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Warhammer Fantasy: Divided Loyalties - an Advisor's Quest

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Well, since the gyrocopters did not clue them in, I wonder if the sun moving to help burn them will be properly interpreted as revenge for that bird the boss ate that one time.

"We told him, feathery things are not for eating, bad juju this is boss, but did he listen? No, you crazy old borker, too many red fungus he said, always omen this omen that, well who is laughing now?" (Translated from orcish).

Also, what are the chances that a surviving Birdmuncha goes "well that was fun, guess I'll go look for that dragon now"?
 
BoneyM said:
Burning Shadows is selective in what it burns, and the criteria used can be incredibly vague or incredibly specific. The dominant theory is that the spell draws information from the caster's mind to differentiate targets from non-targets. Either something else is going on here or there's a significant flaw in that theory. Because for an instant that stretches into what feels like hours, you glimpse one greenskin after another for a fraction of a second each and mentally confirm that, yes, it is an enemy of the Dawi. Apart from some being Orcs and some Snotlings, the only variation is the scarce handful of vultures mixed among them, following hopefully in the Waaagh's wake and likely destined to be very disappointed. And throughout the entire process you can feel the energy of the Waaagh like an unpleasant vibration in your teeth.
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Whew. It seems Gazul takes the approach of never trivializing deaths, even those of monstrous enemies. No wonder Gunnars approaches everything with gravitas.

Either that or Burning Shadows functions very differently when scaled up to battle magic.
In the instant before a half a million deaths, the Karak suddenly seems very, very small, and you can feel the attention of immense powers upon it. One is as familiar to you as your own soul, and you can feel His amusement and anticipation. Another has just thrummed through your soul, and His attention is already moving on. A third eyes the Karak dubiously, and nudges His brother to go deal with it, who nudges back, no, you go deal with it, and the two fall to bickering.
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Ranald, ironically even more gung-ho than Gazul despite his general tendency toward pacifism. Gazul moving on, some evidence that that it wasn't Burning Shadows requiring Mathilde to confirm every single enemy turned to ash. Mork and Gork, feuding as always.

(one, encompassed within a single body but no less powerful for it, moves through halls of stone long remembered, a pat on a shoulder here, a gruff word of encouragement there)
(one, brooding and angry and indecisive, has a fraction of His attention here, but in the same way that a fraction of your attention might linger on the throb of an old scar)
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Grombrindal, keeping morale up.
And... almost certainly Sigmar. Angry, brooding and indecisive but with no real pieces in this particular game except for Mathilde, the scar of a past failure of his.

But despite all that attention, the only one acting is you. So you act. The world goes dark. The membrane between what you consider reality and the realm of souls and gods ripples as five hundred thousand links between the two are severed at once.

And then you are only Mathilde again, and wince as the room takes on the feel of being slightly too sharp and bright, all the Ulgu that filled it drained away in an instant.
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Humans who have seen enormous death or accepted the coming of their own have Shyish running deep through them, last I recall. Roswita, for example.

Half a million dead, every one of them killed personally and individually, but in an instant. I doubt it'll ever come up because anyone with windsight like Mathilde has learned the value of discretion, but the Purple in her soul after this must be terrifying to behold.
 
MooseHowl said:
Ranald, ironically even more gung-ho than Gazul despite his general tendency toward pacifism. Gazul moving on, some evidence that that it wasn't Burning Shadows requiring Mathilde to confirm every single enemy turned to ash. Mork and Gork, feuding as always.
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i mean Ranald is the protector and we just fired a death tower to protect all people in K8P
 
Sinsystems said:
So correct me if I'm wrong but aren't Snotlings the most chaff of chaff with them having terrible stats in general and next to no leadership? I ask since I'd imagine that they are highly likely to panic the moment they realize what just happened.
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The worst case scenario is probably all of them trying to hide in the tunnels they dug and somehow the tunnels starting to spawn exploding spore sacks or becoming hazardous terrain some other way.
Without orcs ordering to do stuff, they're less of a conventional threat and more just problematic to have around in such absurdly large numbers.
 
the Snotlings on their own couse the same problem a masive infestation of pests causes, with the few orks that are still here with them they are just literal canon fodder untill the orks are all gone then they are pests
 
Given the Snotlings were tunneling, and not the orcs themselves, we might just be dealing with a Grand Army of Snotlings trying to charge a heavily-fortified Dwarvish Karag.
 
mouli said:
This absolutely demands an omake. Either from Ork Quest PoV or something else, I dunno. But the Wrath of the Birds is just too good to pass up.
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Do you know that scene in Return of the King where Faramir and the remnants of Osgiliath's garrison are riding across the Pelennor to Minas Tirith, hounded by Nazgul and saved at the last moment by Gandalf? Imagine that, except it's orcs and snotlings running back to Karak Drazh, shadowed by gyrocopters and bombers, saved at the last minute by Gandork the Green driving off the metal monstrosities.
 
Silver719 said:
Given the Snotlings were tunneling, and not the orcs themselves, we might just be dealing with a Grand Army of Snotlings trying to charge a heavily-fortified Dwarvish Karag.
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i mean there are still orks outside the west gate and some overseers in the tunnels but yeah no real big threat since we killed a load of their leadership so infighting will likely happen when they all find out that 500K of them got dusted
 
Silver719 said:
Given the Snotlings were tunneling, and not the orcs themselves, we might just be dealing with a Grand Army of Snotlings trying to charge a heavily-fortified Dwarvish Karag.
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There are orcs in the tunnels:
BoneyM said:
Some of the Orcs are disappearing into the tunnels now.
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But, uh, yeah. This plan worked out pretty well. I don't think we're going to get to phase three. I'm not sure we're going to reach phase two.
BoneyM said:
You give Wolf a pat, inform him that he's now in command
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...I do this every time I'm at my girlfriend's and we leave the apartment. As far as I know, my girlfriend's cat is not a familiar. But it's important to make sure the cat knows that she's in charge.
 
Personally, I think the brothers are the dwarf gods, figuring out who should be dealing with this, and the wounded one is Mork.
 
Wasn't there a list of notable kills on a threadmark somewhere? I thought it was on the Character page, but now I can't find it.
 
picklepikkl said:
I think it's likeliest to be the Horned Rat. The personality fits, and the second line isn't saying that this place is an old scar, but rather that it causes the same sort of dull twinge of pain to the god as an old scar might.
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Mathilde has seen Horned Rat before inside that one loyal Council Agent.
If that was Horned Rat, I think she'd know.

Abhorsen said:
Wasn't there a list of notable kills on a threadmark somewhere? I thought it was on the Character page, but now I can't find it.
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Warhammer Fantasy: Divided Loyalties - an Advisor's Quest Fantasy - Users' Choice!

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here you go.
 
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Aftermath
  • Apocrypha
    • (several days later)

    Martin Bramblethrasher shifted his grip, crouching down and setting his footing, staring over the rim of his wheelbarrow at the orc in front of him.

    "Haaaaaa-" He shouted, springing forward. The ground was good this time- no unexpected rocks or dips to rob his rush of power and direction. "-Ahhhhh!"

    He hit cleanly at the ankles, shoving the wooden handles of his barrow down and out, the entire corpse suddenly losing cohesion and crumbling neatly, choppa and all, into the tub. He stepped back, grinning, and cast a look out over the caldera. All around him halflings were puttering about with wheelbarrows, shovels, and brooms. Most of the poor fools, having accidentally crumbled their targets, were moving them one shovel at a time. Martin grinned again and raised his voice.

    "One clean blow, just like the dwarves do it! Come on halflings, show some skill!"

    A chorus of groans and jeers answered back as he smuggly lined up the front edge of his barrow with the next.

    "Haaaaa-Ah!"

    --------------

    The dwarf fancied himself an artist. But not like those strawbeard fossils who busied themselves carving bas reliefs and etching endless geometries into soft metal- No! For true art was in capturing the moment, the pathos and majesty, as history turned on its axis. Not in calling back memory to the moment, but in capturing the thing in itself, allowing the later dwarves to not just imagine but to see and experience the very zeitgeist!

    "Hey you! Off from here! There are plenty others!"

    Now if only his largest obstacle weren't halfling children! Running about with branches and broomsticks pretending to be dwarves and fighting orcs, the endless ashy ranks falling to their enthusiasm and shouted stories and wrecking all the detail!

    He harumphed, turning back to his true find, his masterpiece, the work that would secure his name for a hundred generations. A crew of other dwarves he had bribed and bullied were setting up canvas screens, to hold off the destruction that would come eventually from the wind, but he had eyes only for the pump wagon they were surrounding.

    What must have been Birdmuncha the Really Zoggin Big half-stood atop it, suprise evident in his body language and blank metal mask turned to Karag Nar, one hand braced and the other out thrust, pointing. The moment captured couldn't have been more perfect.

    And if the combination of apprentice preservation runes and delicate brushes with pitch and varnish were enough, it would be here for ages, for every dwarf who had ever heard the story to walk up to and look at, not just to imagine, but to look into the face of the warboss and ask it-

    "So, is this when you realized you fucked up?"
     
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  • Apocrypha
    • Someone observed that now only some Elves helping out are needed to perfect the trifecta of Elves, Goblins, and Skaven all being of more aid to K8P's defense than Thorgrim was. Consider that Mathilde, as a product of the Imperial Colleges of Magic, which is an institution founded with the crucial assistance of the High Elves, just obliterated half of the Waaagh with her magic using a device built with the assistance of said Colleges.
     
    BoneyM said:
    6. Orcs speak in hushed whispers of the vengeance from the skies for that bird the Boss ate.
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    I love both the humor of the line, and the attention to detail that you put into making this even a possible result considering how unlikely it was to ever become relevant even if rolled
    BoneyM said:
    5 and 6? They must only have one flag for 5.
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    This on the other hand shows that Matilde's dwarven infection has not progressed far enough. I really doubt the dwarves would be missing a flag. My bet is that it was a matter of them tracking the numbers in far smaller increments 5s of percent, and only updating the message at even increments of 5. But then an update came and to make the counter precise they had to skip past 55 to get to 56
     
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    Glau said:
    The dwarf fancied himself an artist. But not like those strawbeard fossils who busied themselves carving bas reliefs and etching endless geometries into soft metal- No! For true art was in capturing the moment, the pathos and majesty, as history turned on its axis. Not in calling back memory to the moment, but in capturing the thing in itself, allowing the later dwarves to not just imagine but to see and experience the very zeitgeist!

    "Hey you! Off from here! There are plenty others!"

    Now if only his largest obstacle weren't halfling children! Running about with branches and broomsticks pretending to be dwarves and fighting orcs, the endless ashy ranks falling to their enthusiasm and shouted stories and wrecking all the detail!

    He harumphed, turning back to his true find, his masterpiece, the work that would secure his name for a hundred generations. A crew of other dwarves he had bribed and bullied were setting up canvas screens, to hold off the destruction that would come eventually from the wind, but he had eyes only for the pump wagon they were surrounding.

    Birdmuncha the Really Zoggin Big half-stood atop it, suprise evident in his body language and blank metal mask turned to Karag Nar, one hand braced and the other out thrust, pointing. The moment captured couldn't have been more perfect.

    And if the combination of apprentice preservation runes and delicate brushes with pitch and varnish were enough, it would be here for ages, for every dwarf who had ever heard the story to walk up to and look at, not just to imagine, but to look into the face of the warboss and ask it-

    "So, is this when you realized you fucked up?"
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    You know I can just imagine that being a fantastic commemoration.
     
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