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Warhammer Fantasy: Divided Loyalties - an Advisor's Quest

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storryeater said:
Another guess: being hit by it makes you hallucinate a life of happy marriage, only to wake up from it, which ends up making you feeling like a widow of a spouse that never existed.

...Ok, this is less funny and more unironically scary, the sanity damage this would inflict would be extremely cruel.
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But how would that work for species with no concept of romance or marriage? Would an Orc just hallucinate a best frenemy?
 
'Widow-Maker' could be an axe that fills the wielder with courage and makes them insensate of pain. They rarely survive more than a a couple of battles but there's always another beard ready to take it up be a champion briefly. There's a line of widows in the weapon's wake.
 
The Lone badger said:
'Widow-Maker' could be an axe that fills the wielder with courage and makes them insensate of pain. They rarely survive more than a a couple of battles but there's always another beard ready to take it up be a champion briefly. There's a line of widows in the weapon's wake.
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Sure, it just doesn't really feel like it fits an axe who's known wielders are:
-Grimnir
-Morgrim
-Every single High King
 
TimEd said:
Really, I imagine it'd only take a single dwarf on dwarf casualty for a dwarf (especially from an Ancestor dwarf) to call a weapon Widow-Maker, because that'd mean they were pushed to extremes and were forced to end a dwarf life to get their way.
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While they've supposedly never had a civil war (as far as the Empire knows anyway, and the Dwarves wouldn't exactly be eager to tell them if they did), Dwarves have definitely killed Dwarves before
And I don't even mean circumstances like the Dawii Zhar, or the Slaaneshi Slayers

We have an example in this very quest where Ulthar's brothers and their bodyguards all mutually axed each other over inheritance

Dwarf on Dwarf, and indeed Clan on Clan violence has to have happened many times over the long, long history of the Karaz Ankor
Otherwise they wouldn't need to have people whose job is dedicated to mediating Grudges

Intra-group conflict is rarer for Dwarves
But mostly they're just a lot better at burying the evidence
Ulthar once again makes a good example, the entire Karaz Ankor at large is doing their best to act like absolutely nothing of note has happened at all
You could never get a human kingdom to move in lockstep over an issue like that
 
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The Ancestor Gods having to step into intra-dwarf conflicts that had turned violent and end them could have been one of the instigators for them forming the whole system around grudges and such, to prevent them from escalating like that.
well if they were the ones who set it up. How far back do formal grudges go?
 
I'm guessing grudges are the foundation of the dwarven feudal system the way 'protection' is for humans.

In our society you had a boss who you obeyed and in return he'd protect you from other people, and if something too big came along he'd go to his boss, who could go to his boss and so on to the line until the response was comparable to the challenge. Serve the Baron and you can feel (moderately) secure that no-one will burn your crops - even a full-scale invading army can be escalated to the King.

In dwarven society it instead organised over having someone you could go to if you couldn't resolve a grudge yourself. Serve the mine-king and you can feel secure that no grudge will go unanswered - even should you die it'll be in the Book and the High King himself will ensure it is not forgotten.
 
I did consider that Widow-Maker might refer to dwarf on dwarf violence, especially during the migration from Zorn—what if the loyalists had tried to prevent them from leaving?

But that creates questions about the timeline. I assume that Grimnir's axes are runed, which means they were created after Gazul and Thungni discovered runesmithing. But did they develop that before or after leaving Zorn? I was under the impression that it was discovered during the creation of the Karaz Ankor, but what if the discovery is what gave the Ancestor Gods the power to leave their home/prison? And as such, Widow-Maker was created with the intent of cutting down those who would stop Grungni, Grimnir, and Valaya from leaving.

Or perhaps it really is an Old One thing, and both Onkegruni and the Sword of Khaine are named after some sort of Ur-Weapon used by the Old Ones, and the cultural context for its name has been lost.
 
I... had a very, very out there thought just now.

What if in the process of freeing the Dawi from their home/prison, Grimnir killed the spouse of one of the pre-escape Dawi gods? The bereaved god, assaulted by grief and rage and betrayal, swore vengeance on the Ancestors and the Dawi who fled with them.

Perhaps that god made the tools for their vengeance in Kavzar?
 
We know that Grimnir was its most famous owner, but was he its first owner? Maybe the axe already had a name and the reason is lost to history.
 
I pick up a piece of string and connect the scrap of paper with 'Widow-Maker??' scrawled on it and then walk across the room, ducking over numerous other pieces of string, to connect it to the section labelled 'Ancient Widow'. Then I think further, hesitate, then take a deep breath and also connect the 'Widow-Maker??' to a dusty corner of the room, where a section labelled 'Amazons' has a subsection labelled 'Rigg', which itself has a bit of paper next to it with 'absent husband?' written on it. Then I look at the other major connection to that section that connects to Rigg's daughter, and need to sit down and think for a while.
 
Boney said:
I pick up a piece of string and connect the scrap of paper with 'Widow-Maker??' scrawled on it and then walk across the room, ducking over numerous other pieces of string, to connect it to the section labelled 'Ancient Widow'. Then I think further, hesitate, then take a deep breath and also connect the 'Widow-Maker??' to a dusty corner of the room, where a section labelled 'Amazons' has a subsection labelled 'Rigg', which itself has a bit of paper next to it with 'absent husband?' written on it. Then I look at the other major connection to that section that connects to Rigg's daughter, and need to sit down and think for a while.
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Does that personal wiki of yours have a section labeled 'red string and cork board'?
 
A quick wiki walk has taught me that Rigg's daughter is called Kalith/Kalam, and that Kalith's father was Amex, the Elven god of the sea, wealth, and happiness—someone I have never heard of before. The wiki then tries to claim that Amex is Mathlann.

Mathlann is the only Cytharai in the Asur inner mandala. Did He get promoted to replace the previous god of the sea, one who represented trade and connections, rather than storms? And who is Kalith? I'm trying very hard to not look at Kalita here. But maybe Kalith/Kalam->Khaine?

A group of renegade dwarves departed across the sea, and there is a place in Lustria called "the mine of the bearded skulls". Where they looking for Rigg?
 
NuclearConsensus said:
I... had a very, very out there thought just now.

What if in the process of freeing the Dawi from their home/prison, Grimnir killed the spouse of one of the pre-escape Dawi gods? The bereaved god, assaulted by grief and rage and betrayal, swore vengeance on the Ancestors and the Dawi who fled with them.

Perhaps that god made the tools for their vengeance in Kavzar?
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My out there thought is that we don't know Valaya's story before the whole mother figure of the dawi thing.
 
Nerdasaurus Rex said:
and that Kalith's father was Amex, the Elven god of the sea, wealth, and happiness—someone I have never heard of before.
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That's perfectly fair, here is the passage in WD 307 (page 33) that describes him.
One source is to be found in the somewhat curious writings of one Drivot the Diatribist. This bizarre character, thought to have been an erstwhile White Wizard of the College of Light, wrote extensively about the creation myths of the Lizardmen, the Elves and of other races. Though there is no clear evidence that he actually travelled to any of the places of which he wrote, nor met any of the beings he professed to know so intimately.

Not for nothing is Drivot known as the "diatribist," for his writings are full of ranting meanderings that frequently lead the reader along paths of reasoning only a madman could hope to navigate. With wild abandon, Drivot relates his tale of an (previously unheard of) Elven god of the sea, wealth and happiness and his union with the Amazon goddess he calls Rigg. The result of this marriage was the 'Mother of all Amazons' Kalith.
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Nerdasaurus Rex said:
A quick wiki walk has taught me that Rigg's daughter is called Kalith/Kalam, and that Kalith's father was Amex, the Elven god of the sea, wealth, and happiness—someone I have never heard of before. The wiki then tries to claim that Amex is Mathlann.

Mathlann is the only Cytharai in the Asur inner mandala. Did He get promoted to replace the previous god of the sea, one who represented trade and connections, rather than storms? And who is Kalith? I'm trying very hard to not look at Kalita here. But maybe Kalith/Kalam->Khaine?

A group of renegade dwarves departed across the sea, and there is a place in Lustria called "the mine of the bearded skulls". Where they looking for Rigg?
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A god of Wealth, trade and connections being involved with the creation of the dwarfs makes sense...

Maybe in the dwarfs escape from Zorn the Ancestor gods had to kill him, and the way they actually became divine was partially the claiming of those domains from him.
 
Though this makes me wonder why the Sword of Khaine was named Widowmaker either. Aenarion used it primarily against daemons after all.
 
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