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 isn't really in a great position right now due to the sheer lack of information and that's stressing him out a lot,
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.
Having the choice to take an extremely valuable resource from an innocent without informing them and having it massively benefit you. Yeah that's a pretty similar situation that mirrors what the High Kings are doing but they choose differently from Belegar.
Recent advancements in the understanding of the Waystone Network have brought with them an awareness of the ways in which the energies involved can and have been put to use for the betterment of various Peoples and Polities. In the light of this knowledge, it is troubling to find that great volumes of magical energies are being drawn from the surrounds of Karak Eight Peaks to an unknown end. The first response of any rational ruler would be to end this state of affairs, but the possibility has been raised that there exists a proper explanation for this state of affairs. Should this be the case, then the full truth of the matter should be vouchsafed to the rulers from whose Karaks the energies are being siphoned.
In the absence of any such explanation, the only course of action that can rightfully be taken would be to sever this unknown connection so that the resources rightfully belonging to the Karak can be used for the betterment of the Karak...
Props to Belegar for phrasing it as delicately and reasonably as possible while still being firm and getting his point across. Dude needs and deserves answers.
"Let's operate under the assumption that the High King wasn't being deliberately mysterious," you say to Belegar. After the massive flare of apparently non-magical fire had filled the sky over the Citadel, his messenger to you had met you halfway to him. He hadn't moved from where the High King's messenger had delivered his obscure message, but he had had a table set up and a few relevant tomes brought out for him to start leafing through for clues. "The most likely reason for a message being sent in that way is that a message cannot be sent at all. To my eye, this smacks of a secret that cannot be told, but must be shared."
"That seems like a sensible place to start," Belegar replies, to your relief. He's gotten a better grip on his habit of reflexively interpreting everything from the High King in the worst light possible than he once had.
Seeing Belegar and Mathilde having the same train of thought and pretty much instantly understanding what's happening is really cool.
"That makes a lot of sense, actually," you say, looking out over the farms and pastures that have filled the sheltered center of Karak Eight Peaks. "I'd wondered what the purpose of all this space was in the original Karak Eight Peaks, as it's much more above-ground space than any other Karak I've ever seen has claimed. This Karak being a hub for immense airships would make sense - both Dwarven and foreign."
"Foreign?" he asks.
"Elven Skycutters, most obviously, and possibly more peaceable forms lost to these more fractured times. I know next to nothing about it, but ancient maps show an Elven settlement called 'Oeragor' in the Badlands, and I've wondered how a colony would work that far inland. Airships could be the answer. And I've read of Nehekharan Sky-Boats, and Arabyan flying carpets, and many kinds of airships of Cathay that all might have travelled here in ancient times. Perhaps even Fozzrick himself might have paid a visit." You contrast the mental image against the pleasantly bucolic valleys of today, and suspect that most would call the past greater than the present.
The Golden Age of various nations had some really cool stuff for everyone.
"The Eyes that are making the Second Silver Road War possible might be another example of one of these grandmasterpieces."
"If so, the reclamation of Karak Eight Peaks might have made it possible."
"And Karak Vlag," he says pointedly.
"I suppose so. And through it Karag Dum is reconnected, and considering its location, it must be pouring energy in."
"Then why would he not have supported the Expeditions more than he did?"
"Perhaps he simply didn't know that the flow could be restored so easily. Before us, no Karak had ever been wholly retaken. He might have thought that whatever it is that makes a Karak-Waystone would need to be performed from scratch, and the impression I have is that the modern Runelords are not capable of doing so. That would explain his sudden shift of priorities from vengeance to revanchism."
Belegar is quiet for a while. "If you are correct, and the Underearth requires an input of power to maintain itself, or perhaps to maintain its connection to the world of the living... that may be even more of explanation for his Age of Reckoning. If a day was coming when an afterlife with our ancestors was lost to any Dwarves that still lived, then an extinction in the name of vengeance before that day came might be preferable."
"'Die well'," you quietly recite.
"Was he waving me through a door that might soon be closed? That he might have thought would become closed to me and mine if rescued?"
It's not a question that you can answer, and not one that you're expected to. You simply sit with the King as he rethinks every interaction he's ever had with the High King.
They understand why Thorgrim has done what he's done, it's not perfect but it's enough for them to understand why the High King has done what he's done.
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.
Belegar and Mathilde have given Thorgrim a lot of hope and headaches overall. But I agree that he's gotten the message across while keeping to his oaths.
Excellent. This was what all of us who voted for that option were hoping for -- okay, well, I think we were hoping for Thorgrim actually having a conversation, but if he's bound by oath not to, he nonetheless did the next best thing, and the bonds between King and King, once frayed nearly to breaking, may now be mended. A nice heartwarming result after a long and difficult week.
Honestly this is doing wonders for Belegar's mental health since was really really stressed from the whole thing with Thorgrim. Hopefully the conversation will go well and clear up his concerns.
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.
Belegar has a crazy amount of prestige and clout so it's actually possible, not sure he'd accept though.
From a decision making perspective the answer Mathilde and Belegar came to seems roughly equivalent to the real answer. "The power must flow or else really really bad things happen to the Dwarves."
You will make the same choices either way in all but the most extreme situations.
Yeah they understand the stakes but not the details.
Temporarily, but I think it overall reduced his existential anguish in a number of ways.
First- he's no longer dealing with Schrodinger's High King. This means that he'll regret his previous thoughts toward him, but now knows what actions he should take going forward- it is now a past failure, rather than a continuing one.
Second, and more importantly- it makes it worth it. Belegar has worried, since the expedition succeeded, that it wasn't worth the cost. Previously, all he had to hold on to was reconnecting Karak Azul to the wider Karaz Ankor- now he knows (or at least thinks, but the truth isn't far off) that reclaiming K8P saved the Dwarven afterlife. Everything he did, everyone who died- it was worth the cost.
Hadn't thought about the secondary thing but that's 100% true. He's been thinking that reclaiming the Eight Peaks while cool was a waste of life in the grand scheme of things but the whole showing that energy can be given back to Karaz Ankor makes it worth it.
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...
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.
Belegar became willing to consider ranger tactics while reconquering things, learned that he preferred victories with less bloodshed even if it cost glory and then he spent years learning the realities of rulership through various clusterfucks. Add Mathilde's commentary and advice in these critical movements and you get a dwarf that's willing to be tricky to fulfill his duties.
