Warhammer Fantasy: Divided Loyalties - an Advisor's Quest

[chocolote12]

It's not about Belegar refusing it, but the possibility that there would not be any more gyropopters to send because they are all lost in battle. If Thorgrim had sent a gyrocopter that woudl have been on standby for evacuation, otherwise every machine in the hold is committed to fight and potentially be destroyed against the orcs.

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He did send a gyrocopter to transport the anvil. It was specially modified and everything. If we use it for something other than that it's our fault, not his. 'A gyrocopter that would have been on standby for evacuation' is basically semantics; a gyrocopter is a gyrocopter, and we have them. Rather than expending additional gyrocopters, if we believed that we should use the gyrocopters to transport things out of the Karak rather than fight, we can allocate them from the gyrocopters he's already given us.

 

[agumentic]

It's not about Belegar refusing it, but the possibility that there would not be any more gyropopters to send because they are all lost in battle. If Thorgrim had sent a gyrocopter that woudl have been on standby for evacuation, otherwise every machine in the hold is committed to fight and potentially be destroyed against the orcs.

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If Runelords believed they'd need gyrocopters on standby for evacuation, they could request for them, and Belegar would almost certainly grant that request.

 

[Doomed Wombat]

I don't think that standard is entirely equal. It's all of their responsibilities to safeguard the anvils of doom or not, as the case may be. Thorgrim already provided the Airforce of Karak Eight Peaks; this included the heavily modified gyrocopter made specifically to transport Kragg's Anvil. If we choose to use it to attack with, rather than keep Kragg's Anvil safe, that's a misallocation of resources on our part, not something he should rectify by giving us more gyrocopters.

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Mmm hard to argue misapplication if the dwarf himself refuses to get in.

in any case yes he ain't being unreasonable it's just we wanted him to pull his head on marching large sections of his population to death to avenge grudges rather than deciding not tohelp people out.

he's not wrong, but the human lizard brain isn't that logical and the dawi brain is certainly infuriated.

 

[DragonParadox]

I don't think that standard is entirely equal. It's all of their responsibilities to safeguard the anvils of doom or not, as the case may be. Thorgrim already provided the Airforce of Karak Eight Peaks; this included the heavily modified gyrocopter made specifically to transport Kragg's Anvil. If we choose to use it to attack with, rather than keep Kragg's Anvil safe, that's a misallocation of resources on our part, not something he should rectify by giving us more gyrocopters.

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Even if you take that position there is only one gyrocpter fitted out specifically to carry an anvil, there are currently two anvils in K8P. More to the point sending one or two gyrocpters not to fight but to evacuate would have been a trivial expenditure for KaK. Yet Thorgrim did not do that even with anvils on the line. Politically this is a massive blunder for him and unlike the consequences of leaving a newly liberated Karak high and dry this is one he could have foreseen and avoided.

 

[Oshha]

Doesn't any forces Thorgrim send have to answer to Belegar and therefore any orders he gives for them to wait on standby to evacuate the anvils, Belegar can just override and order the gyrocopters into battle?

Unless I'm misunderstood how things work, Thorgrim can't just send gyrocopters to evacuate the anvils if things goes poorly because Belegar gets to command those gyrocopters as the local king.

 

[veekie]

That pocket of Mors must have a very good commander.

Might actually be interesting to see Mors hold long enough that the Orks break at the same time as the Orks in the Caldera, and this pocket of Mors gets out and vanishes into the Underway.
And no one knows if they survived or not.

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Like I said previous. Clan Mors is now ironically, reenacting every single step of the fall of a Dwarfhold.
-Surrounded on all sides by orcs and skaven trying to kill them.
-Discipline, equipment, siegecraft and centuries of stockpiling insufficient to keep up with the attrition of being assaulted on all sides at once.
-King/Warlord going on a death or salvation charge against their greatest foe, surrounded by the most loyal, most skilled and best equipped warriors, only to be entrapped, and ground down at a terrible cost, but one which left them dead to the last.
-While the warriors are away, an unexpected strike force arrives from an unexpected angle and annihilates the civilians that the warriors were fighting for.
-And off in a corner, the rearguard holds to their very last breath, waiting for rescue that would never come.

This is a really silly argument. This is twisting what Ranald the protector is pretty badly. Ranald the Protector doesn't care about war which this is. He cares about protecting the common man. None of whom will be here on the front lines. Very often it's the soldiers that Ranald the Protector gets killed.

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Actually, no, dwarf throngs are mostly militia, all working dwarves with most of their lives spent pursuing a trade.
They are mostly common men, except maybe the former ironbreakers, the longbeards and the runewarriors.

We lost Karagril miners. I think it is incredibly unlikely that they were caught outside of the walls, considering they live inside of them. And the Dragons Roar as well as Dwarven Semaphores should have provided more than enough warnings for them. The Broken Tooth somehow punched through our defenses or circumvented them.

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My guess is that they had a recent excavation outside the gates(possibly for the aqueduct) they had to seal back up and got caught outside, because keep in mind, when the orcs attacked they had only an hour's warning to brick up everything.

 

[DragonParadox]

Doesn't any forces Thorgrim send have to answer to Belegar and therefore any orders he gives for them to wait on standby to evacuate the anvils, Belegar can just override and order the gyrocopters into battle?

Unless I'm misunderstood how things work, Thorgrim can't just send gyrocopters to evacuate the anvils if things goes poorly because Belegar gets to command those gyrocopters as the local king.

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Not really no, Thorgrim could second his forces to Belegar but he is not obliged to. He is not subordinate to Belegar.

 

[chocolote12]

Even if you take that position there is only one gyrocpter fitted out specifically to carry an anvil, there are currently two anvils in K8P. More to the point sending one or two gyrocpters not to fight but to evacuate would have been a trivial expenditure for KaK. Yet Thorgrim did not do that even with anvils on the line. Politically this is a massive blunder for him and unlike the continuances of leaving a newly liberated Karak high and dry this is one he could have foreseen and avoided.

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I take the position that he has already made much more than a trivial expenditure of Gyrocopters. We certainly did not make any of the ones we currently have ourselves. If we wish to preserve anything in the Karak that could be preserved with Gyorocopters, we already possess the gyrocopters that he has given us, which are suitable for that role.

This is certainly a dwarven political blunder, but the anvils don't factor into it; he's already fulfilled that duty.

Doesn't any forces Thorgrim send have to answer to Belegar and therefore any orders he gives for them to wait on standby to evacuate the anvils, Belegar can just override and order the gyrocopters into battle?

Unless I'm misunderstood how things work, Thorgrim can't just send gyrocopters to evacuate the anvils if things goes poorly because Belegar gets to command those gyrocopters as the local king.

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Essentially yes. However, by the logic that any Gyrocopter Thorgrim gives him is potentially a fighting Gyrocopter, he's already supplied him Gyrocopters which could be either fighting Gyrocopters or transporting Gyrocopters. The only bar to our access to transporting Gyrocopters is personal preference; if we need them, we can just swap some over.

 

[vsh]

I am going have to reluctantly disagree here. Thorgrim is the one who has the explicit political manifesto of killing dwarfs faster so long as a bunch of old grudges get scribbled out for it. That's pretty villainous in my opinion albeit a tragic villain. It's true Thorgrim trained Belegar, but he trained him to go out and die striking out grudges not actually be the king of a living Karak.

People have been saying 'don't blame Thorgrim, pity him'. I am minded to do both.

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You have to account for the tangible afterlife. Dwarves extinct on Mallus, but getting a nice place in the halls of the ancestors is not the worst thing that could happen, even if it's not what he really wants. Chaos dwarves' fate, dishonoroble extinction and consequent dwarven hell are both much worse. Thorgrim's being practical, in a fashion.

 

[picklepikkl]

Just as a note: there are four gyrocopters in our possession that could airlift the Anvils. These are the specially-built "gyrocarriages," which have a much higher-than-normal cargo capacity. However, using them as gyrocarriages for evacuation purposes is mutually exclusive with using them as bombers in the defense of K8P:

10 Gyrocopters (clattergun)
10 Gyrocopters (cannon)
4 Gyrocarriages (can be used as bombers)

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If we use them as bombers, they are at risk of destruction.

 

[DragonParadox]

You have to account for the tangible afterlife. Dwarves extinct on Mallus, but getting a nice place in the halls of the ancestors is not the worst thing that could happen, even if it's not what he really wants. Chaos dwarves' fate, dishonoroble extinction and consequent dwarven hell are both much worse. Thorgrim's being practical, in a fashion.

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Eh... that's more an article of faith than fact. Not like we have independent verification of the dwarf afterlife existing. We just have verification of the gods existing in some manner.

 

[Eldon]

When it comes to Thorgrim not sending aid it is important to remember we were not asking for nor expecting a massive amount of dwarfs. We were expecting air support. Air support that not only needs very few dwarfs to man-and therefor risks few lives, but is the most likely to survive the battle and can retreat anytime. So the fact he did not even send a single gyrocopter to help harass the orcs or bomb their siege equipment says a lot.

And for him doing what we want and not wasting dwarvern lives on a hopeless cause? I do not personalty see it like that. If it was that he could have urged us to stand strong, or use the underway to stage a fighting retreat back to Barak Varr or Karak Azul. But instead he told us to die well. To me he is not learning not to waste dwarf lives, he has decided to waist our lives instead of his own. After all, in the end he told us to die well. Not hold out, not do what you can to evacuate/survive. No, he told us to die. And the fact he was willing to tell us that while refusing to risk his own is what I find so offensive in his actions.

 

[Chronic]

My guess is that they had a recent excavation outside the gates(possibly for the aqueduct) they had to seal back up and got caught outside, because keep in mind, when the orcs attacked they had only an hour's warning to brick up everything.

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In my opinion there is really no reason to assume convoluted special cases when the easiest explanation is that the Orks just broke through our defenses and inflicted major losses.

 

[DragonParadox]

When it comes to Thorgrim not sending aid it is important to remember we were not asking for nor expecting a massive amount of dwarfs. We were expecting air support. Air support that not only needs very few dwarfs to man-and therefor risks few lives, but is the most likely to survive the battle and can retreat anytime. So the fact he did not even send a single gyrocopter to help harass the orcs or bomb their siege equipment says a lot.

And for him doing what we want and not wasting dwarvern lives on a hopeless cause? I do not personalty see it like that. If it was that he could have urged us to stand strong, or use the underway to stage a fighting retreat back to Barak Varr or Karak Azul. But instead he told us to die well. To me he is not learning not to waste dwarf lives, he has decided to waist our lives instead of his own. After all, in the end he told us to die well. Not hold out, not do what you can to evacuate/survive. No, he told us to die. And the fact he was willing to tell us that while refusing to risk his own is what I find so offensive in his actions.

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I do not think Thorgrim is afraid to risk his life, it's just that as part of his little polity-wide suicide pact he has to be the one to die last or at least among the last so he can lead everyone to their proper deaths against the enemies of the dwarfs.

 

[veekie]

In my opinion there is really no reason to assume convoluted special cases when the easiest explanation is that the Orks just broke through our defenses and inflicted major losses.

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The numbers don't align with anything else, 500 dwarf casualties is possible in open field battle, but not really tunnel fighting, if they were inside Karagril, you'd be looking at "Orcs still stuck in, 500 casualties", not "Orcs ran away, 500 casualties". We'd know very well if they got in.

If the orcs broke through they won't be running away, they'd be dispersing through Karagril. So they didn't breakthrough.
If the orcs fought at the fortification they might or might not flee, but losing 500 dwarves in an hour on a fortification that couldn't be much more than 50 dwarves wide AND had emplaced artillery is rather odd.

The simplest explanation is that dwarves were caught outside the fortifications, but the orcs broke and fled when the Karagril artillery could be turned on them or reinforcements charged them and took out the local big boss.

 

[chocolote12]

Eh... that's more an article of faith than fact. Not like we have independent verification of the dwarf afterlife existing. We just have verification of the gods existing in some manner.

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I mean, humans can ask dead people stuff. Not, like, as a miracle or anything special, it's a pretty standard effect. In fact, the existence of the soul after death is so demonstrable that a lot of people have problems with the dead people proving it without prompting, and then they have to ask the dead people to please calm down and go back to sleep, and sometimes they have to skip the part where they ask politely.

Dwarves do it too. It's just that it's only the evil dwarves who get up without people bothering them, and the dwarves are pretty good at stopping people from bothering them, so you don't see it as much.

 

[Eldon]

I do not think Thorgrim is afraid to risk his life, it's just that as part of his little policy-wide suicide pact he has to be the one to die last or at least among the last so he can lead everyone to their proper deaths against the enemies of the dwarfs.

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Yea, That makes sense, he is still an elf sized hypocrite in my book for not risking his own or of the dwarfs under his authority but fair enough I guess.

 

[ChronOblivion]

When it comes to Thorgrim not sending aid it is important to remember we were not asking for nor expecting a massive amount of dwarfs. We were expecting air support. Air support that not only needs very few dwarfs to man-and therefor risks few lives, but is the most likely to survive the battle and can retreat anytime. So the fact he did not even send a single gyrocopter to help harass the orcs or bomb their siege equipment says a lot.

And for him doing what we want and not wasting dwarvern lives on a hopeless cause? I do not personalty see it like that. If it was that he could have urged us to stand strong, or use the underway to stage a fighting retreat back to Barak Varr or Karak Azul. But instead he told us to die well. To me he is not learning not to waste dwarf lives, he has decided to waist our lives instead of his own. After all, in the end he told us to die well. Not hold out, not do what you can to evacuate/survive. No, he told us to die. And the fact he was willing to tell us that while refusing to risk his own is what I find so offensive in his actions.

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Thorgrim's entire air force is not a negligible cost at all, and if it truly was as hopeless as Thorgrim believed, not sending any assistance is the pragmatically correct move because that sacrifice won't accomplish anything (which we really don't want Thorgrim to keep doing). It would have a political cost, but that still may have been better for the Dwarves. Unfortunately, this is a winnable battle that would've definitely benefitted from that air support, and if we survive or barely get wiped out, it's a fucking political nightmare.

 

[veekie]

On Thorgrim, think of it from his perspective. He's getting the Northern Dwarf flashback. A sliver of hope for their reunification, and then lost forever. Hope is the first step on the path of disappointment and greater loss.
No, better not to hold out pointless hopes. They'll die. Don't waste more lives there when those lives would not be fulfilling any grudges, only adding new ones.

If Belegar had Stressed.
Thorgrim most likely had Depressed AND Fatalistic.

 

[DragonParadox]

I mean, humans can ask dead people stuff. Not, like, as a miracle or anything special, it's a pretty standard effect. In fact, the existence of the soul after death is so demonstrable that a lot of people have problems with the dead people proving it without prompting, and then they have to ask the dead people to please calm down and go back to sleep, and sometimes they have to skip the part where they ask politely.

Dwarves do it too. It's just that it's only the evil dwarves who get up without people bothering them, and the dwarves are pretty good at stopping people from bothering them, so you don't see it as much.

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Ancestral ghosts are not proof of an afterlife, just lingering spirits. Knocks with the dead could also commune with such spirits

 

[chocolote12]

Ancestral ghosts are not proof of an afterlife, just lingering spirits. Knocks with the dead could also commune with such spirits

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Those properly consecrated through the rituals of Morr no longer rise up as the unquiet dead, yet they can still be asked questions. 'Does the afterlife exist' is an odd objection in a setting with a powerful Warp entity whose job is running one for everybody. If Ranald exists and has power over chance, Morr exists and has power over the souls of the dead.

 

[DragonParadox]

Those properly consecrated through the rituals of Morr no longer rise up as the unquiet dead, yet they can still be asked questions. 'Does the afterlife exist' is an odd objection in a setting with a powerful Warp entity whose job is running one for everybody. If Ranald exists and has power over chance, Morr exists and has power over the souls of the dead.

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Fair point.

 

[B_omega]

You have to account for the tangible afterlife. Dwarves extinct on Mallus, but getting a nice place in the halls of the ancestors is not the worst thing that could happen, even if it's not what he really wants. Chaos dwarves' fate, dishonoroble extinction and consequent dwarven hell are both much worse. Thorgrim's being practical, in a fashion.

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On Thorgrim, think of it from his perspective. He's getting the Northern Dwarf flashback. A sliver of hope for their reunification, and then lost forever. Hope is the first step on the path of disappointment and greater loss.
No, better not to hold out pointless hopes. They'll die. Don't waste more lives there when those lives would not be fulfilling any grudges, only adding new ones.

If Belegar had Stressed.
Thorgrim most likely had Depressed AND Fatalistic.

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There are better deeds then just saying 'die well'

He can order the Karak evacuated, he can ask for the non combattants to be evacuated.

He can do a whole lot of things using a gosh-dammed letter then just wishing us to 'die well'.

So, unless proven otherwise, i'm gonna treat this as a betrayal of trust between king and high king.

 

[DragonParadox]

There are better deeds then just saying 'die well'

He can order the Karak evacuated, he can ask for the non combattants to be evacuated.

He can do a whole lot of things using a gosh-dammed letter then just wishing us to 'die well'.

So, unless proven otherwise, i'm gonna treat this as a betrayal of trust between king and high king.

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Thorgrim does not have the authority to order an evacuation.

 

[Chronic]

On Thorgrim, think of it from his perspective. He's getting the Northern Dwarf flashback. A sliver of hope for their reunification, and then lost forever. Hope is the first step on the path of disappointment and greater loss.

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Takling about Northern Dwarves, i'll still advocate for putting together an expedition to find out what happened to them in this timeline. Maybe they still have holds which we could connect to the Karaz Ankor via teleportation tower.

I'm sure we'll do it just after the Nagarythe vacation and my genius plot-scheme to take over a Skaven warlord clan as the Warlord Cluny Fearless, a genius strategist who had his musk-glands ripped out during a battle against goblins and thus never squirts the musk of fear.