- Pronouns
- He
Thorgrim NegaQuest thread: Hey MoneyB, can we solve this diplomatic Grungnian knot by flexing? That's not words, neither spoken nor written!
MoneyB: You all know how it goes, Try It And Find Out
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Warhammer Fantasy: Divided Loyalties - an Advisor's Quest
- Thread starter Boney
- Start date
- Fantasy Users' Choice!
Voted best in category in the Users' Choice awards.
Thorgrim NegaQuest thread: Hey MoneyB, can we solve this diplomatic Grungnian knot by flexing? That's not words, neither spoken nor written!
MoneyB: You all know how it goes, Try It And Find Out
I don't have anything to say about specific parts of the update, it was all great. It was incredibly clever as an authorial choice to have them assume it powers the Underearth. The Cult of Gazul wouldn't say anything about it. For Mathilde specifically, the Runelords also wouldn't say anything if they even remember it. Thorek's actions could be taken to imply that Karak Azul's Runesmiths had forgotten about it.
I did have a question though. What do Belegar and Mathilde think about the political costs of building the Karaz Ankor network and what did they think about building it before Thorgrim's message? This was an absolutely enormous project. Before Thorgrim told them it powered relics of the ancestors, how valuable could have whatever Karaz-a-Karak been powering to be worth all that? At least before the Network was inspected, there is the excuse that they hadn't studied the network so they wouldn't have grasped the full extent of the work. But after that, it would be all but impossible for them to think that the Network had been built without the consent of the Kings of the Karaz Ankor. (Edit: I guess they could think that the High King was supposed to send gold to the Karaks but that stopped during the Time of Woes and was forgotten.)
I'm just speculating here, but I wonder how this is going to end up. The runes that make up the Karaz Ankor's network fall under the aegis of Clan Thungnisson, the Runesmithing clan of Karaz-a-Karak. They might just ask Kragg about it. If anyone in Clan Thungnisson would have the capability it would be him. I don't think they will still have the capability, but it's not impossible.
I'm excited to add all the Karaz Ankor's nexuses to my map.
There is a difference: mountain waystones relay energy and Karak waystones absorb energy. It's a feature that the Dwarves of the Golden Age specifically implanted as a security measure.
Why? There were plenty of holds settled during the Golden Age that didn't have Karak-waystones. Some of them are probably even around today. The New Holds were just minor holds during the Golden Age, and largely poor besides. They rose to prominence in the aftermath of the Time of Woes. Possessing the capability to build Karak-nexuses is by no means the same thing as that thing being simple. It makes plenty of sense for those holds to simply not have possessed the influence to get a nexus. That and there would have been a point where all the wonders of the ancestors would have been powered with the available power. Why build more after that? You would want to build more to keep up with expansion and population growth, but that's not a reason to throw them out in Izor and Hirn.
The exception is Karak Norn, which was founded to hold a regular nexus.
Several comments from Boney have also heavily implied that it was the Dwarves of the Golden Age. They could be interpreted differently, but it would be a rather tortuous reading. I linked the quote that the runes are under the jurisdiction of Karaz-a-Karak above, but the interlude that introduced the dwarf network directly stated that the Karaks were turned into waystones. Boney also stated here that the waystones network was integrated into the wonders of the Ancestors, and that they had dwarves who had been taught by the Ancestor gods themselves who did the work. Which could be another reason, actually. It's possible that only those taught by the Ancestor Gods could make the Karaz Ankor's waystones.
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Parabola
Divided Loyalties Librarian
- Location
- The Destination of Fate
- Pronouns
- She/Her
That really is the heart of the matter. Mathilde lives among dwarves to a large extent, but she doesn't actually need to legally be one to be welcome among them, and really, that's the part that gives her (and us) warm fuzzy feelings so it's the most important one.
Omegahugger
Inattentive Idiot
If we want to, we could take a crack at this as our next mystery.
Mathilde does have a pretty decent guide to preventing souls from reaching their desired afterlives for a Grey Wizard, we could probably work something out.
Mathilde is not going to yoink Nagash's unless the thread starts voting for her to take it. <.<
(The book is part of Frederick/Vlad's portfolio, citing your sources properly is important to ensure your necromantic predecessors get the credit they deserve. Just because Vlad has a large Youtube channel does not make it okay to mis-attribute his work to Nagash, and Frederick is honestly a bit of a one hit wonder as far as Necromancers go)
Parabola
Divided Loyalties Librarian
- Location
- The Destination of Fate
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Dwarves have even more reason than most to want to reduce the amount of free-floating magic in the world. And Karak Eight Peaks more than most Karaks, as apart from Karak Norn no other Karak has significant amount of what it considers part of the Karak above-ground.
NexusEye
Aspiring God
- Pronouns
- She/Her
What does Karak Norn have above ground that it considers part of itself?
- Location
- USA
Doesn't a big part of it look out over Athel Loren? By definition that means it has to be higher than the forest, which is on ground level.
Mopman43
Mountain-Hermit of Nitpeak
- Location
- Vermont
There are actually examples of Thunderbarges given beyond Malakai- page 425 of the 8th edition Core Rulebook gives some lore and even rules for them.
They're still portrayed as radical, but at least they're not just the pet-project of a Slayer-Engineer.
NexusEye
Aspiring God
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Ground level isn't flat, it rises and falls with the terrain. You're thinking of sea level which is flat and follows geoid of the planet.
The top of Karak Norn's mountain is a forested plateau.
Parabola
Divided Loyalties Librarian
- Location
- The Destination of Fate
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Nevermind, the A Tide Turns interlude says the Throne of Power isn't getting power from Norn. I guess its current nexus was formerly elven-owned? That'd be a good reason for Athel Loren to hold a grudge against them.
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- Location
- Europa, Jupiter Orbit
I am a bit confused. When you say "would have", does that mean it didn't happen? Why not?
Also, would the Dwarven Conclave then retract/amend their statement after finding out that Ranald is a lying liar who lies?
Karak Norn is generally considered a Young Hold, but it might be more correct to say it was a 'Hill Dwarf' settlement that survived the War of Vengeance and was able to transition into being a Young Hold by taking in an influx of refugees from the fallen Old Holds.
In this context it means something like 'I am not saying or do not know that this happened for sure, but it is reasonable to assume that this is what happened'.
They're not in a huge hurry to announce to the world that they fell for the lie in the first place.
In this context it means something like 'I am not saying or do not know that this happened for sure, but it is reasonable to assume that this is what happened'.
They're not in a huge hurry to announce to the world that they fell for the lie in the first place.
Cloudperch
- Location
- Chicago
- Pronouns
- She/They
It was still dark out, before dawn.
The west fields were bare, harvested and tilled under, smooth dirt underfoot. Plenty of space. No snags or sharp edges.
Gotri couldn't stop grinning. Adela was almost sick with nerves. The We hovered anxiously, and ran back and forth in the dimness, half-seen arachnids on a dim slumped mass, spreading it out, and out, and out again.
And many more besides, both crew and observers. It was Clan Huzkul and their guests, Viceroy Franceso and his council, who had perhaps the best view, sitting atop the walls of the citadel as the sky grew lighter. From behind and above them hoses descended, thick as a thigh and anchored to the very tops of the twin towers. Below and in front of them was a ballet of movement, hundreds of men and spiders spreading layers of silk and rope netting across literal acres of ground. In the center was (or rather, had been, for now it was swathed under a tent of silk) a sort of boat like thing, a trimaran really, one long hull resting in a cradle with its two outriggers.
Twin engines sat on the outriggers, shiny and new, broad propellers on shafts pointing backwards, and only hours from being tacky with the final coat of varnish. (They had a schedule to keep.) Pipes stretched from the engines across to the center hull, a single boiler there shared by both. Gotri was quite proud of it- wood and metal were used with utmost restraint, power and resilience yes but always, always with an eye towards weight.
In truth he felt a little guilty, a little bad for King Belegar. He had lured a few of Barak Var's less restrained shipwrights into the project early as consultants, and one thing led to another and now there was a brand new 'engineering' clan, even if it was a small one, moving into the Karak. He thought it was a good thing, but, as always, there was a way things were done and it was not, in fact, how this has been done.
They had been drawn by the challenge. Make a ship, but make it light. Iron decks and bulkheads were traded for a steel skeleton and wood planking, and tests were run. Arguments were had. There was grumbling, but every dwarf knew that this was just an application of Morgrim's craft and it had been done before. But such a craft! It had not been called on in thousands of years; a craft of subtraction, to take away material en mass without taking away strength.
It was the halflings, though, who had sent them in a new direction, challenged them to raise their ambitions. Wood planking and steel beams? Hah! Woven wicker panels covered in silk, paper thin wood sheets laminated together over moulds, tensioned cords holding internal struts. Basket-making techniques. But strong, and light. More collaborators were called in from Karag Norn, experts in wood and ropes.
They were making a thing the ancestors had made before, therefore it was Traditional. They had no guidance on how the ancestors did it, therefore they had to try many different ways of doing it and see what worked.
Gotri loved it. And so did enough others that they stayed, ignoring the pleas of their kings.
Mentally, he shrugged. That was a Belegar problem, not a him problem.
In the current design, the only steel was in the engines, fittings, and weapons. The final prototype weighted a twentieth that of the initial design, while having nine-tenths the strength. A featherweight ship that would barely float in water, sitting in the middle of a barren field, underneath a huge silk blanket that had finally been fully spread out by the spiders. Dwarves hustled forward, attaching the hoses and connecting the cloth to the citadel towers.
Thorgrim had promised six hours of liftgas on this date, dawn to noon. The first sign of it was a sound like a vast rushing exhale and a sudden rippling surge as the silk slowly began to inflate.
Slowly, slowly the silk been to balloon up.
Francesco sat forward, blanket around his shoulders and a stirland style ale in his hands against the morning chill. He had finally, FINALLY gotten a process down to turn that damn spider silk into cloth. But as soon as he had, King Belegar had called him into a meeting with a manic glint in his eye (and Gotri grinning like a loon over his shoulder) and told him his immediate production was spoken for, here's cash on the barrel head. He didn't think more than a few sets of bedsheets made it out of the greedy hands of the engineers. Now, he finally got to see what all that hard work had gone towards.
At a distance far enough to properly take it in, it happened slowly. Inflating, taking on the shape of a squat cigar, the silk rose and began to tug against the netting of ropes that held it down. Crews scurried to untether the ropes from the ground and attach them to the hull, previously been hidden underneath the deflated envelope. They worked a few ropes at a time, a dance of shifting weight and ballast and attempts to enforce even inflation, until at last it was full enough to hold it's shape. By the time the last line was fastened to the hull the sun had risen clear of the the mountain ring and the final shape of the craft was clear.
Gotri knew it was nowhere near as complex as the stylized depictions and the few scraps of ancient airships they had to work from. A single bag full of gas instead of many cells in a rigid frame, a simple underslung hull instead of an integrated gondola. Four bolt throwers on pintels instead of cannon.
But that was ok. This was a proof of concept. It was the engines that mattered this time around. If the gas gave enough lift, if the envelope was impermeable, if the *wildly* experimental hull held together against the forces of wind and gravity... Then the engines would give it thrust, and direction, and control.
If it worked, they could elaborate more in the future. Proper testing first. They had gyrocopters for scouting and gyrobombers for heavy ordinance; airships weren't needed for either role.
Distance, persistence, and endurance. That had been Gotri's pitch. Distance, in that a single ship carrying fuel instead of cargo could probably make it to Cathay or Swamp Town without stopping, further if they knew the winds. Perstance, in that it could hover over a town or fortress for weeks without any need to land, keeping huge areas under it's guns limited only by how much ammunition could be carried. Endurance, in that there was enough space for a crew to move about and live aboard for the weeks or months the first two would demand.
Dreng had backed him immediately. The new loremaster peppered him with questions for an hour about whether it would support a team of air-dropped iron breakers before giving his unreserved support. Belegar's only reservation was in how to petition Everpeak for the gas, and it wasn't much of one. So by the time poor Franceso had arrived, he was rather steamrolled into providing the silk.
The envelope filled slowly for hours, the limited capacity of the hoses carrying liftgas making clear exactly how much volume was being displaced as time wore on. By midmorning, there was no more slack in the lines holding it to the hull. By late morning the hull was beginning to sway and hop in its cradle, and Gotri ordered the boiler lit.
It was half an hour before noon when the craft finally lifted free. Adela was standing there to smash a bottle across the bow as it did, having been prevailed upon to christen it as it took flight for the first time.
Cloudperch.
There was a longer khalazid name that meant something like 'watchtower/firing position upon the fake mountains above the real mountains' or something like that, but everyone knew it was backfilled. Cloudperch was catchy.
(Gotri had to thank Weber later- giving him a way to not only keep Adela from bugging him about being onboard for the first flight, but to have her thank him for it? Gold.)
At the top of the citadel towers, crews began reeling in the hoses, still attached to the airship. It drifted, pulled by those tethers until finally, with Gotri standing at the helm, the first airship in thousands of years docked. Not at Gretel's tower. The other one.
From where he sat with Mathilde drinking on her balcony, King Belegar sighed deeply. She raised an eyebrow at him but how to explain the complex mix of nostalgia, wonder, satisfaction, newly sparked ambition, disapproval of novelty, guilt over hypocrisy, pride, and tempered expectations he had swirling in his heart? After a moment she gave him a nod and they both returned their gaze below.
At noon precisely the gas shut off. Moments later the hoses were disconnected and tethers cast off, the Cloudperch given a gentle push away towards the open sky.
"Engage propellers! Throttle ahead one fourth! Prepare for initial rudder and turning tests!"
Cloudperch Class Light Airship
Length of envelope: 210 meters
Length of hull: 70 meters
Crew: 24 airmen, 18 iron breaker marines
Main Armament: 4x heavy ballista
Engines: 1 peat-fed closed loop steam boiler with condenser. 2x triple expansion turbines with gearing and clutch.
Speed: 20 mph cruising, 33 max
Endurance: 3 weeks standard, 9 weeks max
The west fields were bare, harvested and tilled under, smooth dirt underfoot. Plenty of space. No snags or sharp edges.
Gotri couldn't stop grinning. Adela was almost sick with nerves. The We hovered anxiously, and ran back and forth in the dimness, half-seen arachnids on a dim slumped mass, spreading it out, and out, and out again.
And many more besides, both crew and observers. It was Clan Huzkul and their guests, Viceroy Franceso and his council, who had perhaps the best view, sitting atop the walls of the citadel as the sky grew lighter. From behind and above them hoses descended, thick as a thigh and anchored to the very tops of the twin towers. Below and in front of them was a ballet of movement, hundreds of men and spiders spreading layers of silk and rope netting across literal acres of ground. In the center was (or rather, had been, for now it was swathed under a tent of silk) a sort of boat like thing, a trimaran really, one long hull resting in a cradle with its two outriggers.
Twin engines sat on the outriggers, shiny and new, broad propellers on shafts pointing backwards, and only hours from being tacky with the final coat of varnish. (They had a schedule to keep.) Pipes stretched from the engines across to the center hull, a single boiler there shared by both. Gotri was quite proud of it- wood and metal were used with utmost restraint, power and resilience yes but always, always with an eye towards weight.
In truth he felt a little guilty, a little bad for King Belegar. He had lured a few of Barak Var's less restrained shipwrights into the project early as consultants, and one thing led to another and now there was a brand new 'engineering' clan, even if it was a small one, moving into the Karak. He thought it was a good thing, but, as always, there was a way things were done and it was not, in fact, how this has been done.
They had been drawn by the challenge. Make a ship, but make it light. Iron decks and bulkheads were traded for a steel skeleton and wood planking, and tests were run. Arguments were had. There was grumbling, but every dwarf knew that this was just an application of Morgrim's craft and it had been done before. But such a craft! It had not been called on in thousands of years; a craft of subtraction, to take away material en mass without taking away strength.
It was the halflings, though, who had sent them in a new direction, challenged them to raise their ambitions. Wood planking and steel beams? Hah! Woven wicker panels covered in silk, paper thin wood sheets laminated together over moulds, tensioned cords holding internal struts. Basket-making techniques. But strong, and light. More collaborators were called in from Karag Norn, experts in wood and ropes.
They were making a thing the ancestors had made before, therefore it was Traditional. They had no guidance on how the ancestors did it, therefore they had to try many different ways of doing it and see what worked.
Gotri loved it. And so did enough others that they stayed, ignoring the pleas of their kings.
Mentally, he shrugged. That was a Belegar problem, not a him problem.
In the current design, the only steel was in the engines, fittings, and weapons. The final prototype weighted a twentieth that of the initial design, while having nine-tenths the strength. A featherweight ship that would barely float in water, sitting in the middle of a barren field, underneath a huge silk blanket that had finally been fully spread out by the spiders. Dwarves hustled forward, attaching the hoses and connecting the cloth to the citadel towers.
Thorgrim had promised six hours of liftgas on this date, dawn to noon. The first sign of it was a sound like a vast rushing exhale and a sudden rippling surge as the silk slowly began to inflate.
Slowly, slowly the silk been to balloon up.
Francesco sat forward, blanket around his shoulders and a stirland style ale in his hands against the morning chill. He had finally, FINALLY gotten a process down to turn that damn spider silk into cloth. But as soon as he had, King Belegar had called him into a meeting with a manic glint in his eye (and Gotri grinning like a loon over his shoulder) and told him his immediate production was spoken for, here's cash on the barrel head. He didn't think more than a few sets of bedsheets made it out of the greedy hands of the engineers. Now, he finally got to see what all that hard work had gone towards.
At a distance far enough to properly take it in, it happened slowly. Inflating, taking on the shape of a squat cigar, the silk rose and began to tug against the netting of ropes that held it down. Crews scurried to untether the ropes from the ground and attach them to the hull, previously been hidden underneath the deflated envelope. They worked a few ropes at a time, a dance of shifting weight and ballast and attempts to enforce even inflation, until at last it was full enough to hold it's shape. By the time the last line was fastened to the hull the sun had risen clear of the the mountain ring and the final shape of the craft was clear.
Gotri knew it was nowhere near as complex as the stylized depictions and the few scraps of ancient airships they had to work from. A single bag full of gas instead of many cells in a rigid frame, a simple underslung hull instead of an integrated gondola. Four bolt throwers on pintels instead of cannon.
But that was ok. This was a proof of concept. It was the engines that mattered this time around. If the gas gave enough lift, if the envelope was impermeable, if the *wildly* experimental hull held together against the forces of wind and gravity... Then the engines would give it thrust, and direction, and control.
If it worked, they could elaborate more in the future. Proper testing first. They had gyrocopters for scouting and gyrobombers for heavy ordinance; airships weren't needed for either role.
Distance, persistence, and endurance. That had been Gotri's pitch. Distance, in that a single ship carrying fuel instead of cargo could probably make it to Cathay or Swamp Town without stopping, further if they knew the winds. Perstance, in that it could hover over a town or fortress for weeks without any need to land, keeping huge areas under it's guns limited only by how much ammunition could be carried. Endurance, in that there was enough space for a crew to move about and live aboard for the weeks or months the first two would demand.
Dreng had backed him immediately. The new loremaster peppered him with questions for an hour about whether it would support a team of air-dropped iron breakers before giving his unreserved support. Belegar's only reservation was in how to petition Everpeak for the gas, and it wasn't much of one. So by the time poor Franceso had arrived, he was rather steamrolled into providing the silk.
The envelope filled slowly for hours, the limited capacity of the hoses carrying liftgas making clear exactly how much volume was being displaced as time wore on. By midmorning, there was no more slack in the lines holding it to the hull. By late morning the hull was beginning to sway and hop in its cradle, and Gotri ordered the boiler lit.
It was half an hour before noon when the craft finally lifted free. Adela was standing there to smash a bottle across the bow as it did, having been prevailed upon to christen it as it took flight for the first time.
Cloudperch.
There was a longer khalazid name that meant something like 'watchtower/firing position upon the fake mountains above the real mountains' or something like that, but everyone knew it was backfilled. Cloudperch was catchy.
(Gotri had to thank Weber later- giving him a way to not only keep Adela from bugging him about being onboard for the first flight, but to have her thank him for it? Gold.)
At the top of the citadel towers, crews began reeling in the hoses, still attached to the airship. It drifted, pulled by those tethers until finally, with Gotri standing at the helm, the first airship in thousands of years docked. Not at Gretel's tower. The other one.
From where he sat with Mathilde drinking on her balcony, King Belegar sighed deeply. She raised an eyebrow at him but how to explain the complex mix of nostalgia, wonder, satisfaction, newly sparked ambition, disapproval of novelty, guilt over hypocrisy, pride, and tempered expectations he had swirling in his heart? After a moment she gave him a nod and they both returned their gaze below.
At noon precisely the gas shut off. Moments later the hoses were disconnected and tethers cast off, the Cloudperch given a gentle push away towards the open sky.
"Engage propellers! Throttle ahead one fourth! Prepare for initial rudder and turning tests!"
Cloudperch Class Light Airship
Length of envelope: 210 meters
Length of hull: 70 meters
Crew: 24 airmen, 18 iron breaker marines
Main Armament: 4x heavy ballista
Engines: 1 peat-fed closed loop steam boiler with condenser. 2x triple expansion turbines with gearing and clutch.
Speed: 20 mph cruising, 33 max
Endurance: 3 weeks standard, 9 weeks max
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MiracleGrow
Miracles for only $19.99 [They/Them]
- Location
- DOOR STUCK DOOR STUCK PLEASE I BEG U
Honestly what I want to know is how Ranald spoke to the Dwarven Conclave. Did a cat just run into the room and tore up some papers that happen to fall in place and say YES?
They got in touch with His most recent representative at a Grand Conclave, probably.
MiracleGrow
Miracles for only $19.99 [They/Them]
- Location
- DOOR STUCK DOOR STUCK PLEASE I BEG U
Yeah makes sense. I think any of his representative would say yes to a question like that. With zero need of input from Ranald lmfao
ImperatorV
The Laughing One
- Location
- The Voyaging Realm
Ah yes, the high priest of Ranald that needed to answer the difficult theological question: does Ranald want to prank the stuffy and conservative dwarven spiritual authorities? Truly a conundrum for the ages, that one.
As funny and nice as it sounds, I think we should not make any airship bags with silk, unless silk becomes way cheaper than it is. As nice as it would be for the job, I believe it would have a similar problem as a gold wizard gilding his/her head, except at a much larger scale: anyone who wants silk knows that if they can down your airship, they can get a ridiculous amount of it.
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Not Mathilde's bed, clearly.
Sweet omake, Glau. I like the stat sheet at the end too.
MiracleGrow
Miracles for only $19.99 [They/Them]
- Location
- DOOR STUCK DOOR STUCK PLEASE I BEG U
Sorry for still going on this, but when I think of a Ranald Rep I immediately think of this tweet every time.
View: https://twitter.com/dril/status/575121631846227968?lang=en
View: https://twitter.com/dril/status/575121631846227968?lang=en
On the flammability of hydrogen gas as a lifting medium...thats a well solved issue. Hydrogen burns fast, and at a low temperature, what would normally happen in an airship if the lifting gas caught fire is that the fire would rapidly consume the available gas and/or oxygen in its cell and the airship loses a bit of lift. The hydrogen would extremely rapidly escape from any breach. You need 500 celsius of heat to ignite hydrogen, which means mostly any given cell doesn't really burn hot enough to get another cell at that temperature.
Assuming properly engineered and well separated gas chamber pockets an airship simply is no more prone to fire than a sailing vessel of the same composition, albeit with the sails equivalent being critical to staying in the air. Heck, the same overengineering would necessarily involve a large amount of ballast, which can be dumped to compensate for loss of lift or balance(if a disproportionate number of gas cells were breached on one side but not the other).
The Hindenburg burned because its paint job was chemically similar to rocket fuel. The surface caught fire, all of it, and then all the gas went up at once when it burned through the surface material, because the whole thing was burning already.
Really the bigger pain in the ass is that hydrogen gas is an escape artist, and so would require considerable amounts of regassing on a regular basis.
Assuming properly engineered and well separated gas chamber pockets an airship simply is no more prone to fire than a sailing vessel of the same composition, albeit with the sails equivalent being critical to staying in the air. Heck, the same overengineering would necessarily involve a large amount of ballast, which can be dumped to compensate for loss of lift or balance(if a disproportionate number of gas cells were breached on one side but not the other).
The Hindenburg burned because its paint job was chemically similar to rocket fuel. The surface caught fire, all of it, and then all the gas went up at once when it burned through the surface material, because the whole thing was burning already.
Really the bigger pain in the ass is that hydrogen gas is an escape artist, and so would require considerable amounts of regassing on a regular basis.
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