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Warhammer Fantasy: Divided Loyalties - an Advisor's Quest

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Alas, poor Johann. He's got a shot to salvage this, if he does the follow-up correctly, and so giving him time to recover should be the top priority for his action slot - and more pragmatically, he wouldn't be able to contribute much in his current state anyhow.

Let's translate the We-talk.

BoneyM said:
"Karak-We-green-food is five-eighths sufficient," the We spokesspider relays to you from its position of pride on one of the We's golden walls of tesselated coins, "Hunting in..." it pauses as it considers the phonetics, which is no mean feat for a species that communicates non-verbally. "'Black-Crag' is two-eighth sufficient. Final one-eighth from Karak-We-gold-food. This is a suitable many-food."
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They're getting five-eighths of their food from scavenging the hallways, two-eighths from actively hunting live greenskins in Karak Drazh, and are buying the last eighth with the gold from silk sales.

It's a stable arrangement, and they're happy to continue the alliance.

(As a side note, I wonder if the We have a natural predisposition to counting stuff in base 8 groupings, the same way humans find decimal easy?)

"Are the Black-Crag-green-four-legs becoming more sometimes-not-food?" You'd consulted your notes on the speech patterns of the We in preparation for this meeting.
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"Are the Drazh greenskins getting harder to hunt over time?"

It's a natural question for Mathilde to ask, as an intelligence agent - she wants to know what the orcs response to the spider incursions has been like.

"Green-four-legs-sometimes-food are very sometimes," it says, and though the circlet does not relay tone, you can sense the frustration with greenskin unpredictability that is common to so many of their enemies.
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"They're tricky," basically. Although "very sometimes" is an excellent description that I hope Mathilde steals for her own use.

"But the We have hunted green-four-legs for many-Echo. If they become more sometimes-not-food, we will learn how to make them more sometimes-food. We do not wish a no-food."
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"They're tricky, but we've hunted them for a long time. If they become harder prey, we'll become better hunters. We'll make this alliance work."

"Nor do we," you say with a smile, and mean it. The We are undeniably strange beings, but under their alien mindview was a charming and unselfish simplicity of being. "Into what are you growing your not-food-gold?" They'd stumbled onto the concept of accounts, by splitting their Karak-We-gold into food-gold and not-food-gold. You're starting to wonder how the economists of the University of Altdorf would react to the creatures.
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"Growing gold" into things, is a fascinating way of conceptualizing the idea of savings. At this rate, when K8P reopens those foreign deposit accounts, it'll be the We running the bank.

"We wish to know of not-We-Wes," it says, with a happy chitter of its mandibles. "The Karak-We is part of the Karaz-We, which is in a many-food with the Empire-We, which itself is made up of smaller-Wes which are made of smaller-Wes which are made of smaller-Wes. And each not-We is alone in its We, but it still seeks bigger-We.
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They want to buy books with their money. No wonder they get along so well with Mathilde. :V

I suspect the We would be big fans of the Library idea to store knowledge in. Maybe the Library can hook into the Waystone network somehow and allow the knowledge to be retrieved from anywhere, like some sort of World Wide Web? :V

And yeah, they've got the general gist of the political situation down, in their own terms. Glad to see that they know more or less what's up.

It is frightening and inspiring. Any other-We with a single Egg-Layer would be frightened, would seek only the safest food. But not-We are only ever one not-We, but they still hunt, and they hunt such that if they were other-We, we would consider it mating-suitability. Even you hunt, and you are the most-Echo of the not-We, who must know how only one you are."
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The We are shocked that beings with a non-distributed conscious are willing to risk themselves, and become skilled warriors. Even Mathilde fights, and she's the wisest of the not-We, so she knows how risky it is.

You take a moment to digest that. "I do know how only one I am," you say. "But I will never not be only one. So I would rather hunt well, than not."
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She knows the dangers, but for her, risk is unavoidable, so she chooses to pursue excellence instead of hiding away.

It chitters again. "We are glad to be in a many-food with your Karak-We."
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I'm really looking forward to seeing how the We develop over time. It seems inevitable that they'll eventually have enough individuals to split into two groups, and I wonder how they'll differ from each other in personality and the choices they make.
 
BoneyM said:
You know right away.

Johann squeezes the bulb on an end of a pipe that opens the funnels, and somehow manages not to flinch as twin strands of gold with the consistency of honey stretch towards his held-open eyes, but though screaming is entirely appropriate given the situation, you've heard more than enough screams in your time to tell between terror and agony. The funnels snap shut as Johann drops the bulb, and you pull him out from under the mechanism by his feet so that the still-suspended gold can splash against the bench instead of Johann's face. But after that, all you can do is hold him as he thrashes and screams and his eyeballs boil away in his head.
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Okay, yeah. Ouch. Can we get him like... a service dog or something? Probably going to need it.
BoneyM said:
"We wish to know of not-We-Wes," it says, with a happy chitter of its mandibles. "The Karak-We is part of the Karaz-We, which is in a many-food with the Empire-We, which itself is made up of smaller-Wes which are made of smaller-Wes which are made of smaller-Wes. And each not-We is alone in its We, but it still seeks bigger-We. It is frightening and inspiring. Any other-We with a single Egg-Layer would be frightened, would seek only the safest food. But not-We are only ever one not-We, but they still hunt, and they hunt such that if they were other-We, we would consider it mating-suitability. Even you hunt, and you are the most-Echo of the not-We, who must know how only one you are."
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Spooder friends are best friends.
 
Lupercal said:
Best guess is that they find the dwarfs and humans cooprative "hunting" inspiring (and sexy). If they were reduced to a single body they think that they would be to paranoid to cooperate that way with other Wes and would hide while trying for easy prey.
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There is also the fact that immediately after praising the humans/dwarves, they specify their respect for the mc.

Which mean that by We standards, the one with the highest *snrk* "mating-suitability" is mathilde.

TFW your admirer and potential lover goes from someone like Anton... to literal giant spiders that consider how good you are at killing things "sexy".

Bring a whole new meaning to the saying "bumping uglies", that's for sure...
 
ichypa said:
...now this is pretty damn interesting. I'd like to advocate looking into how the We communicate next turn, because it looks like they can see something that we don't.
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Having give this a further think instead of going to bed, it think it's probably one of three things:

1. Mathilde is just the most magical being that they know of, and since the We presumably uses magic to communicate, we would logically be capable of being the most-Echo
2. The We can somehow perceive all the secret messages stuffed into Mathilde's head, and therefore would be most-Echo by dint of having the most external memories/knowledge distributed into her brain
3. The We can somehow perceive our Link of Psyche with Wolf; and while we are capable of drawing upon his sense, memory, and mental capacity in a way that would probably seem similar to itself to the We, we are not truly one with him, and never will be.

Edit: 1/3 Weber'd
 
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fictionfan said:
Might be referring to wolf.
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I think you're right. I had been really confused about why the We singled Mathilde out as the most-Echo not-We. My best theory had been that they just meant "you understand our way of thinking better than anyone else." But I think you're right and they're aware of the familiar bond between Mathilde and Wolf, and it is the most like the Echo that any of the not-We have.

Anyway, I am going to be a responsible grown-ass man who has work in the morning and go to bed. I would appreciate it if someone posted this library plan when the vote opens:

[ ] [LIBRARY] Rune Magic (Imperial Extensive), Powerstones (Imperial Extensive), Waystones and Henges (Dwarf Antiquarian)

Reasoning can be found here.

I also want to buy a powerstone this turn so we have it on hand for when we do research on "what happens if you poke AV with solidified Wind-magic":

[ ] [COLLEGE] Powerstone (5 Favour)

Gnight all, if you catch me reacting to posts in the next few hours please yell at me.
 
I continue to be fascinated by the idea of frikkin telepathic spooders figuring out derivatives and fractional-reserve banking before the rest of the planet. Mathilde would be giggling for years at the enormity of the prank she'd helped perpetrate on the empire's financiers.
 
fictionfan said:
He has service rats.
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Service animals require very specific training and very specific personalities from the pets. Neither of which has been applied to the ratdogs.

I love my dog, but he wouldn't be suitable to walk a blind man down the street.

Vebyast said:
I continue to be fascinated by the idea of frikkin telepathic spooders figuring out derivatives and fractional-reserve banking before the rest of the planet. Mathilde would be giggling for years at the enormity of the prank she'd helped perpetrate on the empire's financiers.
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Think we could get them to invest in the EIC?
 
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Luminous said:
Service animals require very specific training and very specific personalities from the pets. Neither of which has been applied to the ratdogs.

I love my dog, but he wouldn't be suitable to walk a blind man down the street.
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I don't think service dogs would exist yet in-setting. At least, not as they do today.
 
The Golden Man said:
There is also the fact that immediately after praising the humans/dwarves, they specify their respect for the mc.

Which mean that by We standards, the one with the highest *snrk* "mating-suitability" is mathilde.

TFW your admirer and potential lover goes from someone like Anton... to literal giant spiders that consider how good you are at killing things "sexy".

Bring a whole new meaning to the saying "bumping uglies", that's for sure...
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Lets be fair here. Johann absolutly declaired us to be his best friend by inviting us to sit in on his transhuman upgrade. We were directly compered to his parental figure in terms of emotional intimicy, so I think we have a pretty good shot of a romantic relationship with him.
 
BoneyM said:
"and I had my former Master with me for my lungs. But she's busy siccing Golden Hounds on ghouls, and this was the only timeslot for the- for some of the tools."
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BoneyM said:
I just..." He looks up at you, and you can't help but notice the bags under his eyes before he turns back to the metal. "Someone to be here, and to get me back to the Karak if it goes wrong."
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You know, I find the implications of these statements very heartwarming. Johann is pretty blatantly implying that next to his old master, we were next person he thought of for moral support. Helps to remind me that even if we haven't devoted many socialization actions to him, we have still been closely working with him for the better part of four years now as are primary magical research partner, so Johann probably considers us a close friend.

Edit: And kinda Ninja's by Lupercal, thanks for the hugs though!
 
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