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Warhammer Fantasy: Divided Loyalties - an Advisor's Quest

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Boney said:
There's this situation that happens kind of frequently where someone asks me a question that has a really clear yes or no answer, but the context surrounding it makes it blindingly obvious to me that the answer I will give will be interpreted to mean entire volumes of information that it doesn't actually contain. I know what is meant is 'has the extremely complicated social/cultural/historical/psychological/economic/???/???/??? phenomenon that is the falling Dwarven population been defeated, possibly forever, possibly everywhere, possibly with Mathilde deserving and receiving a significant portion of the credit' and you need to understand that there are so many confounding factors that this single figure really isn't the crystal ball you think it is. Karak Eight Peaks doesn't have the same age demographics as the Karaz Ankor 'average'. It doesn't have the same gender ratio. It doesn't have the same proportion of married and single. It doesn't have the same proportions of Apprentices, Journeymen, and Masters. It doesn't have the same ratios of Clans and Clanless. It doesn't have the same ratios of Karaz Ankor-born and former expats. And even the idea of the 'Karaz Ankor average' being a meaningful figure is extremely suspect, considering that every Hold has completely different circumstances that lead to completely different birthrates.

All that said, and if I see anyone citing this one word while ignoring the paragraph above I'm going to be extremely disappointed: yes.
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I was not thinking about the phenomenon being outright defeated, much less everywhere or forever, just about whether we had managed to land a solid punch to it, searching for incremental progress rather than thinking we could have gone even close to a complete fix, but fair, I should have asked what I actually meant. I think this kind of communication is informed by reality, when we cannot ask an omnipotent God about a definite answer to thinks like that, so we look at things around the stuff we want to find in order to draw conclusions intelligently, and this thinking carries on to the way we ask questions on QMs,

Thanks a lot about the elaboration, truly appreciated it, so there are more births but the situation is different enough no conclusion can be made about how the demographic problem fares and whether any progress is being made there.
 
Boney said:
It lasts until the age of 30, and consists of learning literacy, history, traditions, mining, combat, and the craft of their Clan, with at least two years spent in the Hold's mines.
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Man I'd love to be a fly on the wall in a dwarven combat class
"No snorri that's the wrong end of the axe. Dorri! Put down that hammer right this instance! Morri, crossbows are next class and target practice is not to be done indoors!
 
pucflek said:
Sounds pretty normal to me for the time period. A kid every year and a half sounds about right for expanding family.
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With Karaf Nar being much more accepting of magic than probably any other human city, then you could get truly extraordinary levels of organic population growth.

Given the geometry (it has a central staircase, I think) relatively few oil lanterns with with Light of Purity cast as they were lit and reservoirs that can be filled without extinguishing could protect against the transmission of the childhood disease that were historically one of the major constraints.

Combine that with a food surplus and you could easily see the local population quadrupling in a generation.

Watching what Belegar would do if in forty years he rules (via a vassal) the largest human city in the world would be amusing.

Start looking at supporting the Gnolumgi reclaim the ancestral human lands that they lost in the first half of the Time of Woe? I mean, several dwarf holds that the dwarves want back were lost to the greenskins before the last human tribes of the future Darklands were driven across the mountains.
 
Feim said:
from, well most things that talk about it, i am fairly sure dwarfs have an inverse population boom trend to humans.

that is, humans have massive population booms when in danger. a well known phenomena. the more obviously dangerous the world around them is the more people have loads of kids. in an unconscious attempt to out chance the death rate.

dwarfs, don't seem to do this. if the worlds shit, they are under constant threat, and things are looking bleak? birth rates plummet.
if things are good, resources are high, the immediate world is pretty much safe, their homes are safe and there is no actual threat nearby that can harm them at the moment? they seem to grow much faster. humans do the opposite, if things are mostly fine birth rates go down.

probably one of those things where humans are supposed to be one of the roaming horde factions of the old ones. while dwarfs very much arn't.
dwarfs niche is behind the friendly lines where its mostly safe building fortifications, armour, and weaponry.

while humans niche is almost the exact opposite, all those things are useful for humans, but they'll still sally forth without most of them. as was the case when nomadic, going out into hostile land and just living there for a while, then moving on. never actually having a front line.


nowadays of course, none of the original niches matter all too much. but these species are entirely artificial, so a theorised niche they fit helps me keep track of what instincts they might naturally have.
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This isn't quite true. Recall that Karak Vlag's population is nearly as large post-recovery as it was pre.
Boney said:
"Our population is two thirds of what it was when we were stolen," he corrects, "but it was once lower, and has been climbing steadily for over a century.
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And Mathilde hypothesizes about the psychology involved:
Boney said:
And yet they survived. No, more than that, they thrived. Their nadir was over a century ago, Brokkr said, and their population has been climbing since. Well, you suppose that makes sense, on both sides of the equation. The Daemons had reason to allow that as a renewable source of their new variety of shock troop, and as a self-maintaining toy for them to turn their attention to when they fancied. And on the Dwarven side, well, you're familiar with Dwarven fatalists, those that dwell on the decline of their race. But Karak Vlag's fatalists died in the first decade, leaving only those that embraced life as an act of defiance. You consider that for a moment, then draw a comparison to Karak Azul, isolated for millennia and constantly surrounded by greenskins but still strong despite it. Perhaps Dwarves with an immediate enemy to spite are ones more mentally healthy than those with no immediate threats, who have sufficient safety and freedom to despair at how much greater they used to be.
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(In this respect I find dwarves very relatable, because I am excellent in a crisis and absolute pants at slow grinding stress. Water defeats stone more often than other stone does.)
 
Feim said:
that is, humans have massive population booms when in danger. a well known phenomena. the more obviously dangerous the world around them is the more people have loads of kids. in an unconscious attempt to out chance the death rate.

dwarfs, don't seem to do this. if the worlds shit, they are under constant threat, and things are looking bleak? birth rates plummet.
if things are good, resources are high, the immediate world is pretty much safe, their homes are safe and there is no actual threat nearby that can harm them at the moment? they seem to grow much faster. humans do the opposite, if things are mostly fine birth rates go down.

probably one of those things where humans are supposed to be one of the roaming horde factions of the old ones. while dwarfs very much arn't.
dwarfs niche is behind the friendly lines where its mostly safe building fortifications, armour, and weaponry.

while humans niche is almost the exact opposite, all those things are useful for humans, but they'll still sally forth without most of them. as was the case when nomadic, going out into hostile land and just living there for a while, then moving on. never actually having a front line.


nowadays of course, none of the original niches matter all too much. but these species are entirely artificial, so a theorised niche they fit helps me keep track of what instincts they might naturally have.
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Do you have sources for that? Because the limited research I've done does not really support that conclusion, but rather the opposite, if anything, with times of hardship and danger tending to result in less kids, from what I've seen.
Also, the reasoning your entire argument is giving me major evo-psych vibes, which I'll admit is definitely biasing my reaction toward it.
 
Tiresia said:
Do you have sources for that? Because the limited research I've done does not really support that conclusion, but rather the opposite, if anything, with times of hardship and danger tending to result in less kids, from what I've seen.
Also, the reasoning your entire argument is giving me major evo-psych vibes, which I'll admit is definitely biasing my reaction toward it.
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It's sort of accurate. In a crisis it's not accurate, but better living conditions do lead to less kids, on average. Birth rates among first world countries are low, while third world countries have a higher birth rate.
 
Boney said:
It lasts until the age of 30, and consists of learning literacy, history, traditions, mining, combat, and the craft of their Clan, with at least two years spent in the Hold's mines.
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Wonder which one they have hidden math under.
Probably traditions, you can fit a lot under traditions with a bit of creativity.

It is going to be really weird in K8P when you have a class each of humans, dwaves and halflings all of the same age going through radically different educations and comparing notes.
 
rocketroland999 said:
It's sort of accurate. In a crisis it's not accurate, but better living conditions do lead to less kids, on average. Birth rates among first world countries are low, while third world countries have a higher birth rate.
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Well yeah, but that is not because a worse standard of living leads to more kids in general, it's that a lower degree of education for women, access to contraception and general gender equality leads to more children. It's very specific to where we are in the here and now with antiseptic childbirth and childhood vaccines meaning most children survive infancy thus leaving family planning as the main limiter on how many children are born, intrinsically linked to women's rights due to a bunch of socio-cultural reasons that would take to long to expand on here
 
Angelform said:
Wonder which one they have hidden math under.
Probably traditions, you can fit a lot under traditions with a bit of creativity.

It is going to be really weird in K8P when you have a class each of humans, dwaves and halflings all of the same age going through radically different educations and comparing notes.
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Need to know a lot of practical engineering to be a decent miner.
I'd probably put math under that.
 
An incredibly overlooked factor in the "developed societies have worse birth-rates" is that generally speaking it's less feasible to have a family in those societies because their labor engagement structures make it so there's little to no way to actually raise your children without it being a crushing financial burden every which way. You can see this the most sharply in South Korea and Japan, but when you account for immigration throwing off numbers from the generational delay in family-building, it maps rather consistently to the degree in which a society then also provides affordances for being-a-parent to its populace.
 
Godwinson said:
An incredibly overlooked factor in the "developed societies have worse birth-rates" is that generally speaking it's less feasible to have a family in those societies because their labor engagement structures make it so there's little to no way to actually raise your children without it being a crushing financial burden every which way. You can see this the most sharply in South Korea and Japan, but when you account for immigration throwing off numbers from the generational delay in family-building, it maps rather consistently to the degree in which a society then also provides affordances for being-a-parent to its populace.
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K8P is quite different from IRL circumstances. As an example, Belegar would love to have more recruitable soldiers to patrol his karak and man the fortifications in an emergency, and he has overwhelming amounts of money to pay for that.
 
SaltyWaffles said:
K8P is quite different from IRL circumstances. As an example, Belegar would love to have more recruitable soldiers to patrol his karak and man the fortifications in an emergency, and he has overwhelming amounts of money to pay for that.
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Oh, yes, I wasn't saying anything about K8P, I was just pointing out that the dynamic people so often love to bring up about birthrates in varying development of economies often ignores a LOT of factors in favor of a neat little racist-as-fuck Social Darwinist-supporting narrative package that deliberately obscures that.

(To be extra, extremely clear, I am not at all saying that the people who brought that up here are engaging in racism or social darwinism or anything of the sort-- I'm saying that the standard narratives about population growth are, and have deliberately obscured that fact from people to get them to repeat and internalize it.)
 
Godwinson said:
If we wanted people to use the library we shouldn't have voted for it to use territorial giant spiders for its librarians.
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SaltyWaffles said:
Territorial isn't a fair descriptor. That implies that they are hostile or at least quite wary of people entering their territory. But the We have been remarkably welcoming of people into their territory for pretty much the entire time we've known them, and have not responded with aggression or lashing out at any point. The closest we get to that is the rare occasion when a lone hunting We-spider is in its hunting grounds and a dwarf wanders too close without warning, and even that's because it's separated from its greater hive-mind and acting on instinct to being surprised in a place where it's expecting danger/hostiles.

The Library-We are specifically welcoming of visitors and trained to assist visitors, not be wary of them.

I will grant you that the giant spiders would be something the casual library-goer would avoid, but KAU boasts a pretty staggering selection. Anyone willing to make the trip to K8P would not be put off by the giant spider librarians that even the famously conservative dwarves have no issue with. And that "no issue" isn't from lack of exposure, either: dwarves from throughout K8P have contributed towards building the bookshelves, tracks/rails, carving out the library's spaces, transporting books into the library, affixing runic lights and furniture, collecting silk, and more.

For academics who want the chance to read books from the ancient Library of Mournings, books on seemingly any subject from throughout most of the Old World, or tomes on magic (normally not something you can find in public libraries, except for KAU), and an extensive selection of dwarven books, braving the friendly giant spiders is a challenge they are probably willing to tackle for that otherwise-inaccessible fruit.

And while they're there, they can study and get material for academic papers on the human population (and halfling population!) living in and being part of a full-blown Karak. Now that the Karak is fully secure, the river/road to and from the Karak is secure, and the canal linking travelers safely all the way from the Empire to Karak Eight Peaks, there's no danger to worry about, just the travel time and expenses.
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Clearly we just need to direct the Library-We to have their hunters set up webs in the commonly travelled corridors, so as to capture the flow of traffic and direct it to the library.
 
Adhoc vote count started by einargs on Apr 7, 2025 at 5:47 PM, finished with 6417 posts and 423 votes.
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So with instant run off, the Armor of von Tarnus currently leads by 4 votes, though without runoff the airship leads.
 
[X] Plan: The Prismatic Wanderer
[X] Plan Pickle Requests mk IV
[X] Plan Not Pickle Requests Variant with Apparitions
[X] Support in dispatching Battle Wizards to one major conflict of Mathilde's choice
[X] Plan: The Next Generation
[X] Plan: All the Books Forever
 
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