- Location
- New Brunswick, NJ
- Pronouns
- He/Him/His
Woke up to no QM activity. Hope everything is OK with our beloved Aussie.
༼ つ ◕_◕ ༽つ BoneyM take my energy ༼ つ ◕_◕ ༽つ
༼ つ ◕_◕ ༽つ BoneyM take my energy ༼ つ ◕_◕ ༽つ
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.
Sinsystems
Patron Librarian
I mean considering what Mathilde has been doing it wouldn't be all that surprising if people thought she was a vampire, of course I would love to see that AU thread speculation for how she does all this stuff. Especially if there are people who don't fully grasp what it is a Grey Wizard does and instead just knows them for their Total War spells.
Integration with human society.
Putting aside End Times and predestined doom for the entire world for the moment, the most likely positive scenario for the dwarven race is that more and more of them actually live together with humans. Not just trading remotely, but either humans integrated in dwarven kingdoms or vice versa.
The humans force the innovation that the dwarves are incapable of doing on their own, while on the other side the dwarves keep out Chaos and provide their genius and expertise.
- Location
- Outside the Box
- Pronouns
- She/Her
The only "fault" the dwarves have is that it takes them centuries to train up experts to their top potential. Compared to their ancestral civilization, current dwarves are almost all beardlings. But that hasn't kept them from inventing new things to compensate, like gunpowder or gyrocopters. So even if they have some "inbuilt flaw" they have the ability to adopt and work around it anyways.
Their adherence to tradition is a cultural thing, not genetics or whatever. Unfortunately, many of their traditions come from a time where their top dwarves were often very, very old. (At least, as far as I can tell/guess without reading any source books or whatever.)
Their adherence to tradition is a cultural thing, not genetics or whatever. Unfortunately, many of their traditions come from a time where their top dwarves were often very, very old. (At least, as far as I can tell/guess without reading any source books or whatever.)
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- Location
- Singapore
Considering he has been posting on one of the Australian timezones, some of his posts have been at very ungodly hours. It won't surprise me if he needs more time to rest.
In the short-medium run? The best option would be to have good enough realisations with humans so that the dwarves make artisan (machine) tools and infrastructure and create designs that are then built on production lines by humans. The dwarves retain high value add activities while letting humans do the implementation.
That still involves a mindset change, but we can see the vague shape of it in the option Mathilde already has available. What Mathilde could do is try to have one of the K8P craft clans enter into a joint venture with the EIC to establish a gun factory in Karak Nar, rather in Stirland. That's much more strategically useful as it can't be cut off by siege, and it provides honest work to the wives the ex-mercenaries will shortly be importing, as well as for any other settlers. It's also the type of thing that shouldn't take much of Mathilde's time beyond coming up with the idea, and it may well be cheaper in terms of favours.
Although Mathilde isn't in charge of the human population, it's still a good idea to have a solid base of civilian jobs to anchor the human economy and not have it be purely dependent on trade and the military, as both of those can be very volatile and dangerous.
- Location
- Australia
There's no human who's as resistant to corruption as a dwarf, no lizardman as flexible in mind as an elf, no halfling as strong as an ogre. The flaws of the races are defined by how they affect ALL its members, not just most of them, no exceptions. Dwarves can't or don't adapt as much as other races, fine, but they do have the ability to adapt. Just because they don't always do so doesn't mean they're incapable of it as a rule. Furthermore, your opinion on the dwarfs' shifted goalposts is bad. Just because adaptation doesn't happen in the direction you want doesn't mean it's not adaptation. This way of thinking, that an apt description is invalid because of your own personal preference, it's toxic.
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deathofrats0808
Don’t think of it as dying; just as leaving early
- Location
- Earth
By that logic, none of the races have flaws. Not all the Elves are obsessive and arrogant, not all Ogres are stupid, not all Dwarves follow the same mindset etc etc.
- Location
- Australia
I'm still not certain that the flaw of the elves is arrogance rather than frailty, so I won't comment there. The ogres are flawless; their physiology is perfect, it's just their culture that's lacking. Dwarfs don't all follow the same mindset, but each individual mindset is predictable. Drop two balls - one from 1 metre up and one from 2 metres up. They'll bounce up to different heights but the heights will be completely predictable for each one.
SuperSonicSound
Shadowmancer of the Shadow Cabal
The Ogres literally have an unending appetite that can never be slaked.
deathofrats0808
Don’t think of it as dying; just as leaving early
- Location
- Earth
Elves are as tough as humans generally speaking though. So, what you're saying is that the Ogres and Orcs aren't flawed, despite the whole point being every race is flawed? And not really. Belegar was pretty traditional until fairly recently in this quest, he changed because events occurred to change his mind.
That's a function of them being affected by the Maw IIRC. They weren't always like that.
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Look, it's "flaws" as interpreted by the unreasonable Alien Mind standards of the Old Assholes and their search for whatever it was that their non-thinking-like-us brains think makes these species less-than-ideal... as sacrificial pawns.
No one should be shamed at an Old One's opinion of their flaws.
Personally, I think that the Dwarven "flaw" as far as the Old Assholes is concerned is their loyalty, general integrity, and difficulty to keep in servitude... servitude being what the creators wanted out of their creations after all.
- Location
- Australia
Firstly, that may just be the Maw's influence. Secondly, if that is the flaw, then you'd have to find an ogre that doesn't have an unending appetite to prove that the flaws aren't omnipresent.
Again, my knowledge on elves is shaky so I can't comment on them. Orcs aren't an Old One creation and so are irrelevant to this conversation. And the ogres are culturally flawed but physiologically perfect, whereas the other Old One races have some physiological flaw; please let this be the last time I have to make this correction. Belegar doesn't disprove my point. Please think about it more.
SuperSonicSound
Shadowmancer of the Shadow Cabal
Edit: You know what this discussion is entirely pointless consider it dropped on my end.
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- Location
- Australia
No the presence of the orcs on Mallus most certainly does predate the old ones. They were one of the native species the Old Ones slated for extermination in fact.
- Location
- Stupid Lucky Time
I was going to say that too, but after looking at their wiki entry, I'm not so sure anymore. Seems like they had a compulsion to smash and eat everything not nailed down anyway, which caused problems when their numbers swelled too much and lead to food shortages which, in turn, led to the human-eating mindset that screwed over relations with Cathay.
The tortuous Maw-cursed appetite that could never be sated came later.
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deathofrats0808
Don’t think of it as dying; just as leaving early
- Location
- Earth
I don't think why the Old Ones were doing all this stuff was ever actually elaborated on. I've seen theories that it was to fight a war, theories that it was to create a world that could resist Chaos, theories they just wanted slaves. It's not clear.
How is being culturally flawed, not a flaw? And besides which, mindsets are not set by physiology, so according to that, Dwarves have no flaw.
Elaborate on how Belegar doesn't disprove your point.
I was basing my info off the 8th edition book, where the problem wasn't their appetites, it was their numbers. Too many ogres, too little to hunt led them to enter Cathay looking for food, where some of them acquired a taste for human flesh. A bit like some predators actually.
- Location
- Australia
"Flaw" in the context of this conversation is used exclusively to refer to the physiological bad bits of the Old Ones' created races. As the ogres' problems don't come from any physiological bad bits, they have no "flaws" as defined by the context of this conversation. Mindsets count as physiology if they're hard-coded into the race rather than simply being a result of education (or lack thereof).
And no. I've already done so. I'm not gonna remake arguments I've already made for your own personal consumption.
deathofrats0808
Don’t think of it as dying; just as leaving early
- Location
- Earth
But you just said that it's not that Dwarven mindsets are all the same, but that each individual Dwarven mindset can be predicted if you know that Dwarf. So how can that be hard coded into the race, if it's so different for each Dwarf?
No, you haven't. You've not mentioned why Belegar being able to change his mindset in a pretty short span of time, shows him as predictable.
NavySeel
"I don't know what I'm doing."
- Location
- Places
How are mindsets not to atleast some level determined by physiology or atleast that of the brain and hormonal system.
While those differences are pretty much nonexistent in humans by the time you get to entirely different species I'm not so sure there are definitedifferences between how humans, elves and Dwarves think.
Not so massive that they can't understand each other or there aren't many similarities but they're there.
Then moving further away the lizardman mindset is quite clearly a product of their brain structure being so different to mammalian ones.
deathofrats0808
Don’t think of it as dying; just as leaving early
- Location
- Earth
Depends what you count as mindset I suppose. But to me, your mindset is determined far more by the influences you are exposed to than by your biology. Lizardmen don't think they way the do because they're lizards, they think that way because they're raised that way. Something like, say intelligence or quick-wittedness is more physiological, but the Lizardmen being unable to actually do shit without following the Great Plan is because that's what their culture has been built around, not because they're pre-programmed to do so.
Yeah, that's fair, I'll drop the topic.
No stealthy runes as written (unless you count the Master Rune of Disguise, but that's a Warmachine Rune) but there isn't an anti-Dhar Rune as written so what Mathilde gets is pretty unpredictable. I'd guess she gets more of a murder weapon though. Fits with what was asked for, and makes sense given Kragg's probable opinion of being sneaky (that it can be useful, but certainly shouldn't be relied on).
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SuperSonicSound
Shadowmancer of the Shadow Cabal
There isn't, weapon runes are all about either being killy in combat or making it harder for killy things to hit you.
No stealth rune. Dwarfs generally have little to no stealth capability.
Thinking of the future however:
This turn is the lab.
Next turn I propose we excavate two rooms. One to be a public library, the other a personal vault.
Library should be free for our employees, accessible to anyone else for a small fee. We will likely need to hire someone a be librarian/guard. I'm for a Dwarf librarian if possible.
Thoughts?