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Warhammer Fantasy: Divided Loyalties - an Advisor's Quest

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Boney said:
According to the 7th Edition Dark Elves Army Book, Black Dragons originated in eggs that the Druchii stole from Caledor and 'enchanted with dark spells to corrupt the unborn Dragons within', with all other Black Dragons descending from that original clutch. There doesn't seem to be any room in that lineage for Carmine Dragons.
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The very same page talks about a clutch of eggs found in naggaroth, and I misremembered that as the origin of the black dragons, but I guess that clutch was just the product of two dragons mating in secret before hiding their eggs.
 
My headcanon about Gnomes comes from this thread, and it's that they're Halflings heavily attuned to Ulgu and live separate from the rest of their race.
 
Come to think of it, Emperor Ludwig the Fat, who gave the Halflings the Moot, was the second to last of the 'Drakwald Emperors', and the Mirror Moors were part of Drakwald before its lands were absorbed into Middenland. When the last Elector Count of Drakwald died, Ludwig's son, Emperor Boris Goldgather, never appointed another. Which is strange, since he sold every other title he could acquire or invent, including making a horse a duke. Perhaps Boris took after his father and granted it to a separate group of Halflings - one that decided to stay quiet about it after the huge fuss Stirland and Averland made about the Moot. Emperor Mandred Skavenslayer dissolved the title, which meant that these theoretical Halflings would have lost their elector vote, but perhaps nobody wanted to own a Drakwald swamp badly enough to raise the forces necessary to repossess the land and the matter was simply forgotten. Qui tenet teneat, qui dolet doleat.
 
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A swamp is good defense against humans, but most gribblies will head right for it. So if something rolls over the Empire and the Moot, then the hypothetical swamp halflings would be in for a bad time too.

Plus, if you had to decide between a swamp, the moot, and valleys protected by a karak, halflings will like the latter two options a lot more.
 
BurnNote said:
A swamp is good defense against humans, but most gribblies will head right for it. So if something rolls over the Empire and the Moot, then the hypothetical swamp halflings would be in for a bad time too.

Plus, if you had to decide between a swamp, the moot, and valleys protected by a karak, halflings will like the latter two options a lot more.
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It's also just kinda difficult to farm in a swamp without draining said swamp. Which would force the secret third halflings to either subsist on just fishing and gathering or buying from actual farms not in said swamp. Logistics come into play again.
 
Parabola said:
We know it's possible, because when we met Cadaeth for the first time she sort of flexed on us by showing us she had a bunch of trees in her soul, but there's a big difference between "we know it's possible for an elf with an unknown amount of backing and resources and time investment" and "possible for Mathilde".

The above idea Boney laid out also probably needs the person you're experimenting with to have their soul detached from their body, and that'd probably be ridiculously complicated in itself. You can imagine how fraught the idea is.
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I just had the thought that there is a pretty safe way for Cadaeth's faction to experiment on souls to generate specific magical abilities, they can perform the experiments on magical trees and when they succeed turn them into controllable familiars and/or dryads as needed.

The Limial germination ritual basically showed us that the Ward of Frost does not mind regularly destroying small copses of trees in magical experimentation if the potential results are usefull enough.
 
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Tobtorp said:
It's also just kinda difficult to farm in a swamp without draining said swamp. Which would force the secret third halflings to either subsist on just fishing and gathering or buying from actual farms not in said swamp. Logistics come into play again.
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The corollary is that swamps are usually some of the easiest places there are to subsist on just fishing and gathering. Swamps are in fact incredibly productive ecosystems, it's just productive in a way that's hard to extract wealth out of.
 
Boney said:
1) Early fandom inertia. If you're trying to hammer all the early lore into a semblance of order and you get to the dragon spectrum and Elspeth von Draken is already depicted on a red dragon, you're stuck with that.
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I don't think that applies here?

Elspeth first existed in Tamurkhan, and 'Carmine Dragons start off as red' is from the Monstrous Arcanum, released the year after Tamurkhan.
 
Mopman43 said:
I don't think that applies here?

Elspeth first existed in Tamurkhan, and 'Carmine Dragons start off as red' is from the Monstrous Arcanum, released the year after Tamurkhan.
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I vaguely recalled having heard of Nuln having a bonkers powerful resident Wizard back in The Old Days circa 6th, but I might be misremembering. In any case, the point wasn't so much about that one specific example but more about that if established art or lore already gave a colour for a certain flavour of dragon, you might get stuck with that even if it doesn't fit neatly into a complete dragon spectrum.
 
Tobtorp said:
Absolutely, they haven't hidden whole unique civilizations in them generally. If those gnomes are more then like 3 villages worth of dudes they need more then swamps can provide, which would involve trade.
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It's stated that the population in the Mirror Moors used to be in the thousands, but was devastated by Grom's forces.

They do trade, though.

In the duchies bordering the Mirror Moors and nearby the Midden Marshes, Gnomes are relatively well knownas they are often found abroad as entertainers, wandering pedlars, or merchants. Locally, they are known as 'Moorfolk', a secretive people with untrusting natures who fish the Midden Marshes. Rumours of Moorfolk practicing forbidden magics are common, which attracts witch hunters to the region in significant numbers, though few find anything more than open moors and the dangerous local fauna, including River Trolls, Fen Worms, and Bog Octopuses.
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Gnomes from Clan Peddlar have wandered the Empire for centuries, trading for goods and spying on their neighbours. Indeed, many scholars claim the world 'pedlar' is sourced in that Clan name, and that the dangerous profession was introduced to the Empire by Gnomes.
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(From their dedicated section in Rough Nights and Hard Days for 4e)

In general, they're presented as being known to the nearby towns, but hiding their magic, and presenting themselves as Halflings every else.

And they've only been hiding at all for the last 200 years, ever since the founding of the Colleges of Magic.
 
Tobtorp said:
Absolutely, they haven't hidden whole unique civilizations in them generally. If those gnomes are more then like 3 villages worth of dudes they need more then swamps can provide, which would involve trade.
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hence my semi joking idea of them being a secret halfling project.
Explains where they come from, where they got their resources, and why nobody noticed them before (because they were not there).
 
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