- Location
- France
- Pronouns
- He/Him
I'm not sure replacing the divided backstabing underground menace with an united hivemind underground menace is a good idea, even if they are curently our allies.
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.
Omegahugger
Inattentive Idiot
I mean, Abelhelm and Frederik are similar in the sense that they are both male competent rulers who takes way more punishment on the battlefield than they should, but I don't think the comparisons go much further than that.
For one thing Abel chose to become an elector count, whereas Frederick kinda had everything dumped on him. And their relationship with Sigmar went more or less completely opposite ways,
- Location
- Aotearoa
Not without more food. There are Skaven and other corpses for now, but when they run out...
The Hall of Pillars in the Under-Citadel will definitely stop being a Many-Food situation- which is when two different We can coexist. Another organised No-Food (migration) might be in order.
The best case for us is probably relocating the We somewhere they can prey on the remainder Red Fang orcs pressing the Karagril Underway.
fictionfan
Please sir, may I have some Meows?
- Location
- Tempe, AZ
Their silk would be able to buy as much food as they want. Maybe we should give their education more personal attention.
Also they have alot to gain from working with us.
The We lack alot of long term threat potential simply because they don't have hands. Meaning that even with intelligence they can't really use weapons or siege which makes their ability to break dwarf fortification about non-existent no matter how many of them there are.
Also they have alot to gain from working with us.
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- Location
- France
- Pronouns
- He/Him
The We might not be an existential threat to the Karak Anzor, but they would be an existential threat to the Empire. You don't need siege weapon if you already occupy the sewers of every city in the Empire, and unlike the dwarves, the humans have zero underground fortifications. And unlike the skaven the We do not fight among themselves, and they do not forget.
- Location
- The Star Kingdom of Manticore
There is also a massive mountain filled with greenskins right next door. They survived off greenskins before. We offer shelter they offer silk constant pressure on the greenskins. Sounds good for both parties.
Pretty much, sabotage is hard, dwarfs tend to source their workers internally.
Military assault on a river where dwarves have ironclads is suicide. Raiding overland would need to assault dwarves in a defensive position.
Quest
The Great One
- Location
- Everywhere
I dislike this argument. It has never had any basis in reality. Mathilde's duties are what she decides they are and no one will gainsay her.
Her hobbies are what she decides. Her duties are what her liege decides.
Belegar is unlikely to waste his battle-mountain creating, warboss slaughtering, dragon diplomancing super advisor on something as pedestrian as suppressing bandits.
And concerning her hobbies? We have far better things to be doing with Mathilde's extremely limited time.
Quest
The Great One
- Location
- Everywhere
Intrigue from Marienburg itself is simply bandits?
shepsquared
Erratic Aussie
- Location
- Melbourne, Australia
Judging from the recent past, he's more likely to go himself.
- Location
- The Star Kingdom of Manticore
Frankly their intrigue options are limited to disrupt the canal. Dwarfs source work internally and culture pressure makes it near impossible to hire one to ruin something. Marienburg is on the opposite side of the empire which means they can't even apply economic pressure to slow the development. That means they are limited to the more 'crude' ways of slowing down construction. Hiring people to go and try and drive off the dwarfs or to blow up the canal.
However that is a really bad idea because if Barak Varr finds out about that then Marienburg is going to have ironhulls rammed down its neck and it would give the empire an excuse to attack as well since it would a direct attack on the ancient allies of Sigmar. Such a direct attack is one of the worst things they can do. Really all that Marienburg can down is panic and try and figure out how to be a more attractive trade port than Barak Varr. Anything else is likely going to be a worse result for them. That doesn't mean some won't try but if they do it is going to get very ugly for Marienburg very quickly.
13th Bee
Worker
- Location
- Tennessee, USA.
Marienburg will lose some "market-share" as it were, but they aren't going to suddenly have all shipping traffic go elsewhere. There are plenty of routes where it won't make much difference or where Marienburg is still the quicker route. There's also political considerations, like all the trade with Ulthuan almost certainly not going to Barak Varr.
Mopman43
Mountain-Hermit of Nitpeak
- Location
- Vermont
We also don't work for Barak Varr, and Belegar isn't the one building a canal.
It seems unlikely that Barak Varr would request our services if the canal started hitting snags.
So I was rereading the quest, and this AN from way back in the purge of the Haunted Hills is mildly amusing in retrospect. Clearly, Boney's attempt to quash the thread's love affair with Burning Shadows had the opposite effect to what was originally intended.
Omegahugger
Inattentive Idiot
When BoneyM crushes our love*, it just resurges twice as strong!
*I was this close to saying crush instead of love
fictionfan
Please sir, may I have some Meows?
- Location
- Tempe, AZ
It is when we first learned the theory of combining burning shadow with divine power.
But Marienburg is going to completely miss out on the new silk trade, which is going to be a massive chunk of the luxury goods market (and I'm pretty sure Ulthaun goods are almost exclusively luxury goods). At least until the first furious wave of demand is fullfilled, a lot of the money normally used for that is just going to go somewhere else.
Well, it kinda worked, the plan to use it on the citadel was skipped in favor of fire.
But then, we had two crits on tower fanciness, which is basically Ranald's blessing on the wedding. I guess the next step is to procreate and make a battle magic version of burning shadows.
fictionfan
Please sir, may I have some Meows?
- Location
- Tempe, AZ
Bah, battle magic is overrated. Reliable magic is where it's at. We have generally been able to have a bigger impact on battles using reliable spells than someone using battle magic could. Better to get better and better at using less then just throwing more power.
A battle magic version of burning shadows is unlikely to be half as effective as our tower was anyway. All the battle magic on our spell book is limited to medium range. How much is medium range?
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A battle magic version of Burning Shadows would be portable, which our tower is not. And there is in Quest evidence of perfectly reliable battle magic, if your Melkoth (or probably more general: Really good and also the inventor).
Mopman43
Mountain-Hermit of Nitpeak
- Location
- Vermont
How exactly do you think a 'battle magic version' would work?
- Location
- Chicago
- Pronouns
- She/They
True, but also sets up the attitude that viciously backstabbing allies who might become threats later is smart, and if prefer we left that if all things to the skaven.
The We are probably what, less than a hundred hunters and three egglayers so far? Feeding them goats shouldn't be hard, but we may not be sufficiently advanced to make it an understood trade. Punching an offensive into a salient under Black Rock should allow predation because of lack of choke points, and a buffer for the dwarves with the underway behind them...
Overall though, we really need them to get into the mindset of silk=food and away from hunting as primary calorie source. Give them a stake in the success of K8P, make it so they have something to lose. Self-interest should do the rest.
Maybe turn the hunters lose in the Karag the trolls ate, to clean up scraps of greenskin ecosystem?
Mopman43
Mountain-Hermit of Nitpeak
- Location
- Vermont
At the moment, I mostly desire setting them on Black Crag. The We have a tremendous potential for lowering the attrition that Dwarf holds suffer.
The We are quite suited to attrition warfare- as long as they get more biomass back then they lose from hunters dying, and as long as the egglayers are never threatened, they can keep up with attrition indefinitely.
Marienburg isn't really a unified entity of any standard, and more importantly their big stakeholders are focused on the Ulthuan trade, which is completely unaffected, the elves are hardly going to be trading in Barak Varr after all. So what you're looking at is the middle ranking stakeholders who focus on the river trade, and the big players with a finger in the pie.
Expect a spate of Marienburg funded banditry to SLOW the canal construction so that they can re-orient their operations to take into account the new route. Actually getting anyone on site to sabotage it is difficult due to insular dwarf workers, physical sabotage on a canal this size would require extensive use of explosives and be too easy to track back(and also not really hard to dwarves to repair), and political leverage...good luck with that, theres multiple Imperial Electors who'd back the project.
Longer term, the dwarves aren't really suited to hunting down bandit infestations, so if they put enough work in there it'd probably become an endemic problem. It'd be a pure money sink with little return but spite though. So they wouldn't.
fictionfan
Please sir, may I have some Meows?
- Location
- Tempe, AZ
Depends on how successful the bandits are. They would be raiding a very valuable trade route. They might be able to pay for themselves.
Of course spider silk seems valuable enough and light enough that if river bandits become a large problem the dwarfs might just switch to flying it.