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Warhammer Fantasy: Divided Loyalties - an Advisor's Quest

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It's probably the best time to talk to the dragon when Mathilde/Belegar's representative isn't soliciting them in their home. Doubly so since, for now at least, we share a common purpose.
 
CuttleFish2.0 said:
For everyone worrying about the dragon's mood, my thinking goes sort of like this: after it's done styling on the skaven here I would assume it's goal will be to go back to sleep, which'll mean if we want to negotiate with it we may end up having to wake it ourselves. At least now we have some plausible deniability with it that we weren't the things that woke it up.
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That's my best case scenario, goes back to sleep, sees a giant Waaagh coming his way, and has to go back out.

"Oh for fucks sake, another one!?"
 
So from my view on this Parlay with the dragon is advantageous because we basically have two options:

-We can give a go at talking to it here where we are outside of its seat of power, catching it between battles, and while its still pissed at the skaven. Thus gaining intel on how it feels towards us.

-We can wait for it to go home and try to negotiate there in its seat of power while the freezing environment lays on penalties to any negotiator. We can't be sure how long it will take to calm down, as it may just go home and brood. We can gain intel on how it feels towards us, but need to balance that with the thought it may not just go home after this.

Thus I see the wait for it to go home and calm down option to be at best equal to the option we have right now, and worse if its still ticked and brooding.
 
[ ] Attack Clan Eshin.

I also think this is probably the best idea. They're apparently the ones who (barely) came ahead in the Skaven infighting, and barring an opportunity to wipe the Skaven out of K8P entirely, it's better to knock down the stronger of the remaining clans than to wipe out the weaker while the stronger scurries into hiding and then has freedom to act from there.
 
Loot memes aside, the option to try and initiate some sort of preliminary talks with the dragon does sound like a good idea. It's out of its house, so we're not bothering it like we would be if we were waking it up, there's a common enemy around that we can contrast ourselves with, and this is the sort of environment where we can go 'hey, there's this other ridiculous thing on the way, please don't eat us until then' without having to come from a cold start.
 
das_slash said:
That's my best case scenario, goes back to sleep, sees a giant Waaagh coming his way, and has to go back out.

"Oh for fucks sake, another one!?"
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I mean it slept just fine through the Waaagh that was already here when we arrived, unless directly threatened I wouldn't assume it'll go after them on it's own.
 
picklepikkl said:
Personally I think the opportunity for peaceful first contact is massively important; during the vote for this past turn, people were worrying that sending dwarves into Zilfin would be read as a hostile act, and opening a dialogue of "you're at war with the skaven? we're at war with the skaven" has the potential to clear that up. And if the narration says that Mathilde thinks this is the best chance she's going to get, I believe her.
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See, the thing is that this:
BoneyM said:
Or you could use this opportunity to reach out to the dragon. Anyone approaching it in its lair will be at a disadvantage from the cold and from being within its place of power, but Karag Yar could serve as neutral ground to open a dialogue with it. And it shouldn't be hard to approach it as it goes from one group of Skaven to another.
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Doesn't read like diplomatic advantage. Mathilde isn't saying this is the best chance she's going to get, she's noting that approaching a dragon in its lair is generally more dangerous than doing so elsewhere. I personally believe that this is outweighed by a) being completely alone, and b) being completely unprepared for this. Even before the benefits of getting books about dragons and discussing what can be offered with Belegar etc., Mathilde gets a large bonus to Diplomacy checks she's had time to prepare for: she gets to use her Learning instead.

Martenzo said:
[ ] Attack Clan Eshin.

I also think this is probably the best idea. They're apparently the ones who (barely) came ahead in the Skaven infighting, and barring an opportunity to wipe the Skaven out of K8P entirely, it's better to knock down the stronger of the remaining clans than to wipe out the weaker while the stronger scurries into hiding and then has freedom to act from there.
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We're pretty sure that if we just leave them the dragon will kill them both.
 
Being able to attempt parlay with the dragon is an important opportunity here.

I hope that we can at least come to neutral ground so that we don't have to worry about having to fight it, but even if the dragon isn't open to any cooperation, making contact would help to remove the unknowns of the situation, it lets us get a reasonable idea of where it stands relative to us.
Is it hostile?
Does it just aggressively want to be left alone?
Is it ambivalent?
Curious?
Once we know that we can take action more efficiently.
 
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Eshin is by far the greatest remaining threat in Karak Eight Peaks, and the one least vulnerable to the dragon, so inflicting as much possible damage on them should be a priority.

A possible option may be 'negotiating' with Clan Mors, or in specific, Sleek Sharpwit. The longer the Civil War goes on the better for us, and he's intelligent enough to take the deal of 'steal Eshin's breeders and run' while not having any real ability to take revenge on us in the short or long term.

Finally, there's the dragon. It's specifically stated that this is probably the best opportunity we're going to have to diplomance it, and there really isn't someone better than us to handle it, mediocre diplomacy stat or not.

I'm inclined to do this:

1. Make friends with the dragon, or at least get him to avoid killing friendlies
2. Negotiate with the remnants of Clan Mors so they can escape and continue the Civil War
3. Sabotage Eshin and possibly steal their magic lore.
 
My pie in the sky wish is Clan Mors runs away and swears themselves to Ranald on the grounds that he does not betray like the Horned Rat clearly has. If the Horned Rat meant for Mors to serve them, they would have intervened by now. Mors is the least backstabby of the skaven clans as a rule, so that might appeal to them.
And if its done right, the growing divine narrative might be that Ranald protects against the horned rat in particular, and Mors becomes a pack of anti-UnderEmpire partisans
 
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Honestly, I'm seriously in favor of parlay with the dragon. We can handle Skaven under us. A Dragon, well, I have my doubts. Plus, worse come to it, maybe our charisma gives us enough of a bonus to consider a contract with them?

Occasionally toss some silver up there, and if anyone attacks, well.....
 
Securing peace of mind from Dragony Doom can let us seriously move forward on our strategic assumptions. Right now our other main concerns are 1.) Skaven clean up, 2.) Troll sweeping, 3.) Whatever the heck the Mhonar Mystery is. However, we're being pretty hampered by the idea that at any time a dragon might just come down and hit us like a wrecking ball; we can't move all in on Skaven clean up because we might offend the dragon, we can't finish our troll sweeping until we've cleaned up the Skaven because that sounds like a good way to get stabbed by rats, and we can't search out the Mhonar Mystery without having those other two properly handled.

Being able to just crack down and assist the dragon with Skaven Sweeping would massively help us in our quest to finish that up, and then we can blitz on down to the other two.

The benefit of finishing those three points is that they'd let us occupy and close off the Caldera Entrances to every non-inhabited mountain, stopping the Karak Drazh Waaagh from siphoning out of the Caldera before we can shave them all with the Eye of Gazul. If we want to perform our hat trick, we need to finish those things first.
 
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Deathbybunnies said:
Doesn't read like diplomatic advantage. Mathilde isn't saying this is the best chance she's going to get, she's noting that approaching a dragon in its lair is generally more dangerous than doing so elsewhere. I personally believe that this is outweighed by a) being completely alone, and b) being completely unprepared for this. Even before the benefits of getting books about dragons and discussing what can be offered with Belegar etc., Mathilde gets a large bonus to Diplomacy checks she's had time to prepare for: she gets to use her Learning instead.
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See here's the thing. We don't know if we'll get a better chance. We aren't exactly spoiled for choice here. For all we know, it may decide to clear the entire Karak dwarves and all. It may be annoyed at the army of Gyro-copters incoming and attack them. It may decide it doesn't like there being an Ulgu superweapon and attack us. You are essentially arguing for not contacting the dragon at all during the mini-turn which isn't something we have the luxury of.
 
pucflek said:
Are you sure it won ´t be the Assassin doing the Assassinating :V We don ´t know how they rolled after all.


Moratorium still in effect, i think.
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1. They'd be under some sort of malus by now.
2. The Eshin characters have the best odds of escaping the dragon, and we have the best odds of preventing that.
3. Killing Skaven is much better diplomacy toward the dragon than anything Mathilde's Diplomacy could come up with. Actions speak louder, after all.
4. I was making a reference to SW:tOR. It's a line the Sith Inquisitor drops in a quest to launch a preemptive strike against assassins targeting important people in the Empire on the planet where it takes place.
 
Deathbybunnies said:
See, the thing is that this:

Doesn't read like diplomatic advantage. Mathilde isn't saying this is the best chance she's going to get, she's noting that approaching a dragon in its lair is generally more dangerous than doing so elsewhere. I personally believe that this is outweighed by a) being completely alone, and b) being completely unprepared for this. Even before the benefits of getting books about dragons and discussing what can be offered with Belegar etc., Mathilde gets a large bonus to Diplomacy checks she's had time to prepare for: she gets to use her Learning instead.


We're pretty sure that if we just leave them the dragon will kill them both.
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So something that's worth noting in that bit you quote is "disadvantaged from the cold".

Its an Ice Dragon and its home is above the snow line so its lair should be below freezing. That sounds like a bad penalty to leverage against any negotiator especially on top of it being in its seat of power where its magical enchantments can be in full effect.
 
Frankly, I see nothing to be gained from parlaying with the Skaven.

And we need to parlay with the dragon at some point. We may as well do it now.

Originally, I prefered to assassinate the dragon while it still slept, but that is off the table now. The next less risky thing is negotiation with it.

Because whatever happens, I really don't want to have anything approaching a fair fight with the dragon.
 
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Quest said:
See here's the thing. We don't know if we'll get a better chance. We aren't exactly spoiled for choice here. For all we know, it may decide to clear the entire Karak dwarves and all. It may be annoyed at the army of Gyro-copters incoming and attack them. It may decide it doesn't like there being an Ulgu superweapon and attack us. You are essentially arguing for not contacting the dragon at all during the mini-turn which isn't something we have the luxury of.
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Well, yes, that is what I am proposing. I believe the random chance of the dragon deciding to attack the dwarves is lower than the chance of Mathilde screwing up her diplomacy rolls and pushing it to decide to attack the dwarves.

BungieONI said:
So something that's worth noting in that bit you quote is "disadvantaged from the cold".
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Buy some warm clothes. Spend a favour on a warming enchantment if it's really that bad.
 
[ ] Parlay with the dragon.

The last force on the field we have to worry about is the dragon. Even a basic cease-fire would be big, as would just finding out what it wants. I rather doubt we will nave another opportunity this good to talk.
 
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