- Location
- Finland
HE most definitely can't order K8P evacuated, and we have zero means to evacuate non combatants.
Other that (from his point of view) sending more dwarves to their deaths, he can't do much beyond "Die well".
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.
Other that (from his point of view) sending more dwarves to their deaths, he can't do much beyond "Die well".
- Location
- Finland
I never knew i must have this in my life.
- Location
- Finland
You said order, not recommend.
And recommendation could be seen as an insult.
Yes, but that goes against the bedrock of his policy that the dwarfs are on their way out. Dwarf lives are to be preserved yes, but only in so far as they can be then used up to strike out more grudges.
- Location
- New Brunswick, NJ
- Pronouns
- He/Him/His
"Non-combatant" is not really a useful term to apply to dwarf populations, who practice a universal adult militia. You can argue that he isn't giving any thought to the human/halfling populations, but, uh, we knew that.
And yeah, dwarf kings are sovereign within their karak. Evacuate or not is Belegar's call to make, not Thorgrim's.
Yeah, if those living in K8Ps really wanted to, they could have packed up and started marching out of the East Gate the same way they came, given that their route towards Barak Varr is entirely uncontested.
Instead they sent the High King a message, asking for help to fight the orcs, because they were planning to fight the orcs instead of abandoning the Karak of their ancestors again.
And the High King's job isn't to dissuade someone who wants to die honorably in the Karak of their ancestors.
He can't evacuate K8P, and it's well within Belegar's options anyway. We are only blocked on the west side, the way out of K8P is safe. "Die well" is a dick move for sure, but the thread is still too harsh on Throgrim.
- Location
- Singapore
Thorgrim's point of view is that the Dwarfs are fucked. No ifs, ands, or buts. They're fucked, they're on the way out, they are stuck in an irrecoverable Tantrum Spiral that sees more dwarfs dead than alive every year at a rate that will see them extinct in a (dwarfen) blink of an eye. And he sees the countless Grudges that are not yet struck out, the lingering, festering wounds on the psyche of his people. His dying people, who are going to kill themselves killing everyone who has ever done them wrong whether or not he does anything. The deed that won him the contest to become High King, the act of restoring contact with the Northern Holds of Kraka Drak, an act of hope, was completely undone when they were wiped out by the Northmen. And by all accounts they died swinging, even though they could have fled southward, with the knowledge that their southern kin would have gladly taken them in.
That is the mindset we are working with here. A King who is so broken by the continued suicide of his people that the best he can hope for is for his people to die with a clear conscience and a good reputation with the umgi living in the flatlands beneath the mountains. The best he can do isn't to stop the deaths or bring hope to his people or even meaningfully reverse their decline; if there ever was a point of no return for the restoration of the Karaz Ankor, it was prooooooobably the Time of Woes. And they fucked it up good. As far as Thorgrim is concerned, he can't change anything except how they go. And he intends to do it slowly, while taking as much of the enemy with him as possible, so he can face the Ancestors and say that he did his best.
Belegar is just one more beardling in a long line of beardlings who thinks he's figured it out, who thinks he can overturn the decline of the Dawi and bring back the glories they had before the Time of Woes. I imagine that the majority of them died on their quests or died not long after with an orange crest and an axe in their hands. Belegar has a better claim than most to actually having the solution - cooperation with the mayfly races and throw cat ninja wizards at the many problems surrounding him - but Thorgrim is skeptical. Of course he would be. This man has been High King since not long after the ascension of the Great War Against Chaos, not long after Magnus the Pious became Emperor and reunified the Empire. This man saw the disastrous rule of Dieter IV. This man saw the way that the umgi insist on tearing themselves apart within as little as a single dwarfen generation. It will take a lot more than a reclaimed hold to restore the Karaz Ankor - and this is the same issue that Belegar has been grappling, mind.
Thorgrim shouldn't be hated or resented, though it is definitely fair and understandable to hate him and resent him. But he's a broken man working with broken tools, who hopes that he can at least do some good for his community before his workshop is finally closed down. Is it any wonder that when he hears that a recently reclaimed hold which doesn't even own half of its own territory, who didn't even have a Dwarf King manning the defense, was being attacked by four hundred thousand orcs and twice that in gnoblars to soak up quarrels and bullets and all the clever contraptions of the Rangers and the Engineers? Twenty to one odds, long odds for even the indomitable Dawi? After he already gave them a squadron of Gyrocopters? With all the other problems he has to deal with, because he's the bloody High King of the Karaz Ankor?
He doesn't mean anything by his letter. He's just given up.
Remember that - at least, if Thorgrim is anything like his canonical counterpart - the person who wants Belegar to prove Thorgrim wrong the most is Thorgrim.
That is the mindset we are working with here. A King who is so broken by the continued suicide of his people that the best he can hope for is for his people to die with a clear conscience and a good reputation with the umgi living in the flatlands beneath the mountains. The best he can do isn't to stop the deaths or bring hope to his people or even meaningfully reverse their decline; if there ever was a point of no return for the restoration of the Karaz Ankor, it was prooooooobably the Time of Woes. And they fucked it up good. As far as Thorgrim is concerned, he can't change anything except how they go. And he intends to do it slowly, while taking as much of the enemy with him as possible, so he can face the Ancestors and say that he did his best.
Belegar is just one more beardling in a long line of beardlings who thinks he's figured it out, who thinks he can overturn the decline of the Dawi and bring back the glories they had before the Time of Woes. I imagine that the majority of them died on their quests or died not long after with an orange crest and an axe in their hands. Belegar has a better claim than most to actually having the solution - cooperation with the mayfly races and throw cat ninja wizards at the many problems surrounding him - but Thorgrim is skeptical. Of course he would be. This man has been High King since not long after the ascension of the Great War Against Chaos, not long after Magnus the Pious became Emperor and reunified the Empire. This man saw the disastrous rule of Dieter IV. This man saw the way that the umgi insist on tearing themselves apart within as little as a single dwarfen generation. It will take a lot more than a reclaimed hold to restore the Karaz Ankor - and this is the same issue that Belegar has been grappling, mind.
Thorgrim shouldn't be hated or resented, though it is definitely fair and understandable to hate him and resent him. But he's a broken man working with broken tools, who hopes that he can at least do some good for his community before his workshop is finally closed down. Is it any wonder that when he hears that a recently reclaimed hold which doesn't even own half of its own territory, who didn't even have a Dwarf King manning the defense, was being attacked by four hundred thousand orcs and twice that in gnoblars to soak up quarrels and bullets and all the clever contraptions of the Rangers and the Engineers? Twenty to one odds, long odds for even the indomitable Dawi? After he already gave them a squadron of Gyrocopters? With all the other problems he has to deal with, because he's the bloody High King of the Karaz Ankor?
He doesn't mean anything by his letter. He's just given up.
Remember that - at least, if Thorgrim is anything like his canonical counterpart - the person who wants Belegar to prove Thorgrim wrong the most is Thorgrim.
If we go Caldera, the Wyvern Caves presumably do not factor in. They're hard to get to, and the orcs will have a way into the caldera for a readily apparent fight.
If we go West Gate, we burn the first 3% or so, maybe a few more, then they splash and scout the entire west side of the mountains for ways in. They will presumably see the defenses set up around the Wyvern Caves, and head for that, even though they have to climb a lot. At which point it becomes a relatively standard fight, for defending a 45-degree slope on top of a cliff.
If we let them into the Caldera, we're waiting until almost all the orcs are in the caldera, and then we're burning almost everything that isn't in the most eastern part of the Caldera to death.
We're planning to inflict such ruinous losses on them with that, that they decide to throw everything they have remaining alive forward, into the shadow of the Caldera lip, at which point they cannot leave that shadowed area, because we'll be burning any orcs attempting to run towards Zilfin, Yar, the West Gate or the Wyvern Caves.
- Location
- Finland
Like, let's be honest here, this whole trip to K8P should have failed, hard.
Our success should have been impossible.
If not for Mathilde it probably would have been impossible.
Like, the best case scenario should have been a peak, two tops, and then decades of constant warfare to push out everyone else.
But, here we are.
You hardly can blame Thorgrim for not expecting basicly the champion of manling god of theft, deception, gambling and protection from tyrants to jump in and tip the scales to such an absurd degree that has happened.
Our success should have been impossible.
If not for Mathilde it probably would have been impossible.
Like, the best case scenario should have been a peak, two tops, and then decades of constant warfare to push out everyone else.
But, here we are.
You hardly can blame Thorgrim for not expecting basicly the champion of manling god of theft, deception, gambling and protection from tyrants to jump in and tip the scales to such an absurd degree that has happened.
I think that Und-Uzgar, East Gates and a peak or two would be an average result. Belegar's got a pretty sizeable expedition even before Mathilde started her shenanigans.
- Location
- Singapore
On hindsight, it's a shame Thorgrim did not have a Mathilde to give him hope in this timeline early in his reign....
He did not have a Frederick Hohenzollern...
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chocolote12
A Penguin Flailing Against The Keyboard Of Life.
Snotlings, actually? Gnoblars are, like, ten times the size of snotlings, not that that's saying much, unless the wiki was using hyperbole when they called them ankle-high...
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No I can't. I can blame him for discounting a significant proportion of the Karak's defenders as of right now. 25000 dwarfs... never mind the sheer gall of discounting the men and halfflings whose comrades bled and died for Karak Eight Peaks, he even did it with King Kazador and his throng.
- Location
- Finland
Sizeable, but not that huge, and no runepriests, little artillery, just a few journeymen and no magisters to guide them.
Us doing the final rounds of messages helped a lot even before we got to K8P.
And we saved a ton of lives through our sabotage (we basicly decimated a goblin clan through single assassination), the thing with Mork, finding those enemy pockets when we critted on mapping.
- Location
- Earth
He wouldn't have Kragg without us making the rounds.
He would've lost
Most importantly, Kragg and Mathilde both voted to attack the Kings Gates, and that decision was only favored in the war council by a small amount. Attacking the Citadel first was almost equally popular. Chances are without Kragg and Mathilde Belegar would have tried to take the Citadel first, and i am not sure how well that would have worked out for him.
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Is there a particular vampire that Thorgrim wants murdered? That's worked for us in the past for improving the mood of authority figures we has poor relations with.
It's not even just Mathilde, if you think about it. Imagine how things would have gone during and/or immediately after the Expedition if the Skaven hadn't been dealing with the aftermath of a civil war.
- Location
- USA
Neferata.
In other words, turns out that the High King is a filthy casual. Disappointing, really.