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Warhammer Fantasy: Divided Loyalties - an Advisor's Quest

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Boney said:
Even if part of the implied message was suggesting the possibility of it being turned on full time if Karaz-a-Karak-K8P relations need more healing, it'd be silly to have it on 24/7 now when there's nothing in place to take advantage of it.
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"All right, Gotri, you can make sky-travelers out of steel and peat, how do you fancy wood and lift-gas?"
 
Wait, so not only does K8P have Gotri, Okri, the Gunnery school, and a ton of Skaven engineering manuals, but it also has the Gas Forges? Are we turning into an engineering hold?

And we came so, so damn close to recruiting Gotrek as well. We'd better keep an eye out for a certain slayer engineer, just in case.
 
Boney said:
Then, without a sound, bright yellow fire from nowhere started at the base of the haze and climbed swiftly upwards, and a pair of immense but lazy flames danced atop the Citadel's two towers, so bright as to be almost transparent, and without a wisp of smoke emerging from it.
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Boney said:
"The High King sends his warmest regards to you and yours, King Belegar," the messenger says,
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...Wait, was that a fucking pun?
 
Nerdasaurus Rex said:
Wait, so not only does K8P have Gotri, Okri, the Gunnery school, and a ton of Skaven engineering manuals, but it also has the Gas Forges? Are we turning into an engineering hold?

And we came so, so damn close to recruiting Gotrek as well. We'd better keep an eye out for a certain slayer engineer, just in case.
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Malakai almost certainly hasn't sworn his oath yet.

If he does come to K8P to make an Airship, I rather hope it goes better than his first canon try.
 
NSMS said:
Thorgrim must have nearly had a heart attack on recieving that message. A secret he's bound by oath not to tell of, yet suddenly not telling of it would potentially doom the entire Karak Ankor. Good on him for finding a way to thread that needle.
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I mean. There is another way to "thread" that needle. Rip off the band-aid and then go slayer. It's good that he found a way other than that, but if he's willing to reveal the secret without technically breaking the oath, I think he'd probably be willing to just break the oath but then go slayer if he really absolutely had to.

infinityDivided said:
...Wait, was that a fucking pun?
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Of course not.

His warmest regards would be the tectonic shackle, surely :V
 
I can only imagine the absolute bedlam that beset the Thorgrim Negaverse when the QM teased the message that arrived from Belegar.

Also the total confusion of the messenger upon being given his very strange instructions.
 
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Huh, remember how we all act like sweet summer children braying for the High King's blood for his last words, who knew there was another subtle meaning in "Die well".
 
That could have gone in a very concerning direction. I'm glad we came to an erroneous but close-enough answer.

And, on another note...
Boney said:
Belegar generally acts with confidence and surety, but that is the privilege of those that know where they stand. In this matter, he is painfully aware that he lives in one of two worlds. In one, the High King is an imperfect ruler of the Karaz Ankor, doing his best to shoulder the weight of thousands of years of accumulated oaths and grudges and enemies and sometimes stumbling. In the other, the High King has been blinded by history and shackled by tradition, and bleeds the rest of the Karaz Ankor to keep the vaults of Karaz-a-Karak full and its primacy unquestioned. In the former world, Thorgrim's abandonment of Karak Eight Peaks was a battlefield amputation that would have seemed justified with the knowledge available to him. In the latter, it was the perfect opportunity to rid him of a renascent Karak that once rivaled the power and influence of Karaz-a-Karak itself before it could do so once more. In the former world, there is some more important purpose that the magical energies drained from the other Karaks are being put towards, and some sort of explanation for why this is being done so without the knowledge or consent of their Kings. In the latter, there is not.

Belegar thinks of the past temptation to take valuable silk from the unknowing We for next to nothing and how that opportunity was left primly untaken, despite the damage to the Karak's large but not bottomless vaults. And he wonders if at some point the High Kings chose otherwise.

In both worlds, Belegar is failing in his duty. In the world where the High King is right and righteous, Belegar's duty is faith and loyalty. In the world where the High King is corrupt or corrupted, Belegar's duty is no less required for it being unthinkable. This middle ground, the tension and the dark looks and the silences that speak entire tomes, is as wrong directed at a rightful High King as it is insufficient for an unrightful one.

So today he must chart a course through two maps at once, and put together a missive that is both respectful and demanding at once, one that will not offend a righteous High King but will corner an unrighteous one.
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I can't help but feel that this is Mathilde's influence on Belegar. She's turned him into someone who has to consider ambiguity and many mutually opposed possibilities. He is, to put it a bit self-indulgently, considering the grey areas of politics.
 
Technically, how do we know that they aren't wrong? What if the Underearth is powered by external energy? If a flow of energy cuts off, would the Underearth re-connect to the Aethyr ((after Gazul cut it off)) or would it leave the planet or would it become stuck there, or what?
Boney said:
The first indication that something was amiss was when the heat haze, which on particularly hot days could completely obstruct the view from one side of the Karak to the other, grew stronger and more turbulent above the Citadel. Then, without a sound, bright yellow fire from nowhere started at the base of the haze and climbed swiftly upwards, and a pair of immense but lazy flames danced atop the Citadel's two towers, so bright as to be almost transparent, and without a wisp of smoke emerging from it.

"The High King sends his warmest regards to you and yours, King Belegar," the messenger says, and without another word he turns and leaves, beginning his long journey back to Karaz-a-Karak.
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"Warmest" regards. Those regards are pretty bright and shiny, but are they warm? :V


... Also. If we had taken some of the "investigate the Abyss/Depth" actions... would we potentially have stumbled upon the reserves of gas, or the gas-creation mechanisms, of this?

... Also also, holy crap, could Skryre or Eshin or Mors have been trying to dig down to reach this stuff? Might that have been what they were hoping to achieve by taking over Karak Eight Peaks? We were told that "There's roughly something equally notable going on in each of the mountains, comparable to Lhune." The Skaven selling stuff to the Orcs in the first mountain we came across. The warpstone Trolls in the other mountain. The Elemental-Golem in the other mountain. The Ice Dragon. The feuding orcs. Clan Eshin being up to something in their mountain, which we never got around to figuring out what it was.
 
Excellent needle-threading on the part of both of them.

And while the conclusion is wrong it's close enough that if they ever do find out the truth it would be "Ohhh, so existential rather than existential makes sense, and no less important."

The important part, really, is they came to the conclusion that the energy was fueling some work absolutely vital to the dwarves - and it was failing until they unintentionally reignited a connection.
 
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An interesting resolution to the Thorgrim-Belegar conflict. It makes sense and arguably makes Belegar even more invested into aiding the Dwarven Waystone network than he would be if he was simply told the truth, he believes that it isn't simply a matter of extinction for the current Dwarven generation but potentially the extinction of all Dwarven generations past and present, which is arguably an even bigger stake than the truth.

Also I'm betting the gas being produced is hydrogen, when hydrogen burns it produces a pale blue flame which is nearly invisible in daylight which is consistent with the part of the flame near the Citadel plus it's consistent with the lack of smoke, hydrogen flames produce only water. That said I can't explain the yellow part of the flame higher up. Perhaps the mixing of the hydrogen flame with the atmosphere heats the non-water parts of the gasses to incandescence and that produces the yellow flame?

Though I wonder what the source of hydrogen is. Water perhaps? It would explain the high energy drain for the gas-forges if they're electrolyzing water into hydrogen, oxygen-hydrogen bonds are strong and breaking them is energetically expensive.
 
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Nerdasaurus Rex said:
Wait, so not only does K8P have Gotri, Okri, the Gunnery school, and a ton of Skaven engineering manuals, but it also has the Gas Forges? Are we turning into an engineering hold?
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I feel like the sudden appearance of the fire might mean that the Gas Forge can generate the gas in question anywhere that the network touches.

On this note though, man. Adela would also probably love the idea of K8P becoming more engineering-like.
 
@Boney you write thoughtfully, and with awareness of the connotations of your words. But I have had Baileys and am feeling all the warm fuzzies, so I have a suggestion:

It might be nice; I think it might be nice to change:

"You simply sit with the King as he rethinks every interaction he's ever had with the High King."
to
"You simply sit with your friend as he rethinks every interaction he's ever had with the High King."

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I get that it's conveying 'King' and 'liege-lord' relationship, but my bias holds 'kingship' as silly, and projecting that unto Mathilde who wields tremendous temporal power in her own right, I am unsure if she views her king Belegar here as 'her King' or as 'her friend'.
For what it's worth, 'friend' would feel much more intimate and warmer.

Edit: Or changing "the king" to "your king" as a middle option.
 
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BeepSmile said:
@Boney you write thoughtfully, and with awareness of the connotations of your words. But I have had Baileys and am feeling all the warm fuzzies, so I have a suggestion:

It might be nice; I think it might be nice to change:

"You simply sit with the King as he rethinks every interaction he's ever had with the High King."
to
"You simply sit with your friend as he rethinks every interaction he's ever had with the High King."

---
I get that it's conveying 'King' and 'liege-lord' relationship, but my bias holds 'kingship' as silly, and projecting that unto Mathilde who wields tremendous temporal power in her own right, I am unsure if she view her king Belegar here as 'her King' or as 'her friend'.
For what it's worth, 'friend' would feel much more intimate and warmer.
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Does that word being there make it feel like the cold necessities of rulership are creating a conceptual barrier of rank and duty between two individuals who would otherwise be unambiguous friends?

Mopman43 said:
Does Gretel still maintain residence? Given she's got a whole town to run now?
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Yes, and every single person in that town has heard about the spectacular view from her holiday home in Karak Eight Peaks.
 
fishsicles said:
Honestly though.

He's more than qualified. Hell, Thorgrim's candidacy came about from rediscovering the Norse Dwarves, but retaking K8P seems to have actually stuck. Were it not for the poking of cultural divides, I'd call him a shoo-in even without Thorgrim's hand on the tiller.
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I'm wondering how this would work out practically. Karaz-a-Karak is the capital. Would Belegar be expected to essentially rehome there to rule? Would the capital move to K8P instead? Essentially see how messy the next Empire sucession is probably gonna be with people debating whats Reikland's vs the Emperor's stuff.
 
A_Somebody said:
I'm wondering how this would work out practically. Karaz-a-Karak is the capital. Would Belegar be expected to essentially rehome there to rule? Would the capital move to K8P instead? Essentially see how messy the next Empire sucession is probably gonna be with people debating whats Reikland's vs the Emperor's stuff.
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Good question. Canon is infuriatingly ambiguous on the matter - it says that there have been High Kings that were Kings of Karak Eight Peaks in the past, and that Ungrim Ironfist was a contender for High King that Thorgrim beat out, but it never explains how that actually would have worked.
 
Boney said:
Good question. Canon is infuriatingly ambiguous on the matter - it says that there have been High Kings that were Kings of Karak Eight Peaks in the past, and that Ungrim Ironfist was a contender for High King that Thorgrim beat out, but it never explains how that actually would have worked.
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if the throne is the control panel then it doesn't matter where in the network the panel is is there ?
 
Boney said:
Does that word being there make it feel like the cold necessities of rulership are creating a conceptual barrier of rank and duty between two individuals who would otherwise be unambiguous friends?
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A tinyyy bit, yeah.

But I edited in at the end of my post that changing '[the] King' to '[Mathilde's/your] King' would change the vibe I got to something more personal.
Not that this update was at all impersonal.

I'm just asking for an extra marshmallow in my hot chocolate (it came with a blanket, fresh from the tumble dryer!), and I really don't want to be like... pressuring you or anything on this, and if you think it's best as it is, then it's best as it is.

 
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