On the topic of DNA and biology, there is circumstantial evidence that it's the same here as it is in real life; namely, that Warhammer apparently does have real life chemistry and physics in operation:
You flip through your books on Chamon and find something called a 'periodic table', and scowl at it. Typical Gold Order, over-complicating everything. How are you meant to make your model fit that many elements? You turn to Dwarven chemistry, and though they don't answer your questions about energy, you do find some interesting information about liquids. Interesting, but surely wrong. Water boils at the temperature water boils at, right?
You don't have to search long to find a thermometer, and your kettle is right there. One reading later, you descend all the way through the mountain and into the Underway, and commandeer a stove built into the Kvinn-Wyr fortifications. As bemused Dwarves warily watch you, you boil a cup of water and frown at the thermometer. Well, there you go. One new entry to your mental notes.
Okay, so water boils easier at higher altitudes. The air is thinner at higher altitudes, too. Less air being around meant that the water being transformed to steam can do so more easily because it's less crowded.
This obviously doesn't prove that biology here works the same way as real life biology, but it does show that at least some of the necessary components for it exist.
I would tend to think not. Specially since the dwarves are dwarves, able to withstand all the things that render humans into mutants and not particularly care. It is fair to say that mutation has a substantial impact on evolution, and the protections the Old Ones built in probably also prevent more natural mutations, since as far as they were concerned dwarves were already as good as they were going to get and change was far more likely to be negative.
In extreme situations, meaningful evolution can happen in as few as 20 generations. That's generally limited to traits with a very simple genetic "trigger" though - the most common case is a change in fur color.
Drift, sure. I'm pretty sure I know of moths that changed color to match the smog in London to improve their camouflage. But more radical evolution? I don't know.
Unnatural drift might have happened. Some Chaos Dwarfs have been fairly consistantly depicted with small tusks developing from the canines of the lower jaw in art.
Been thinking about our underling Gold Wizards for awhile.
Max was an obviously great hire. Great writer, intelligent, patient, focused, and has completed everything we've asked of him without issue. Please continue employing him forever.
Johann, I am considerably more skeptical of, especially considering he gets a significantly higher salary than Max. I was confused by and skeptical of the initial decision to hire him at all. I don't know if this is happening much anymore, but the initial indecision about not pissing him off was pretty bad from the perspective of "we're his supervisor who hired him to do a job". Does Karak Eight Peaks benefit from his warptech research? I could imagine him figuring out counter-measures and weaknesses, but I don't recall getting much benefit from the turn that we went hunting with him to loot stuff. Breach the Unknown is definitely sweet, but it felt like we hadn't really been using it until this turn. As a Wizard, Johann is narrowly powerful enough that it is worth carefully aiming him at our more difficult investigations, everything that can be studied in depth is something that he will drag every secret out of. Though, it isn't like we have a ton of those.
Considering K8P pays their wages, it does also feel odd to dictate papers or sign off on warptech research when it isn't furthering the primary tasks.
Just some thoughts. I am not very fond of Johann as a character.
If this isn't rhetorical, then a strong 'it depends' trending towards 'no'. With strong/extreme selective pressure, a domesticated breed of fox was created in just 40 generations. With zero selective pressure, the Wright-Fisher model has minimal net change for allele frequency in 240 generations with total populations as small as 10k individuals.
Depends on how you define meaningful, but this relies not just on generation number but on population size; allele fixation obviously happens much faster in smaller populations. It also depends on the rate of change of their environments, either natural environment or deliberately-introduced changes; in the last 10,000 years humans have evolved more rapidly than at any other time since our ancestors diverged from the most recent common ancestor of the chimpanzee 4.5MYA, due to spreading to habitats all over the world, adopting agriculture and new living habits in many places, etc.
Depends on how you define 'meaningful', I think. It's enough time for small trends and changes, but unless deliberate effort is made there's probably not going to be any major shifts.
Well going about it the way you have is supremely unconvincing because it reads like "We are doomed regardless!" So what's the point of caring about their casualties if they're doomed to go extinct anyway?
This is rhetorical.
Largely Warhammer runs on Rule of Cool and doing this sort of injection of real world meta knowledge on biology makes the entire edifice fall apart because it was never designed for people to actually concern themselves with this level of detail. So, if this makes the functioning edifice many have been playing in for more than a year fall apart into woe and pessimism because of the introduction of a piece of realism, that piece of realism should be removed and not injected because it is damaging to the fantasy of the game. And if all that is true its pretty easy to consider the Dwarves current state as being caused by their losing so much, a position well supported by canon lore sources both in and out of Divided Loyalties, and that if we win here there's a solid reason to expect the Dwarves to have a resurgence because they'll have Won when all they've been doing is Losing.
Just take the example of Kazador and his brood. He's been winning for longer than Mathilde has been alive and he's doing great.
Been thinking about our underling Gold Wizards for awhile.
Max was an obviously great hire. Great writer, intelligent, patient, focused, and has completed everything we've asked of him without issue. Please continue employing him forever.
Johann, I am considerably more skeptical of, especially considering he gets a significantly higher salary than Max. I was confused by and skeptical of the initial decision to hire him at all. I don't know if this is happening much anymore, but the initial indecision about not pissing him off was pretty bad from the perspective of "we're his supervisor who hired him to do a job". Does Karak Eight Peaks benefit from his warptech research? I could imagine him figuring out counter-measures and weaknesses, but I don't recall getting much benefit from the turn that we went hunting with him to loot stuff. Breach the Unknown is definitely sweet, but it felt like we hadn't really been using it until this turn. As a Wizard, Johann is narrowly powerful enough that it is worth carefully aiming him at our more difficult investigations, everything that can be studied in depth is something that he will drag every secret out of. Though, it isn't like we have a ton of those.
Considering K8P pays their wages, it does also feel odd to dictate papers or sign off on warptech research when it isn't furthering the primary tasks.
Just some thoughts. I am not very fond of Johann as a character.
I like Johann, he's a Muscle Wizard! He has been much more personable since we hired him to. The first vote was balancing out stongarming him into coming out as a Magister, just because someone is your subordinate doesn't mean you should let them dislike you, we don't have any need to do more than that.
I don't recall anybody else saying anything like that. 'I have a faint hope' isn't 'it's in the cards', it's 'maybe it's in the cards that it'll be in the cards'; the existence of the chance is itself unsure, but right now we're legitimately coming up on Magister Lord maybe, and that's around the time that everybody starts eyeballing you to see if they want to let you know how to Banish People to the Shadow Realm.
Johann is made for poking dangerous things. He'd shine a lot brighter if we had any dangerous things we'd be okay with him poking, it's just that right now the only things that fit in there are the spider bodies and the skaven stuff, and we don't really care about the skaven stuff.
The inverse, I think, although I'd have to check the numbers. For there to be a third as many women they need to contribute three times as much genetic material each, so three eggs and one sperm per child.
Boney posted that we are being considered for battlemagics. Everything else is my wishfull thinking, and I am aware of it.
Still, with the WOG that we are considered for it and the precedent of Algard deciding that this particular magister will need this particular spell being a thing, I am (faintly) hopeful.
What is and is not evolutionarily stable depends on the entirety of the environment in which the selection takes place. While losing two out of three males born prior to them reproducing due to war casualties won't itself change the genetic advantage gained by having more female offspring for an individual, that does not mean that it would be a net advantage. For instance, I could see female dwarves with more brothers being more likely to land a higher-quality mate, and families with a higher proportion of male offspring having a greater chance of their own male offspring surviving to reach reproductive ages (from things like having more potential trainers willing to help them for free and cooperative actions).
It seems like you are arguing that a 3:1 birthrate makes sense if it is an effective 1:1 adult ratio due to casualties? I can see that. I'd expect dwarves to be a heck of a lot more matriarchal though, if the average woman lives about three times as long as the average man in a culture that values experience.
To answer a rhetorical question, maybe? Humans have some interesting genetic bottlenecks (specifically, y chromosome lineages were bottlenecked, mitochondrial lineages unaffected) within the last 12,000 years at 2x generation speed, but idk how you'd point out what changed about how we are. Pretty much any speices unique to taiga woodlands evolved since glaciers retreated 10-20,000 years ago, and best guess says sexual selection drove cosmetic differences in the 70-100,000 years since humans left Africa.
But those are the only real data points I know to think about this with.
We should probably start caring about it, since we'll have greater frontage against Clan Mors. @BungieONI made the excellent point that the Tower of Oh Dear is a very good environment for running experiments on warpstone tech, since if something goes wrong and Dhar begins to flood the area you can smash the panic button and be safe from exposure; I'd like to get him analyzing the sample items we picked up ASAP, because anything we can learn from them about firearm construction could be useful in war efforts.
From your position at the base of Karagril all you can see is its towering height, but you know that just on the other side of Death Pass is Karak Drazh, and the entire might of the Red Fang Orcs. "Gyrocopters, siege weapons, Runelords. The caldera is a death trap for any enemy that tries to cross it. And Kvinn-Wyr is handled. Our only dangerous fronts are against Mors under the caldera, and against Moulder in the under-Karagril. That's manageable. Pushing downwards, though..."
King Belegar grimaces. "New fronts with Skryre and the Red Fangs."
"Skryre might stay focused on Mors, but whoever controls under-Karagril is going to have the full attention of Karak Drazh. That Karagril was full of them shows they've got ambitions here. So it comes down to Moulder and Mors. If we reassert the status quo, maybe Moulder is distracted but Skryre and Eshin won't be, and that's two and a half on one, and once Mors is stamped out we're likely to get their full attention. But if we hit Moulder enough to crumple them, and Mors expands into the under-Karagril..."
"All three fronts would be against Clan Mors," King Belegar says slowly, distaste clear on his face but still giving it consideration. Pitting enemies against each other was Ranger tactics, which he'd come to accept. Seeking for a specific enemy to prosper was a step further than that.
"Clan Moulder was definitely moving to try to invade the Karag proper before Mors and the Red Fangs got involved," you say, trying to reshape the issue so it fits better in the Dwarven mind. "A decisive counterstrike would discourage other factions from trying the same."
King Belegar looks up at the Karag towering above the two of you, lost in thought. "No," he says finally. "Comforting, but false. I'll spread the lie for everyone else but won't swallow it myself. We do this to empower Clan Mors, and draw out the Skaven stalemate as long as possible."
---
Properly purging every greenskin from the nooks and crannies of Karagril will be a project of months, but purging enough to be mostly safe turning your backs to it is a matter of mere hours, especially with you pointing King Kazador and his enthusiastic cohort towards any concentration of Orcs large and confident enough to sprout a Waaagh field. You've read more than a few College accounts of the Waaagh field and even a third-hand description from a Bretonnian Damsel, but though most describe it as something halfway between heat haze and a thundercloud, none of them speak of being able to spot it without line of sight, nor do they describe the semi-metallic tang on your tongue that you use to dowse out the direction of the Orcs. Perhaps this is a manifestation of your growing magical acuity, but you suspect it owes at least part of its existence to Mork using your soul as a hand-puppet.
That's a matter for later, and as the forces gather once more you look over Dreng's shoulder as he tallies the casualties. Shockingly light among the mercenaries, which will give Eight Peaks' reputation among sellswords an even further boost, but while they'd likely prove invaluable if the Red Fangs beat Clan Mors to the punch, you're not sure if they should be involved in the fighting against Moulder. The Undumgi could be relied upon to keep quiet, but you doubt those that maintain the Conspiracy of Silence would appreciate a swarm of well-paid mercenaries telling stories of battles with ratmen. Most were likely to return to the Border Princes where gossip travels no faster than a saunter, but some would take their pay and use it to buy a life in the Empire, where the soil was richer and extinction was an occasional concern instead of a regular event.
Then again, perhaps a few dire warnings and veiled threats would seal their mouths. You're still not quite comfortable with weighing human lives against Dwarven ones, but their contribution would prevent total deaths and how did one measure that against the very small but admittedly real chance of a mercenary's tall tale catching on and fracturing the veil of secrecy the Skaven think they have?
[ ] The mercenaries should not fight Skaven at all. They'll not see any Skaven, but will be on hand to fight against the Red Fangs if it becomes necessary.
[ ] The mercenaries should join the fight against Skaven. You'll give them Skaven 101 beforehand, and swear them to secrecy and give some suitably dire threats afterwards.
[ ] The mercenaries should stay in reserve. If the battle against Clan Moulder starts going bad, the mercenaries will be brought in. If they're not needed, they'll never see any Skaven.
There's also the matter of how you'll contribute. You've made a habit of assassination and you like the idea of adding a Warlord to your tally of Warbosses, but you're not sure if that's a good idea before you fill the gaps in your spellbook that caused your recent troubles. On top of that, you'd be operating blind instead of with the benefit of having mapped the tunnels in advance. Perhaps it might be better to contribute in some other way.
[ ] Assassination See if you can bag a fourth general before the day draws to a close.
[ ] Sabotage There's sure to be plenty of beasts to rile up or let loose, and possibly powder stores or warptech weapons as well.
[ ] Interference Interfere with the Red Fang assault, so they can't beat Clan Mors to moving into Clan Moulder's territory.
[ ] Treasure Hunt Last call. Grab Johann and see if you can steal, capture, stash, kidnap, or otherwise acquire anything interesting before Clan Moulder is removed from Eight Peaks.
[ ] Line of Battle
- [ ] With King Kazador Likely to be where the fighting is thickest.
- [ ] With Dreng Likely to be in the center of things.
- [ ] With King Belegar Likely to be where most needed.
- [ ] With the mercenaries.
- [ ] With your Ducklings. If you do not escort them, the Journeymen will not take part in this battle.
[ ] Flanking Lurk near the battlefield and seek a place where a sudden terrifying sword-wizard will cause the most havoc.
[ ] Remain in reserve You'll be in place to react quickly to anything unexpected as soon as news reaches you.
[ ] Other (write in)
