass - leave it wide enough that trade caravans can still pass, but not wide enough that most armies could do so at a reasonable pace. Otherwise... I'd be inclined to do some favor trading.
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See, caravans are exactly what I want to block. I don't want trade with the Chaos Dwarves.
Zero Gravitas said:
It shuts off trade with Cathay so that's not necessarily great.

It isn't like Kislev or the Empire habitually trade with the Chorfs.
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They do though. As Mathilde noted while there, a number of traders just go as far as Uzulak, buy stolen goods, then turn around. And it doesn't cut off trade with the dwarves, just the northern route. Which, yes, does hurt Kislev specifically, but then they also don't get dark lands invasions from there.

NexusEye said:
That still leaves the possibility of a punitive military expedition against Vlag for their actions and Chaos Dwarves are still as vengeful as normal Dwarves towards those that have wronged them even if they don't have a formalised system in the form of the Dammaz Kron. They may even try to take over Vlag entirely or force them to collapse their tunnels like the Norse Dwarves and isolate themselves from the world so they can set up a base of operations to start clearing the rubble. It'll take a long time and will be expensive as hell but in the long-term the loss of trade will outweigh the cost of clearing High Pass so it's still the more profitable choice in the long run, and given Chaos Dwarf lifespans especially among their elite they will be thinking on the timescale of centuries or more.
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Eh, they already hate the dwarves, same with the dwarves hating the chaos dwarves. Avoiding victories because it would piss them off doesn't sound right.

Also, Vlag IMO is likely to fall anyway in the next chaos incursion. It's already likely a target of Slaanesh.
 
Cernunnos said:
My hope is that at some point we get to interact more the the Dark Elves. But with the potential re-emergence of Teclis, milk in hand, I'm not sure we have much time to perform that action before enough elves in high places start to take notice and cut off the option forever.
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It might be the other way around—if Teclis turns up, then the Dark Convent might become even more desperate to sway the colleges on to their side, and may sweeten the offer towards us.

"Your so called Teacher abandoned you for two hundred years—who knows how long he'll stick around this time? We'll stay with you no matter what, and here are treasures to show how sincere our intentions are."

Or something like that. I can't imagine they'd just give up. They are angling for any kind of advantage, both in the war with Ulthuan and their internal politics back home.
 
Nerdasaurus Rex said:
It might be the other way around—if Teclis turns up, then the Dark Convent might become even more desperate to sway the colleges on to their side, and may sweeten the offer towards us.

"Your so called Teacher abandoned you for two hundred years—who knows how long he'll stick around this time? We'll stay with you no matter what, and here are treasures to show how sincere our intentions are."

Or something like that. I can't imagine they'd just give up. They are angling for any kind of advantage, both in the war with Ulthuan and their internal politics back home.
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Maybe ask where he's been for the past 200 years? There has to have been plenty of times they'd have wished he was around.

Or find a new avenue, because you're not wrong, they want to get a new advantage, and trying diplomacy is new, but unexpected and could work, in theory.
 
Abhorsen said:
Also, as an idea for what the transcendant boon might be for Karak Vlag? Permanently closing the high pass in some way (if there's a feasible method). Shutting it down really, really hurts the overland trade lines that the Chaos Dwarves benefit from. The issue would be how much it hurts the Dwarves of Karag Vlag (I think that Kislev would trade one less invasion route for less trade).
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From a military standpoint, if blocking off mountain passes made sense, I feel like the Empire wouldn't have put up with Black Fire Pass for so long. And even ignoring the feasibility issue, there are good reasons to keep a pass open.

A mountain pass is a chokepoint, easily defensible, and allows defenders to predict the movements of the enemy, and set up preparations and fortifications accordingly. Blocking off the obvious route only encourages the enemy to move into vectors that are less well defended, or otherwise not expecting attacks, and you cannot fortify those other areas to the same degree that you would with the natural chokepoint. And by allowing the passes to be open, you enable trade, which then funds the upkeep required to maintain those defenses.

From an economic standpoint, I think shutting it down would hurt Uzkulak a bit, but it would hurt Kislev just as much, if not more. Uzkulak is still integrated into the Chaos Dwarves' network, and they would still have access to most of their usual trading partners, while Kislev would be entirely blocked off from the east and the traffic that would've gone there would go to the Empire instead.
 
Night_stalker said:
Maybe ask where he's been for the past 200 years? There has to have been plenty of times they'd have wished he was around.

Or find a new avenue, because you're not wrong, they want to get a new advantage, and trying diplomacy is new, but unexpected and could work, in theory.
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Or they could pivot to trying to kill us, they are dark elves and while preventing a new era of cooperation between Ulthuan and the the Old World at large by killing the linchpin and project head is not what they came from it is at least something to bring back to their superiors
 
DragonParadox said:
Or they could pivot to trying to kill us, they are dark elves and while preventing a new era of cooperation between Ulthuan and the the Old World at large by killing the linchpin and project head is not what they came from it is at least something to bring back to their superiors
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Depends on their mood. I can see there being orders to try diplomacy, but if that doesn't work, the standby of assassination is always on tap. After all, they can always escalate up if need be.
 
Abhorsen said:
They do though. As Mathilde noted while there, a number of traders just go as far as Uzulak, buy stolen goods, then turn around. And it doesn't cut off trade with the dwarves, just the northern route. Which, yes, does hurt Kislev specifically, but then they also don't get dark lands invasions from there.
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It isn't like Vlag isn't going to stop major invasions whilst trade with the Chorfs can't be that big proportionally speaking.

It really doesn't feel like worth using our Transcendent Boon on - it is not strategically relevant, nor is it beneficial to Mathilde or to stuff Mathilde really cares about.
 
Zero Gravitas said:
Not sure if how I'd feel about us using our Transcendent boon just to better Vlag/Kislev relations from a narrative POV.

Like Vlag and Kislev alread have decent relations. Mathilde often does stuff for the common good but not to the extent of giving away a really high end boon so that two fairly distant polities that already get along fairly well would get along somewhat better.
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Fair enough. I suppose a more self-interested ask would be something like asking for access to basically all of Kislev's libraries, or allowing the EIC several footholds. Or perhaps an overall Boon from Kislev. Really, lots of possibilities.

Abhorsen said:
See, caravans are exactly what I want to block. I don't want trade with the Chaos Dwarves.
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Abhorsen said:
Also, Vlag IMO is likely to fall anyway in the next chaos incursion. It's already likely a target of Slaanesh.
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Knowing Boney, and taking into account the Everchosen tournament, I think which route the next Everchosen would take is in limbo up until the time comes for them to make their move.

And I imagine that if the Karaz Ankor in general really wanted to completely shut off mountain passes that could allow for invasions or whatever, they already would have for some of the others. Either they are unwilling to do so in general, or they might be unable to.

And overall I really wouldn't want to hurt Kislev's trade just to spite the Chaos Dwarves'.
 
The big goal I'd have for relations with the Dark Elves is to set up an underground railroad for slaves and perhaps dissidents. If we could get even a few escaped slaves they'd probably be a much less biased source of information (or at least different, more informed bias than Old World sources and more trustworthy than Drucchi themselves).

Of course, if we could turn some of the cities and cause a schism it would be great but that's probably a long term thing.
 
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Also, Naggaroth is on another continent. The actual Underground Railroad covered much less distance and involved a great number of collaborators and hidden safehouses that any such operation would not have access to.
 
Parabola said:
Fair enough. I suppose a more self-interested ask would be something like asking for access to basically all of Kislev's libraries, or allowing the EIC several footholds. Or perhaps an overall Boon from Kislev. Really, lots of possibilities.
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Another option is to take the "Runic Tributaries" Waystone option with Thorek, and hope he comes up with something as simple as the Runic Capstone turned out to be that can be done by mere apprentices.

Then leverage our Transcendant Boon into getting the Vlag Rhunkits to roll out tributaries everywhere for us.
 
The druchii are much more likely to try and assassinate the Asur who are sent to negotiate with us rather than us- they know the Asur can't really just leave us alone, and they know where we are, so they've got the bones of what they need to set up an ambush.
 
Theoretically we could already look to do that -- take the Belthani tributary stone method, apply the Waystone Rune using dwarf runelore to improve the effectiveness of engraving a 'mundane' rune, then lay them out in that precise grid. The application of the Waystone Rune will reduce the number of stones needed for a given amount of throughput, which is the biggest stumbling block for using an earthbound-magic leyline grid to improve Wind drainage.
 
Glau said:
The druchii are much more likely to try and assassinate the Asur who are sent to negotiate with us rather than us- they know the Asur can't really just leave us alone, and they know where we are, so they've got the bones of what they need to set up an ambush.
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Maybe, though I do not think they would have the courage to try to assassinate Mr. 'I set Maleketh on fire with holy embers so hard he had to flee into the Aethyr to escape me'. If i is some lesser mage maybe but not Teclis.
 
Gavin Prince said:
Another option is to take the "Runic Tributaries" Waystone option with Thorek, and hope he comes up with something as simple as the Runic Capstone turned out to be that can be done by mere apprentices.

Then leverage our Transcendant Boon into getting the Vlag Rhunkits to roll out tributaries everywhere for us.
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I considered that as a possibility, but as you say, that's contingent on Thorek accomplishing that. I wanted to only list stuff that can definitely be done.

The Belthani tributaries, which are the only ones we currently have as a template to work off of, need an external force to push the magic to waystones. Hence Haletha, a Dreaming Wood, or a water spirit. We don't know whether Thorek could do a Belthani-based tributary. Maybe he could ask Thungni to do that, or another Ancestor-God? But that seems like a big maybe.

Personally I suspect Thorek might work best with the Lornalim tributaries as a template, since those presumably make up for the lack of an external force doing the pushing by relying on precious metals - and Runesmiths already have ample experience working with such as materials.
 
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