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Warhammer Fantasy: Divided Loyalties - an Advisor's Quest

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T_of_A said:
A thought: we know that they're good at stonework, and that they have experience in digging tunnels involving rivers. And they've promised us a Transcendent Boon.

Do you think we could ask them to provide technical and/or financial assistance to the Kislevite canal projects ?
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I don't want to ask anything of them that would drain a significant amount of manpower (dwarfpower?). They really can't spare it.
 
GrimTheMad said:
I don't want to ask anything of them that would drain a significant amount of manpower (dwarfpower?). They really can't spare it.
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Why can't they ? It's not like they're facing a crisis. They're recovering, things seem to be doing well, and it's not like we'd ask them to do the whole megaproject solo. Just to send in some experts for advice/warnings, maybe provide some of that dawi mining equipment we've seen (which helps with everything except the mining itself, amusingly), and at best send some artisans to handle the trickier parts humans would struggle with. They'd probably significantly improve the quality of the final project, and reduce the kislevite worker death toll.

EDIT: I'm aware that their population is lower than it was 200 years ago. But I'm not suggesting they send their warriors out to die either. Any experts/artisans sent will return after a few years.
 
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Because it's a Transcendental Boon, they won't keep it at sending some experts and artisans. They will go all out.

Also their expertise is frankly unneeded, this isn't a canal contending with mountains like Black Water, this is more or less just a really big ditch through fairly level terrain.
 
Talon TigerDino said:
Because it's a Transcendental Boon, they won't keep it at sending some experts and artisans. They will go all out.

Also their expertise is frankly unneeded, this isn't a canal contending with mountains like Black Water, this is more or less just a really big ditch through fairly level terrain.
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There's a Boney quote to that effect:
Boney said:
Parabola said:
And if Boris is canny enough, he'd be able to get dwarven assistance on it, as well.
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He might not bother. Not all tasks are equally Dwarf-soluble. Building a canal over a mountain range is the kind of thing they can make an incredibly huge difference on, but building a canal over flat tundra doesn't present many novel challenges.
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As long as we're throwing around boon ideas, wasn't there some talk of getting some Runes for our library a long while ago? For lighting and preservation and such? I suppose we could maybe use the Runesmithing Guild boon to get something good (obviously Belegar could get us something even without a boon but I guess a boon would get us something better).
 
mathymancer said:
As long as we're throwing around boon ideas, wasn't there some talk of getting some Runes for our library a long while ago? For lighting and preservation and such? I suppose we could maybe use the Runesmithing Guild boon to get something good (obviously Belegar could get us something even without a boon but I guess a boon would get us something better).
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In fact, we can try to use Karak Vlag for this. They have no real Runelords, but a huge part of their population can perform at least the simplest runes, so they can provide us with a huge number of fairly simple runes that it would be unreasonable to ask Kragg for.
 
mathymancer said:
As long as we're throwing around boon ideas, wasn't there some talk of getting some Runes for our library a long while ago? For lighting and preservation and such? I suppose we could maybe use the Runesmithing Guild boon to get something good (obviously Belegar could get us something even without a boon but I guess a boon would get us something better).
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This is occasionally brought up, and it's one of my most desired theory plans. There's been talk about entering a library agreement with them soonish, so when that happens I'll be campaigning hard to use the boon on Rhunkit doing the whole kit and kaboodle.

Boney said:
Most Dwarven libraries achieve this in part by only allowing a very small number of librarians to have access the libraries, which lets them minimize airflow and thus carefully control atmospheric conditions, basically turning the entire library into a climate-controlled storeroom. Having something that's meant to allow a whole bunch of people to come and go means larger entryways that are open more often, and that means that the mechanisms of preservation needs to be concentrated on the bookcases instead.

A large-scale deployment of this sort of thing would require either a single large-scale and extremely difficult Runic array, or a lot of individual Runesmiths who don't mind mass-producing Runes, so that would require a KAU action to either recruit a Runelord or bring in Vlag once the library is up and running.
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BeepSmile said:
How about an old friend?
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We are not Boris's old friend, a friend, possibly, but we are, first and foremost, Imperial Lady Magister, and that has political implications.
Boris does not need dwarven stone workers, he needs people with shovels, and he has plenty of those.
Let the man have his national infrastructure project without unsolicited outside meddling.

Also, not sure what you found humorous about my previous post.
It was not intended to be humorous, so i would appreciate learning what the joke is supposed to be.
 
Valmond said:
Also, not sure what you found humorous about my previous post.
It was not intended to be humorous, so i would appreciate learning what the joke is supposed to be.
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I thought it was a Lord of the Rings refrence. Gandalf showing up at Bilbo's house.

It really isn't but I have had an absurdly few hours of sleep, sorry about that.

I agree with your post's point, btw.
 
Valmond said:
We are not Boris's old friend, a friend, possibly, but we are, first and foremost, Imperial Lady Magister, and that has political implications.
Boris does not need dwarven stone workers, he needs people with shovels, and he has plenty of those.
Let the man have his national infrastructure project without unsolicited outside meddling.

Also, not sure what you found humorous about my previous post.
It was not intended to be humorous, so i would appreciate learning what the joke is supposed to be.
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I thought it was funny to say our meddling was unnecessary when our meddling is why it's happening.
 
mathymancer said:
As long as we're throwing around boon ideas, wasn't there some talk of getting some Runes for our library a long while ago? For lighting and preservation and such? I suppose we could maybe use the Runesmithing Guild boon to get something good (obviously Belegar could get us something even without a boon but I guess a boon would get us something better).
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Someone brought up using Kragg's boon to get magic-related books (that don't cover runesmithing) from the runesmiths. Boney indicated that they'd probably have a higher cap than was available to our book-purchasing contacts.
 
adaer said:
I thought it was funny to say our meddling was unnecessary when our meddling is why it's happening.
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And now it is happening, we no longer need to be involved.
And, in fact, our further involvement can be actually detrimental, unless invited.
BEcause right now Boris can say that it is a canal for Kislev, by Kislev, and any benefits empire might have are but a happy accidents.
It can be a matter of national pride, something used to unify the nation, a symbol of strength, and all that crap.
We start dropping in to give unasked aid can be harmful to that narrative.

Also as has been noted, he does not need dwarve expertise here, he needs hands and shovels, and he has both in far greater abundance than Vlag does.
 
adaer said:
I thought it was funny to say our meddling was unnecessary when our meddling is why it's happening.
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Still not seeing the joke.
Yes we got the ball rolling, by asking it as a deniable payment for killing the previous Tsar, our further, especially visible, meddling is not only unnecessary but also potentially unhelpful.
If you feel my statement is somehow ridiculous or worthy of mockery, please argue your case instead of simply making laughing emotes at it.
 
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I still think we should consider asking Vlag to help fortify Kislev's defenses for the next possible Everchosen. It's something they'd be incredibly well-suited to and probably willing to do.

Their stonesmithing and runic expertise would be nothing to sneeze at, and if they're "just" defense-oriented improvement then they and Mathilde would be pretty isolated from most criticisms from the rest of the KA or the Empire.

Getting Vlag to give us their books or expertise to help with our library's preservation is not a bad idea, but we could probably get those things anyway just by asking, and it could be thought of as a waste to spend such a huge boon on that.
 
Parabola said:
I still think we should consider asking Vlag to help fortify Kislev's defenses for the next possible Everchosen. It's something they'd be incredibly well-suited to and probably willing to do.
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I'm not sure this what we want. Karak Vlag will still be the first line of defense if Chaos comes from Kurgan or Tong. In an ideal situation, we would like to ensure that Karak Vlag is the main front of defense, and not the southern lands.
 
Karlov said:
I'm not sure this what we want. Karak Vlag will still be the first line of defense if Chaos comes from Kurgan or Tong. In an ideal situation, we would like to ensure that Karak Vlag is the main front of defense, and not the southern lands.
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If we're worried about that, we could just add a specific clause like "to the extent it does not interfere with the Karaz Ankor's or your own plans of defense against Chaos", similar to how we explicitly noted for KAU that it should be done to the extent that it was sustainable.

Come on. We're talking about an entire Karak's worth of individuals here, around one third of which are Rhunkit, and we know the rest of the Karaz Ankor are already helping them out. And they're an Old Hold. They have the capacity to help others out without weakening themselves.
 
Parabola said:
If we're worried about that, we could just add a specific clause like "to the extent it does not interfere with the Karaz Ankor's or your own plans of defense against Chaos", similar to how we explicitly noted for KAU that it should be done to the extent that it was sustainable.

Come on. We're talking about an entire Karak's worth of individuals here, around one third of which are Rhunkit, and we know the rest of the Karaz Ankor are already helping them out. And they're an Old Hold. They have the capacity to help others out without weakening themselves.
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I'm not saying that the defense Kislev will damage Karak Vlag. I'm rather saying that two of the three human nations of Chaos will still attack Karak Vlag first. Kislev has a dire need to defend against Norsca alone. Therefore, the fortification of Kislev is not so useful if we can forestall the movement of the forces of Chaos south of the High Pass. And this, optimally, would be our goal.

Moreover, if we talk about purely theoretical possibilities without taking into account the structure of questing... it is still possible that we will not have to face Chaos. I mean, the next Everchosen may very well target Cathay. But this is not something that any of us could rely on.
 
Karlov said:
I'm not sure this what we want. Karak Vlag will still be the first line of defense if Chaos comes from Kurgan or Tong. In an ideal situation, we would like to ensure that Karak Vlag is the main front of defense, and not the southern lands.
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I'll be honest if the next Everchosen does target Cathay I am all for trying to gather as many allies as we can with our many many contacts and then race over there. We might not be able to get armies there, but I think we could rustle up some Lords Magister, Runelords and archmages.
 
DragonParadox said:
I'll be honest if the next Everchosen does target Cathay I am all for trying to gather as many allies as we can with our many many contacts and then race over there. We might not be able to get armies there, but I think we could rustle up some Lords Magister, Runelords and archmages.
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If the next Everchosen targeted Cathay, I don't think we'd know about it until after it was already settled.
 
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