In regards to individual provinces having their own foreign policy, the Wasteland seems to have built enough of a relationship with the elves while part of the empire that they were willing to support their bid for independence. I kinda feel like the main thing keeping the counts from getting foreign allies is that until recently there haven't *been* friendly foreign polities with time to turn from their own business and get involved with the empire. Like, Kislev is busy not getting overrun by chaos, the dwarves are constantly under seige, the high elves already fucked over the empire once, the druuchi mostly show up to enslave people occasionally, tilea is a chaotic mess of infighting, araby is pretty distant, the wood elves hate everyone, and the eonir were isolationist. What, was someone going to try and split half a province with the bretonnians by allying with them against another count? With kislev and the dwarves resurging and the eonir reaching out things are changing.
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.
Mathilde has a mental rolodex of where the best example of every subtype of food can be found, including a few oddball subtypes like 'easiest to eat on a Gyrocarriage' or 'most Wolf-portable'. She will try new places as they open, or when there is reason to believe they have significantly improved since their previous evaluation, to see if they are able to dethrone the current reigning champion of their subtype.
For non-food services where 'good enough' is a sensible measure, she vets and sticks with a single service provider to engender a feeling of loyalty in them, because that might one day be a useful resource.
My problem is that it's too interesting an idea for it to be a peripheral detail to a throwaway line, and the possibility exists for it to be story-relevant at some future date where it will have room to breathe.
It's easy to overlook in this era of polyester and sewing machines, but any kind of weaving is actually insanely complicated and when you add novel materials to the mix it becomes even more so. Just ask Emperor Justinian and King Roger II.
Parabola
Divided Loyalties Librarian
- Location
- The Destination of Fate
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Yeah, even if any of the aforementioned were available and/or open to it, Nordland is not nearly as appealing to try to back for secession.
Marienburg had an existing elf population that presumably helped to get connections with Ulthuan. Marienburg is a major trade center which like 90% of the Reik Basin's rivers end up in. Marienburg is surrounded by swamps and can be supplied by sea, making it very hard to assault (Golden Age dwarfs couldn't crack it).
Nordland has none of these things going for them. The capital of Salzenmund is surrounded by the Forest of Shadows on one side and Laurelorn on the other, and despite the ambitions and hopes that went into Neues Emskrank, it's a failed trading town.
...Salzenmund and Neues Emskrank do have nexuses, but unless Nordland somehow sways a lot of Jades to their side, that's not even a net zero, because those nexuses feed into Laurelorn and them being put under likely-non-friendly hands may get Laurelorn to lend their own aid to the Empire.
Didn't one of our folks make a piece of spidersilk cloth by hand within months of getting access to it? Is this a quality thing with the Dwarfs just not wanting to release a product that doesn't meet their strict quality requirements? Because it seems like if humans were doing it they'd have been able to make low-quality clothes out of just doing the squares of cloth and stitching them together.
There's already a whole lot of easier and cheaper ways to make low-quality clothes.
K von Carstein
Likes to go for a walk
- Location
- Belgium
- Pronouns
- He
More likely an expansion of the contiguous provinces.
Yeah, like what happened to the Drakwald and Solland.
Parabola
Divided Loyalties Librarian
- Location
- The Destination of Fate
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Probably gets swallowed up by Ostland?
- Location
- Sweden
Middenland and Ostland become bigger, other than that nothing changes.
There would be one less Elector Count. That is a big change.
- Location
- Belfast
I imagine that any Dawi longbeard she mentions this sort of prioritisation to will grumble approvingly about her process.
Mopman43
Mountain-Hermit of Nitpeak
- Location
- Vermont
Are you sure? I can't remember if any major battles were fought at the modern site of Marienburg, but the city that they famously couldn't crack was located where L'Anguille is in the modern day.
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- Location
- Washington
Not even the first time that's happened, if it comes to that.
dinomannitro6
all your gender is belong to us
- Location
- The Land Where The Sunflowers Bloom
- Location
- To the left. No, not there, the other left.
But is it low quality only by appearance or is it also weak structurally? Because if it's the former it could still be useful in more practical application, in particularly for underarmor/light armor. Regular silkworm silk is already strong enough for early bulletproof vests to be made out of it, so spidersilk should be even better.
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Yeah, but it happened only two or three times in the whole history of the Empire.
That is a pretty big event that changes radicaly the political landscape.
It's weak structurally. Tensile strength is an incredibly difficult property to take advantage of in armour, because the flexibility that makes it appealing to wear will also let incoming force find and follow the path of least resistance. That's why we usually made armour to take advantage of rigidity until we figured out how to make poly-paraphenylene terephthalamide, which has both.
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Spidersilk is stretchier then silkworm silk. I'm guessing that makes it harder to get consistent tension. It also contains more water and is more sensitive to humidity.
I'm sure that making a loom that can handle the fineness of single strands isn't the problem - multiple human cultures have managed it IRL and it's right in the wheelhouse of Dawi precision crafting. Plus there's the option of spinning it into a thicker yarn which would be great for armour if not for ultra-sheer sheets.
I'm sure that making a loom that can handle the fineness of single strands isn't the problem - multiple human cultures have managed it IRL and it's right in the wheelhouse of Dawi precision crafting. Plus there's the option of spinning it into a thicker yarn which would be great for armour if not for ultra-sheer sheets.
Unless they go to Norsca. That could work out pretty well for them. /s
It would be more than that. In the short term and collapse of Nordland is going to cause chaos and likely weaken the Empire's defense of its northern coast as the situation is stabilized hurting trade and likely seeing an uptick in Norscan raids.
Furthermore it will be a major distraction for both expanded provenance for several years as they are going to need to work on integrating all their newly aquired territory and people into the existing government structure. This might leave them less willing or able to commit to Empire wide initiatives as they will already be busy at home.
Longer term it represents the further consolidation of secular power as another province disappears and is absorbed by its neighbors. Along with this it throws the pecking order into chaos as two provinces gain significant power.
Religiously a Ulric leaning province being split by a Ulric and a Sigmar province will lead to the Sigmar followers having a stronger voice in imperial matters. Both due to Ulric's believers losing a more aligned voice among the elecors but also due to a Sigmar aligned province taking land. Finaly the loss of a secular elector will see a slight rise in the power of the cult of Sigmar in electoral matters as their three votes becomes a slightly larger percentage of the total vote.
And that is without second order effects such as other provinces wanting concessions as two of their neighbors get stronger.
The situation is manageable and the Empire has managed it before but it will cause a lot of changes both short and long term on the Empire's internal politics and will likely cause a moment of weakness in the north as everything gets dealt with.
Edit: this was a quick analysis based on what I remember. I'm sure I'm forgetting about a few things that change the situation but the point remains that having 2 provinces absorb a third is going to cause both short and longterm changes and problems. But also likely opportunities although I don't remember enough to be sure on where those might lie.
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- Location
- To the left. No, not there, the other left.
I mean cloth armor was a thing a for long time before kevlar, from linothorax of ancient Greece, to gambeson/aketon/arming doublet of medieval Europe, to variuos regional variations like Ichcahuipilli, to aforementioned silk bulletproof vests of late 19th-early 20th century, to flak vests of WW2 onwards (orginally made from cotton and later ballistic nylon) that eventually morphed into a moder kevlar body armor.
Still all of them require many (like 10+) layers of cloth to work, so making armor from hand woven spidersilk cloth would be prohibitively expensive and time consuming anyway, even if it was strong enough.
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Yeah, I'd much rather see somebody taking waystones and cleansing the drakwald of monsters and restoring a province than see a province disappear, personally. I wonder how much progress someone would have to make before the emperor broke out the runefang and formalized things? I guess it'd probably be an elector vote.
Yes, but it was Max, so anything he used Chamon for they still have to devise a mundane alternative.