Remove ads

Warhammer Fantasy: Divided Loyalties - an Advisor's Quest

Voted best in category in the Users' Choice awards.
Reader mode
Deathbybunnies said:
IIRC the most popular plan was to get Boris to give KAU copying rights for every library in Kislev, in exchange for copying rights that they could use to rebuild their libraries whenever Chaos rolls in and deletes another city. It's a benefit to both polities, though moreso for KAU.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
That was in fact the plan, but if Eltharion's reaction is... unpleasant, it's entirely possible that we'd instead go with "hey we want Kislev's full support with the Project". I also seem to recall Boney saying something along the lines of the tributaries rollout in Kislev mayyy happen automatically depending on how the Boris scene ends up going and what we end up asking.

It might be more straightforward and practical at the moment to just ask Boris for his full support for the Project and only later ask for books and stuff.
 
Last edited:
Personally I'm still in favor of having Kislev help Vlag. A relatively small amount of resources for a nation the size of Kislev would be the equivalent of an enormous amount of aid for Vlag and it would significantly increase their chances of surviving the next Everchosen invasion, plus the cost for Kislev would be mitigated by the fact that reinforcing Vlag would mean they can inflict more attrition on Chaos as they traverse High Pass so Kislev would benefit as well. Libraries are great but keeping Vlag from falling is even more important in my opinion.
 
I think Vlag will survive no matter what. They endured two centuries in the Warp and their ability to survive in that environment is only increasing. Aid would help them of course, but they'll survive regardless.
 
Andres said:
I think the custom is to cash in your assassination cheques before asking for further favours.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Yeah, I know. I should have specified as a separate thing. It's likely that he'd be open to the idea of a book exchange of sorts between KAU and Kislev as a whole, just, on a much lesser scale than we'd normally get by cashing the assassination in.
 
Last edited:
Andres said:
I think Vlag will survive no matter what. They endured two centuries in the Warp and their ability to survive in that environment is only increasing. Aid would help them of course, but they'll survive regardless.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
I think I was wrong to say this. Last time Chaos came around, they got sent into the Warp, which means they didn't get enough aid back then, and it'll be even worse now. With the loss of Dum and the Norscan dwarves, Karag Vlag is the northernmost hold, and the Karaz Ankor has a tradition of refusing to help the northernmost hold.
 
Andres said:
How does Kislev have an economy able to fight Chaos? It's only got three cities, which Reikland alone exceeds.

For that matter, how can Chaos fight Kislev? Norsca has only one city.

EDIT: Reikland only has two cities: Altdorf and Bögenhafen.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Norsca only has one city. which isn't the same thing as saying norsca only has one population center, norsca is primarily tribal and so they don't tend to group together in massive cities as empire folk do. they spread out into many little nameless villages.

it is also not the same as saying Chaos only has one city. for one thing every dwarf hold and majour settlement north of the wastes is a massive pop center and source of black steel arms.

for another, the entirety of the chaos wastes, a time-warped space-bent hellscape where the whims of the dark gods are material law, has exactly as many warriors and nomadic tribes that can come down and join the norscans as plot demands. almost explicitly so, in-universe, infact. because causality gets fucky the closer you get to the gates
 
Last edited:
Feim said:
it is also not the same as saying Chaos only has one city. for one thing every dwarf hold norht of the wastes is a massive pop center and source of black steel arms.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
The Chaos Dwarfs aren't actually north of the Wastes. Their northernmost hold is Uzkulak, which is arguably at the edge of it or possibly still a decent ways south. If we're judging by the line where Mathilde noted that the land itself becomes dramatically tainted with Dhar, they're well south of it.

(They also aren't exactly a large population bump in of themselves, the vast majority of the population would be the slaves)
 
Mopman43 said:
The Chaos Dwarfs aren't actually north of the Wastes. Their northernmost hold is Uzkulak, which is arguably at the edge of it or possibly still a decent ways south. If we're judging by the line where Mathilde noted that the land itself becomes dramatically tainted with Dhar, they're well south of it.

(They also aren't exactly a large population bump in of themselves, the vast majority of the population would be the slaves)
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
I don't mean the chaos dwarfs. I had forgotten karag dum was the northern most dwarf hold.

but in the normal cause of events where it didn't get cor-dum protecting it, it becomes filled with entire cultures of chaos worshippers deep in it's bowels that mine iron and forge black steel arms to trade for slaves.
 
Feim said:
I don't mean the chaos dwarfs. I had forgotten karag dum was the northern most dwarf hold.

but in the normal cause of events where it didn't get cor-dum protecting it, it becomes filled with entire cultures of chaos worshippers deep in it's bowels that mine iron and forge black steel arms to trade for slaves.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Sure, but that didn't happen.

So there aren't any corrupted Dwarf Holds in the wastes.

(Well, apart from Dum, but their corruption at least isn't one that helps the Tribes any)
 
Andres said:
So do the Empire and presumably Kislev.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
yes. it is fairly common in general. and both kislev and the empire are descended from similar practices to the current norscan method iirc. but they both do consolidate. there are cities and major pop centers the loss of which could cripple them.

norsca though hasn't gone past that stage, they don't do cities.
 
Last edited:
Andres said:
How does Kislev have an economy able to fight Chaos? It's only got three cities, which Reikland alone exceeds.

For that matter, how can Chaos fight Kislev? Norsca has only one city.

EDIT: Reikland only has two cities: Altdorf and Bögenhafen.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...


I'd say Kislev can fight Norsca despite only having 3 major cities BECAUSE Norsca has only one major city. While their economy and military ability is small in comparison to the Empire or Brettonia, the collective might of Norsca is probably also smaller than Kislev. Norsca is probably also significantly less unified, and so isn't really sending all of its forces at once. Wth Kislev focused on rebuilding rather than expansion, this leads to the status-quo of raids coming across the border, likely retaliatory raids going back, all without overly much territorial change.

This changes when an everchosen or major chaos lord enters the field, as suddenly it's not Kislev vs. 1-3 Norscan tribes, it's Kislev vs. All of Norsca + Kurgan + Hung + other chaos tribes + armies of demons + chaos dwarf war machines + chaos warriors from the wastes + beastmen + every chaos cult kicking off at once + misc chaos bullshit. That's substantially more forces than they regularly handle, and more than the can reasonably be expected to fight alone without the substantially larger war machines of the empire + KA at their sides. And even with the empire and KA (and Teclis) it was a near thing in the last Great War.
 
Last edited:
silentorphan said:
Dunkelberg, Ubersreik, Auerswald, Holthusen, and Schilderheim don't count? (I'm probably leaving out a whole bunch of others, but I'm counting populations of 3000+ and up.) They may be a bit late in WFRP to count towards canonicity for the quest, but still...
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Nope, those are all towns. To be a city, you've gotta have a population of 10k+ according to WFRP 4e: Death on the Reik Companion page 71, and only Altdorf and Bögenhafen meet that criteria in the gazetteer of the Reikland in DotR Companion. The towns you mentioned respectively have populations of 8.9k, 7.5k, 5k, 3.5k (WFRP 2e: Sigmar's Heirs), and 5.5k (Sigmar's Heirs). The third most populous settlement in Reikland is Kemperbad at 9.6k people.
 
NexusEye said:
males legally required to learn how to use a weapon so they can be drafted if needed,
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
And IIRC so are noble females, and commoner females are at the very least not discouraged
Voikirium said:
Fremen mirage is a hell of a drug
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
To be fair, this is GW made setting. And GW do be huffing that shit like it is the only thing keeping them alive.
Andres said:
With the loss of Dum
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
I don't think Dum qualifies as lost for the purposes of messing with Chaos invasions. The opposite, arguably,what with them forging themselves into a weapon against chaos.
Andres said:
So do the Empire and presumably Kislev.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Well, Norsii were one of the old world tribes before Sigmar booted them out. Kislev IIRC came from a different group of tribes, but there was still probably a lot of crosspolination with both their neighbors and their conquestees. More broadly, there are not a whole lot of ways human civilisation can work within this sort of geographical and political environment, unless a shitton of magic gets involved. And i do mean shitton, "common feature in life and work of peasant/herder Jan Bumblefuck" level of involvement.
 
I always figured that the Gazetteer's census data was only counting people who owned the land their homes were built on, so the vast multitudes living and working on rented plots of land wouldn't be accounted for, let alone itinerant workers.
 
Voikirium said:
Fremen mirage is a hell of a drug
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
I mean, is it? Kyievan Rus also only had three cities and was a fairly succesfull IRL realm.

Russia, one of the biggest and for a time amongst the powerful countries on Earth is also heavily centralized in several cities that plunder the rest of the country to fuel their relevance and opulence. I don´t think the Kislev model is remotely unrealistic, or at least no more so than any other nation in the Warhammer world, since you have to adjust for constant chaos attrition which would make any of them unlivable.

EDIT: Not to mention that Kislev does have other towns and such, its not as if those three major cities were the only settlements there.

Honestly, having one central city and bunch of towns on important crossings/mining locations is pretty much staple of medieval Europe kingdoms.
 
Last edited:
Andres said:
How does Kislev have an economy able to fight Chaos? It's only got three cities, which Reikland alone exceeds.

For that matter, how can Chaos fight Kislev? Norsca has only one city.

EDIT: Reikland only has two cities: Altdorf and Bögenhafen.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

Rule of thumb is that for pre-industrial societies, about 5-10% of the population live in urban areas, and the rest in rural areas. So looking solely at cities isn't typically a good way of measuring manpower.

Post-industrial, the balance tips the other way, to the point that many rural areas today are heavily suffering from depopulation because everyone now lives in the city.

Also chaos controls the entire arctic circle, which is mostly solid land that is sort of inhabitable and is populated by loads of tribes and hordes.
 
Nerdasaurus Rex said:
Rule of thumb is that for pre-industrial societies, about 5-10% of the population live in urban areas, and the rest in rural areas. So looking solely at cities isn't typically a good way of measuring manpower.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
The more cities you have, the more rural population there's gotta be to support those cities, so it kind of is. Another way to look at it is that the Empire has a crapload more fertile land than Kislev and Chaos, so the non-city parts of the map would be more densely populated with hamlets, towns, and villages.
 
Reader mode
You must login or register to reply here.
Remove ads
Back
Top