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Warhammer Fantasy: Divided Loyalties - an Advisor's Quest

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Humbaba said:
Not particularly. It smacks of fighting the last war.

Would spoken queekish have been useful in this particular situation? Absolutely.

But with this done and the Skaven out of Karak Eight Peaks we don't expect to have to regularly infiltrate Skaven, which means we will have very little use for it outside of bragging rights.

We're already hard up for AP, better to stick with "only" upending the intelligence and linguistic world a single time and move on to all our other potentially world changing projects.
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Well, since the Skaven presence in K8P is over, you are not wrong...

But you are seriously understanding the importance of Spoken Queekish will have on a global scale... Written Queekish is already a huge gamechanger, but the ability of only needing to eavesdrop a conversation to get Intel (instead of having to steal documents) , or the ability of interrogate prisoners, is almost as big of a Gamechanger as written Queekish is.
Candesce said:
We're also going to have a much harder time finding Queekish speakers who don't know we're there and so won't be able to check our work, too.

I think spoken Queekish simply isn't happening now.
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Why is that a problem ? We already have Qrech... That is more than enough to ger spoken Queekish.
 
Omegahugger said:
Turns out the reward for years of loyal service is a pat on the shoulder.
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Thing is, we don't serve Ranald. We're not a member of his formal priesthood. Despite the shrine here and ritual worship there, our mutual relationship is beyond that characterisation.

BoneyM said:
Transcendent Ranald: Your relationship with Ranald is not one of temples and priests. He is your oldest and most annoying friend.
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Ranald is our oldest friend. Arguably our best friend.
And what are friends for, if it's not to offer a supportive hand on the shoulder while you grieve?
 
Omegahugger said:
Hmm, so since dwarves keep their titles forever, doesn't that mean that our soldiers would remain our soldiers until they explicitely choose a different employer or occupation (or we relieve them of their duties)? And by the same token, it is okay to ask them to fight in our battles until they cease to be our soldiers?

In other words, it is totally morally justified to raise our dwarven warriors as undead legions! Their duty to their Thane doesn't end just because their life does!
(Slayers exempted. Once you die, you ain't a slayer no more)
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Think it's more that there's no such thing as an acting Thane, so we're a proper Thane now, but that doesn't necessarily mean we remain their Thane forever.
 
Alliterate said:
And what are friends for, if it's not to offer a supportive hand on the shoulder while you grieve?
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Lend an actual hand when needed.

Ranald was willing and capable of making the vampire assaulting Gabriella coincidentally had a fetish for vampire repellents, so why are we supposed to believe he can't do anything for a mere stab wound?

Ah yes, I forgot. He apologised, which as we all know proves he would've done something if he could. Ranald is famous for being honest, after all.

Pipeman said:
Think it's more that there's no such thing as an acting Thane, so we're a proper Thane now, but that doesn't necessarily mean we remain their Thane forever.
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Well, if they're dead, they can't quite change who their Thane is, now can they?
 
Candesce said:
The value of learning Queekish is down, the cost to learning it is up, and we've got a ton of other stuff on our plate as-is.
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The value of learning Queekish is as high as learning the language of a secretive enemy of the Empire and the Karaz Ankor can be.

Plainly put it is unprecedented, vastly important and quite possibly more strategically significant than any other single spell or paper Mathilde has invented or written so far because the Grey College having access to written and spoken Queekish opens up the possibility for a whole new approach on spying skaven.

This is cracking the Enigma code level stuff and the only real long term strategic project we fully 'own' rather than just participate in.
 
Omegahugger said:
Lend an actual hand when needed.
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Ranald does that for us all the time. And has for over a decade.
He's also got a strange sense of humour and on occasion likes to help in ways that we might not immediately see as helpful. But you can't honestly say he doesn't frequentlylend us a hand when it's in his gift to do so.
 
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Zero Gravitas said:
The value of learning Queekish is as high as learning the language of a secretive enemy of the Empire and the Karaz Ankor can be.

Plainly put it is unprecedented, vastly important and quite possibly more strategically significant than any other single spell or paper Mathilde has invented or written so far because the Grey College having access to written and spoken Queekish opens up the possibility for a whole new approach on spying skaven.

This is cracking the Enigma code level stuff and the only real long term strategic project we fully 'own' rather than just participate in.
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I think this overstates the case by quite a bit. Most of the value of Queekish is in the written form, because skaven society requires paperwork to function, and when fighting a secret war, it is much easier to keep papers under lockdown than it is to keep prisoners under lockdown. We've already got all the vocabulary except the magical lexicon, and the magical lexicon isn't actually super useful unless you want to learn skaven magic, which for obvious reasons is a no-no.
 
picklepikkl said:
I think this overstates the case by quite a bit. Most of the value of Queekish is in the written form, because skaven society requires paperwork to function, and when fighting a secret war, it is much easier to keep papers under lockdown than it is to keep prisoners under lockdown. We've already got all the vocabulary except the magical lexicon, and the magical lexicon isn't actually super useful unless you want to learn skaven magic, which for obvious reasons is a no-no.
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Right and it's not possible for the under-empire to catch on and keep those same papers under tighter security? Or as you put it "it's much easier to keep papers under lockdown".

Capturing and interrogating a prisoner is a far simpler process than running into deep enemy territory to try and steal papers of value.

You are understating the usefulness of spoken Queekish to a ridiculous extent.
 
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Thinking of the future value of knowing skaven we might face, it's worth looking at the local map of the Underempire.


There are four major routes leading into the City of Pillars from the Underempire, and there are four tunnels that lead to no known surface features within a couple of hundred miles, which I've marked with green stars. Presumably these once lead to minor dwarf holds, which I'd expect to now be minor skaven warrens. We're also only just over two hundred miles from the major skaven warren underneath what was Karak Azgal, which isn't far if you take the warprailway train. One of those green stars may be Karak Azul, but as Kazador exterminated the local skaven, it's not marked as a major warren...

As a side note, based on the scale, it's about one hundred and seventy five miles from Karak Drazh to Karak Eight Peaks via the Underway, and the orcs don't have trains or super-radios like the skaven do. That means it should take quite a while for orcs to traverse it. I don't know how we can exploit that, but that communications and logistics gap must be something we can work with at some point.

The map contours are also interesting. You can see that Death Pass isn't that far above the level of the Badland all the way to the Dark Lands.
 
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Ganurath said:
Remind me, where did we get our bonus to countering necromancy from, again?
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From reading, not just "a book about necromancy," but the book about necromancy. I do not expect us to trip over the skaven equivalent of the Liber Mortis any time soon.

The magical lexicon is nice to have, but it is not a priority the way the military vocabulary was, and it's not nearly as useful as the engineering vocabulary. If we can get it easily, then awesome, let's get it, but I'm not going to view it as a disaster if we sort all the papers we got from the reconquest and it turns out we can't learn the magical lexicon from it.

(For the record, since this thread moves fast, my position continues to be "we should publish the dictionaries over the next two turns rather than hold out for the magical lexicon, unless it turns out we can learn that trivially." When we learn the magical lexicon, we can publish that as a separate paper.)
Quest said:
Capturing and interrogating a prisoner is a far simpler process than running into deep enemy territory to try and steal papers of value.
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The sort of prisoner who can be captured trivially is not the sort of prisoner who knows much of value. Clanrats are not high-value prisoners.
 
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Alratan said:
Thinking of the future value of knowing skaven we might face, it's worth looking at the local map of the Underempire.


There are four major routes leading into the City of Pillars from the Underempire, and there are four tunnels that lead to no known surface features within a couple of hundred miles, which I've marked with green stars. Presumably these once lead to minor dwarf holds, which I'd expect to now be minor skaven warrens. We're also only just over two hundred miles from the major skaven warren underneath what was Karak Azgal, which isn't far if you take the warprailway train. One of those green stars may be Karak Azul, but as Kazador exterminated the local skaven, it's not marked as a major warren...

As a side note, based on the scale, it's about one hundred and seventy five miles from Karak Drazh to Karak Eight Peaks via the Underway, and the orcs don't have trains or super-radios like the skaven do. That means it should take quite a while for orcs to traverse it. I don't know how we can exploit that, but that communications and logistics gap must be something we can work with at some point.
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Uhhhhh. Where did you get the idea that Skaven have trains? Warptrains, at that? Are there underground rails all over the place? How have I never heard of this?
 
picklepikkl said:
The sort of prisoner who can be captured trivially is not the sort of prisoner who knows much of value. Clanrats are not high-value prisoners.
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You don't need to interrogate the general of an army to know where it's marching. The same applies to cities. Very often those least protected have the most information on the ground.

If you know spoken Queekish, you don't need to target the highest value targets.
 
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Candesce said:
The value of learning Queekish is down, the cost to learning it is up, and we've got a ton of other stuff on our plate as-is.
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I disagree, to breaking the Enigma Code would have been less valuable for the Allies just because, lets say, Poland would have liberated from the Nazis?

I doubt it.
picklepikkl said:
I think this overstates the case by quite a bit. Most of the value of Queekish is in the written form, because skaven society requires paperwork to function, and when fighting a secret war, it is much easier to keep papers under lockdown than it is to keep prisoners under lockdown. We've already got all the vocabulary except the magical lexicon, and the magical lexicon isn't actually super useful unless you want to learn skaven magic, which for obvious reasons is a no-no.
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I think that you are serously underestimating the value of spoken Queekish...

If we only have writen Queekish our only way to get intel is to steal documents... And that had the immense disadvantage that stealing them is not precisely easy, and that if the Skaven notice what has bee stolen and they can plan around that.

Meanwhile spoken Queekish increases immensely the options to spy them, you can get information simply by eavesdropping conversations, you can interrogate prisoner, and if you have someone disguised as a Skaven using doppelganger or something similar, if any of them ask him something it doesn't mean to lose your cover immediately.
 
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Quest said:
You don't need to interrogate the general of an army to know where it's marching. The same applies to cities. Very often those least protected have the most information on the ground.
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Maybe? I certainly think it's useful, I just don't think it should be our #1 top priority the way @Zero Gravitas was asserting. That's why I was advocating a "rapport-and-see" approach with Qrech, where next turn we build rapport with him and observe how he reacts, rather than committing a ton of AP and a Deceiver usage sight unseen. I also want to get Wolf trained up so that we have a second set of ears and a first set of nose on the job with us.
 
It's not like the magical lexicon would be allowed to spread beyond the Colleges, anyway. That sounds like giving a whole bunch of people whose job is to fight the Skaven the ability to actually understand and make use of any Skaven magical lore they find, without any of the education sanctioned Wizards get on safety, miscasts and so on, and that way lies temptation, perpetually-burning city districts and secret Colleges of Ruin. The Colleges would most likely redact all of the dangerous information like that and spread a "safe" version. By publishing the magical lexicon separately, we do the job for them and get about as much favour, while ensuring that the actually important stuff gets disseminated sooner.
 
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primemountain said:
Uhhhhh. Where did you get the idea that Skaven have trains? Warptrains, at that? Are there underground rails all over the place? How have I never heard of this?
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https://warhammerfantasy.fandom.com/wiki/Under-Empire said:
Another mode of transportation used by the Skaven is the Warprail. Designed by the Warlock Engineers of Clan Skryre, the Warprail is a train driven along a system of iron rails by a massive warp-engine. Though still experimental, the Warprail has been the fastest mode of transportation in the Under-Empire...when it works. The warp-engines powering the Warprail are prone to overheating and experience constant problems with pressure regulation. If not properly maintained, warp-engines can explode, causing catastrophic loss of life and can even cave-in the tunnel they travel through.[1c]

If not for these minor setbacks, the Warprail would be the pre-eminent form of travel between major Skaven settlements. As it is, there are only a handful of Warprail engines available, and not all of them are in working order. In addition, Warprail engines require tracks laid down in stable tunnels, and these only exist, so far, between some major Skaven cities, such as Skavenblight, Hell Pit, and the City of Pillars. As Clan Skryre continues to perfect warp-engine technology, additional tunnels and tracks will be implemented, allowing the Skaven to move large bodies of troops and supplies between their cities with unprecedented ease.[1c]
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They're not common, but the city of pillars was mentioned explicitly.

It also explains what Skyre was doing here, even beyond Mors being a traitor clan.
 
Omegahugger said:
Not when it actually mattered.
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It was our fault omega, we were to weak to protect him, then too weak to do what had to be done and resurrect him.

Ranald is the god of luck, and luck can only take you so far.

The only god at fault here is Sigmar, for not healing Abel when we know he could have.

Mathilde, Sigmar, and all those worthless greatswords are to blame here, not Ranald whose been nothing but a good friend this entire time.
 
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primemountain said:
Uhhhhh. Where did you get the idea that Skaven have trains? Warptrains, at that? Are there underground rails all over the place? How have I never heard of this?
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Yes, according to Children of the Horned Rat and the skaven army books, Clan Skyre invented the railway in 2399, and has been building a global underground railway network ever since.
 
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Alratan said:
We're also only just over two hundred miles from the major skaven warren underneath what was Karak Azgal, which isn't far if you take the warprailway train. One of those green stars may be Karak Azul, but as Kazador exterminated the local skaven, it's not marked as a major warren...
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Should be noted that warprail trains are very rare because they are expensive, experimental and also tend to explode if even a little badly maintained, taking entire tunnel highways down with them. According to the wiki entry on the Under-Empire, only the most major Skaven strongholds are connected by rail to Skavenblight. It cites as examples Hell Pit and the City of Pillars, both capital cities of extremely powerful Clans who would be able to pay the enormous costs of such an engineering project to Clan Skryre. I am pretty sure that Karak Azgal or Azul are not major enough to be one of them. Crookback Mountain probably is, though.
 
Alratan said:
Thinking of the future value of knowing skaven we might face, it's worth looking at the local map of the Underempire.


There are four major routes leading into the City of Pillars from the Underempire, and there are four tunnels that lead to no known surface features within a couple of hundred miles, which I've marked with green stars. Presumably these once lead to minor dwarf holds, which I'd expect to now be minor skaven warrens. We're also only just over two hundred miles from the major skaven warren underneath what was Karak Azgal, which isn't far if you take the warprailway train. One of those green stars may be Karak Azul, but as Kazador exterminated the local skaven, it's not marked as a major warren...

As a side note, based on the scale, it's about one hundred and seventy five miles from Karak Drazh to Karak Eight Peaks via the Underway, and the orcs don't have trains or super-radios like the skaven do. That means it should take quite a while for orcs to traverse it. I don't know how we can exploit that, but that communications and logistics gap must be something we can work with at some point.

The map contours are also interesting. You can see that Death Pass isn't that far above the level of the Badland all the way to the Dark Lands.
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Wait, 175 miles? I thought it was a lot closer, but that does mean that reinforcements from Drahz through the Underway haven't even reached the Under-Karagril fight yet, we should prepare for a second wave of attackers sometime tonight.
 
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