Warhammer Fantasy: Divided Loyalties - an Advisor's Quest

Andres · 2025-01-11T04:03:22-0500

Boney said:
If they took so many casualties that they still had a net loss in population even after accounting for the influx of refugees from not just the fallen Holds but also the innumerable minor outposts that must surely have existed in a safer, Underway-linked, pre-Skaven, possibly even pre-Night Goblin world, then that's an extinction event and whatever emerged afterwards should have been completely unrecognizable. My take is that the surviving Karaks might actually have come out of the TIme of Woes with more population than they started with, and the decline only set in afterwards. I think the core tragedy of the Dwarves is that they are able to withstand the greatest of hardships but not the slow grind of a status quo where things are more or less okay but not as good as they used to be and they probably never will be again. They win the war but lose the peace. There's a visceral tragedy in closing a third of the Hold after a brutal war, but doing so one hall at a time every generation no matter what you do because nobody is able to believe that the world their children will inherit will be anything but worse than the one they were born into is a more Dwarven kind of horrible.

The Age of Reckoning was in large part simply Thorgrim being a massive fan of striking out grudges, but I'm also thinking it might've been a necessary defence mechanism. The Great War Against Chaos killed a High King, killed a whole crapload of other dwarves directly, killed even more by making a bunch of holds vulnerable after they sent warriors to fight it, and it didn't just bring down a major hold for the first time since the Time of Woes, it outright disappeared it.

If Thorgrim hadn't declared the new age a glorious one where the dwarves strike out grudges, reclaim their holds, and otherwise get energised into action, what age would it have been? And what would its psychological effects have been on the dwarves sitting in the ashes?

Thorgrim basically reverse-uno'd fate (possibly literally, given that End Times apparently said that the Throne of Power guides destiny or something), turning an age of decline into something even better than the Silver Age. It's for damn good reason he's respected so much and considered a "throwback to the high kings of old".

DragonParadox · 2025-01-11T04:12:04-0500

Valmond said:
The big difference there, i think, is that Odysseus did not break his oath with the horse thing.
Had they sued for peace, and entered the city as guests, and then done the exact same thing succesfully, that would have been instant "piss of the gods" moment, because they would have been given guest rights, and accepted the resulting obligations.
It's the "oath broken" thing that makes the big difference.

Fair enough as far as it goes but there are instances where that does not hold. Another Trickster of a sort in Greek Mythology Prometheus tricks Zeus by convincing him to take the bones and fat of the offerings instead of the meat which is presented as morally good even as Zeus punishes him for it. Even messing with the gods can be good, as long as you are on the right side... though you will suffer for it regardless.

Tobtorp · 2025-01-11T04:19:42-0500

DragonParadox said:
Fair enough as far as it goes but there are instances where that does not hold. Another Trickster of a sort in Greek Mythology Prometheus tricks Zeus by convincing him to take the bones and fat of the offerings instead of the meat which is presented as morally good even as Zeus punishes him for it. Even messing with the gods can be good, as long as you are on the right side... though you will suffer for it regardless.

That plays into how the Greek saw the gods, not as something to aspire to be but something dangerous and capricious that you have to live with and (if possible) calm down.

Tricking the gods is good because their all assholes.

Acolyte · 2025-01-11T04:20:10-0500

Boney said:
so one hall at a time every generation no matter what you do because nobody is able to believe that the world their children will inherit will be anything but worse than the one they were born into is a more Dwarven kind of horrible.

Real.

Tobtorp said:
That plays into how the Greek saw the gods, not as something to aspire to be but something dangerous and capricious that you have to live with and (if possible) calm down.

Tricking the gods is good because their all assholes.

This simply not true. This is internet history revisionism at its finest.

The gods were figures of worth and prayer. Because they did pray to then and not just in a propitiative sense.

I still can't belive one roman twink could kill a pantheon from 4 thousand yesrs ago.

NexusEye · 2025-01-11T04:22:26-0500

Andres said:
Thorgrim basically reverse-uno'd fate (possibly literally, given that End Times apparently said that the Throne of Power guides destiny or something), turning an age of decline into something even better than the Silver Age. It's for damn good reason he's respected so much and considered a "throwback to the high kings of old".

He did essentially fuel that by spending Dwarven lives at an unsustainable rate though, the previous High Kings didn't do that because they hoped for a way of reversing the Karaz Ankor's decline, Thorgrim basically said "fuck it, we're doomed but if we're going to die we might as well die in a blaze of glory" accepting the Karaz Ankor's doom but using its final moments to settle the score as much as possible. But then Belegar reclaimed K8Ps and stopped the timer on Dwarven doomsday and Mathilde Returned Karak Vlag and reconnected Karag Dum creating an even greater energy surplus, causing him to reevaluate things and pivot to reclaiming Mount Silverspear to create an even bigger buffer so the timer on the extinction of the Dwarven race doesn't reset the next time a Karak falls. He burned the future for the sake of a brighter present and is very lucky changing circumstances shook him out of that mindset before it became too late to change course.

Valmond · 2025-01-11T04:28:44-0500

DragonParadox said:
Fair enough as far as it goes but there are instances where that does not hold. Another Trickster of a sort in Greek Mythology Prometheus tricks Zeus by convincing him to take the bones and fat of the offerings instead of the meat which is presented as morally good even as Zeus punishes him for it. Even messing with the gods can be good, as long as you are on the right side... though you will suffer for it regardless.

Oh badly done trickster is a terrible thing.
The Odyssey example is just a poor one.
I hate the whole "let's just get captured to get inside (or into better position to attack)" and "wear enemy uniforms" as somehow heroic and cunning actions when protagonists do them.
Sure people in real world did both, sometimes even for a decent cause.
But there is a reason why people doing them generally got shot with little complaint from either side.

Yes, tricking the gods is not automatically bad in Greek myth, nor are gods always right or righteous.
And hero in greek myth is just a person who has special powers, or the gods favour, not a good or moral person, so it does not really translate to more modern usage of the word.

Dragonofelder · 2025-01-11T04:39:34-0500

Boney said:
All this to say, where would linguistic drift even come from?

I'd like to throw my (wizard) hat into the ring; maybe the drift isn't from the Dawi?

If a lot of inworld sources are from an Empire human perspective, than maybe different scholars have written the translation of "dwarf-friend" differently? It would only take them hearing it differently.

I might be wrong - I don't know what perspective the source is written from

pucflek · 2025-01-11T04:39:54-0500

pucflek said:
Well, i sure do hope the world is becoming better now. Reactivating relics of the Ancestors and stuff.

Knew it was there somewhere.

Boney said:
"World keeps on changing. It's about bloody time it changed for the better. Zhufbar, Kadrin, Varr, Azul. Norn, Hirn, Izor. And Everpeak. Ever since we lost Dum and Vlag, only eight standing Karaks worthy of being called a Karak in the whole damn Karaz Ankor. Now, once more, there's nine." He scowls in the direction of Karagril. "I'll die choking on my own blood before I let it be eight again."

Emphasis mine.

If even the most obstinate dwarf to currently dwarf thinks so, surely most do.

Godwinson · 2025-01-11T04:42:30-0500

Boney said:
I think the core tragedy of the Dwarves is that they are able to withstand the greatest of hardships but not the slow grind of a status quo where things are more or less okay but not as good as they used to be and they probably never will be again. They win the war but lose the peace. There's a visceral tragedy in closing a third of the Hold after a brutal war, but doing so one hall at a time every generation no matter what you do because nobody is able to believe that the world their children will inherit will be anything but worse than the one they were born into is a more Dwarven kind of horrible.

Dwarves have the nature of stone, and thus abhor erosion.

NexusEye · 2025-01-11T04:46:33-0500

Godwinson said:
Dwarves have the nature of stone, and thus abhor erosion.

They may abhor it it but when on the outskirts, unprotected by further layers of stone, they are nonetheless subjected to it. And in the state Karaz Ankor is now there are no more outermore Karaks anymore, everywhere is exposed and everywhere is eroding to a greater or lesser degree and has been for thousands of years.

Andres · 2025-01-11T05:00:33-0500

NexusEye said:
He did essentially fuel that by spending Dwarven lives at an unsustainable rate though, the previous High Kings didn't do that because they hoped for a way of reversing the Karaz Ankor's decline, Thorgrim basically said "fuck it, we're doomed but if we're going to die we might as well die in a blaze of glory" accepting the Karaz Ankor's doom but using its final moments to settle the score as much as possible. But then Belegar reclaimed K8Ps and stopped the timer on Dwarven doomsday and Mathilde Returned Karak Vlag and reconnected Karag Dum creating an even greater energy surplus, causing him to reevaluate things and pivot to reclaiming Mount Silverspear to create an even bigger buffer so the timer on the extinction of the Dwarven race doesn't reset the next time a Karak falls. He burned the future for the sake of a brighter present and is very lucky changing circumstances shook him out of that mindset before it became too late to change course.

In canon, the plot point of Thorgrim unsustainably burning through lives isn't really a thing, and in fact he's essentially doing the same hopeful stuff he's doing now in Divided Loyalties, just without magical megaprojects. He's retaking fallen holds, clearing the underway to better connect extant dwarf settlements, proliferating civic technologies, recovering relics, and carefully hedging the acquisition of new grudges. Half of what he's doing is building up the Karaz Ankor, and I think the shortening list of extant grudges in the Great Book is what gives him so much of the political capital needed to do it.

DragonParadox · 2025-01-11T05:11:05-0500

So what books are you guys looking to get this turn? Some ideas:

Scouting/Woodscraft? - To prepare for Elfication
Tylos - We might want to poke the coins
Finish Nehekaran books - in preparation for learning the language and finally reading the Notes and/or the Prophecies of Zandri. At least for the latter some historical context would probably be useful
The Mountains of Morne and/or ogres - people have been talking about maybe going east, looking for Titan metal is a good jumping off point and the ogres should be getting organized about now which should make it relevant in general

Tobtorp · 2025-01-11T05:17:00-0500

DragonParadox said:
So what books are you guys looking to get this turn? Some ideas:

Scouting/Woodscraft? - To prepare for Elfication

Tylos - We might want to poke the coins

Finish Nehekaran books - in preparation for learning the language and finally reading the Notes and/or the Prophecies of Zandri. At least for the latter some historical context would probably be useful

The Mountains of Morne and/or ogres - people have been talking about maybe going east, looking for Titan metal is a good jumping off point and the ogres should be getting organized about now which should make it relevant in general

You know our book situation better, are books on druchii a worthwhile choice?
Otherwise nehekara and tylos sound fun

Andres · 2025-01-11T05:19:52-0500

Tobtorp said:
You know our book situation better, are books on druchii a worthwhile choice?
Otherwise nehekara and tylos sound fun

Druchii books would be worthwhile, but the Empire has few books on them and the dwarves have none. Bretonnia has more, but we're limited to Extensive with them. We have all the Druchii books we can get.

Gavin Prince · 2025-01-11T05:21:50-0500

The option of polishing off our Colors of Magic sections (Shyish, Hysh, Ghur, Chamon) up to Esoteric from a College purchase is still there. Otherwise, a Barak Varr purchase of Dwarven books on the Nehekharan sections they have material on (Pantheon and War Statuary) is probably okay. Maybe Prophecy, in case we ever get around to looking into that Wsoran thing.

I'm up for another Backfill, too. Though the Vlag archives probably complete what we can get on the Dwarf Pantheon, and copying over the Aquila Academy is a good bet for Military topics.

NexusEye · 2025-01-11T05:23:25-0500

DragonParadox said:
So what books are you guys looking to get this turn? Some ideas:

Scouting/Woodscraft? - To prepare for Elfication

Tylos - We might want to poke the coins

Finish Nehekaran books - in preparation for learning the language and finally reading the Notes and/or the Prophecies of Zandri. At least for the latter some historical context would probably be useful

The Mountains of Morne and/or ogres - people have been talking about maybe going east, looking for Titan metal is a good jumping off point and the ogres should be getting organized about now which should make it relevant in general

All those are good except in my personal opinion the Mountains of Mourn and its relation to Titan-Metal, while I have suggested Titan-Metal based capstones options in the past it was mainly hypothetical, I don't think the cost of acquiring of it and having Ulthuan process into Waystone Gold, unless we really want a magicless Waystone design I don't think it's worth it.

But if we're looking to get stuff to help with our future ancient coin papers/book we could get books dedicated towards numismatics, it would be specialized but the bonus would help in analyzing every type of ancient coin we acquired.

DragonParadox · 2025-01-11T05:30:00-0500

NexusEye said:
All those are good except in my personal opinion the Mountains of Mourn and its relation to Titan-Metal, while I have suggested Titan-Metal based capstones options in the past it was mainly hypothetical, I don't think the cost of acquiring of it and having Ulthuan process into Waystone Gold, unless we really want a magicless Waystone design I don't think it's worth it.

But if we're looking to get stuff to help with our future ancient coin papers/book we could get books dedicated towards numismatics, it would be specialized but the bonus would help in analyzing every type of ancient coin we acquired.

Makes sense and we should be able to get a full +10 on it which is always nice, that is a big bonus even if it is very situational.

mathymancer · 2025-01-11T05:39:45-0500

DragonParadox said:
So what books are you guys looking to get this turn? Some ideas:

Scouting/Woodscraft? - To prepare for Elfication

Tylos - We might want to poke the coins

Finish Nehekaran books - in preparation for learning the language and finally reading the Notes and/or the Prophecies of Zandri. At least for the latter some historical context would probably be useful

The Mountains of Morne and/or ogres - people have been talking about maybe going east, looking for Titan metal is a good jumping off point and the ogres should be getting organized about now which should make it relevant in general

I don't think there's really anything pressing that would benefit from books, except the coin books if people actually want to do them soon-ish. In that case we would probably want a Nehekhara/Tylos/Strygos Barak Varr purchase, though IIRC Boney was previously asked and the Empire doesn't have the full +5 on some or all of those, I don't remember the exact details.

If you just wana BOOKmaxx we can always do a backfill. I think a geography back-fill could be nice: it's an area the many libraries we have copying rights to probably don't have a ton of so it'll be efficient, and it could be useful for future field trips. We could also try and round out some topics we got from the Library of Mournings with non-Eonir books, but I don't think there are any topics that really stand out in that regard. I guess maybe we can get some human and dwarf books on things we might stab at some point? 'Centaurs, Minotaurs, and Harpies', Gors and Ungors, and Chaos Spawn maybe?

Valmond · 2025-01-11T05:41:06-0500

Andres said:
In canon, the plot point of Thorgrim unsustainably burning through lives isn't really a thing, and in fact he's essentially doing the same hopeful stuff he's doing now in Divided Loyalties, just without magical megaprojects. He's retaking fallen holds, clearing the underway to better connect extant dwarf settlements, proliferating civic technologies, recovering relics, and carefully hedging the acquisition of new grudges. Half of what he's doing is building up the Karaz Ankor, and I think the shortening list of extant grudges in the Great Book is what gives him so much of the political capital needed to do it.

This is, literally, by law and tradition, my to do list, and i am getting it done.
- Thorgrim, while pointing at Book of Grudges.

Gavin Prince · 2025-01-11T05:45:59-0500

mathymancer said:
IIRC Boney was previously asked and the Empire doesn't have the full +5 on some or all of those, I don't remember the exact details.

The Colleges had full Imperial material on all four Nehekharan topics. We got 3/4 of that through last turn's purchase, but dropped War Statuary as too esoteric in favour of Liminal Pathways.
Barak Varr has no Imperial material on Nehekhara, but does have +5 Dwarven material on Pantheon and War Statuary

mathymancer · 2025-01-11T05:52:45-0500

Gavin Prince said:
The Colleges had full Imperial material on all four Nehekharan topics. We got 3/4 of that through last turn's purchase, but dropped War Statuary as too esoteric in favour of Liminal Pathways.
Barak Varr has no Imperial material on Nehekhara, but does have +5 Dwarven material on Pantheon and War Statuary

We're talking about different topics. Those four topics are the "Nehekharan Cosmology" topics:

Boney said:
Nehekharan Cosmology
The Nehekharan Pantheon +5 - Extensive and Esoteric Imperial
The Mortuary Cult +5 - Extensive and Esoteric Imperial
Nehekharan Incantations +5 - Extensive and Esoteric Imperial
Nehekharan War-Statuary +0

The topic I'm talking about, which I think will be most relevant to the coin books because it includes the history of Nehekhara, is this one:

Boney said:
The Great Cities of Nehekhara +6 - Imperial / Extensive and Esoteric Dwarven

We got those from a back-fill. In theory some more Nehekharan Pantheon could be helpful for the coin books because some of those coins have dedications to their Gods, but I imagine some cultural context will be better. Though again I don't remember if Boney ever said how high the Imperial bonus on that goes.

Angelform · 2025-01-11T05:55:09-0500

DragonParadox said:
So what books are you guys looking to get this turn?

Any of these:

[ ] Begin copying the full corpus of a Partner Library. (specify which)
Current options: Aquila Academy of Nuln, Imperial School of Engineers, Imperial Gunnery School, Minor Colleges of Nuln, The Mootland Genealogical Library

We went to the effort of getting those partnerships, we we should actually use them at some point.

Gavin Prince · 2025-01-11T06:01:29-0500

Angelform said:
Any of these:We went to the effort of getting those partnerships, we we should actually use them at some point.

That's the KAU action for the next turn plan. This discussion is mostly about what we're getting as our free option in the upcoming Purchase Turn (though don't let that stop you if you want to talk about the former).

We can get four magical topics to +5 Imperial through the Colleges. Or we can get three mundane topics up to whatever the limits of Imperial/Dwarf on those topics are through Barak Varr. Or we can backfill an entire category to get a bunch of scattershot bonuses.

Tobtorp · 2025-01-11T06:04:33-0500

Angelform said:
Any of these:We went to the effort of getting those partnerships, we we should actually use them at some point.

Personally I'm all for copying the Aquila academy because that one just sounds fun. It's the one dedicated human war goddess we know and I want to see what her disciples have to say on the topic.

Nimbus · 2025-01-11T06:09:44-0500

Andres said:
Druchii books would be worthwhile, but the Empire has few books on them and the dwarves have none. Bretonnia has more, but we're limited to Extensive with them. We have all the Druchii books we can get.

Mmm. Still in favour of chatting to L.M. Walther Kupfer; wouldn't be surprised if he's written the most worthwhile of said books.

Warhammer Fantasy: Divided Loyalties - an Advisor's Quest

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