I get the feeling that if we transform into a being of raw confusion and uncertainty, made out of shadows and dust, strung together by cobwebs and filled full of mist, that our physical appearance at the time of our ascension isn't going to matter too much. We could slap on an illusion if we felt like being pretty, certainly.
I don't recall anyone ever accusing Marienburg as a polity of acting in a manner that could be construed as intelligent, especially when it comes to their wallets such as here.
We have not, nor has Mathilde ever considered such a thing in character or seen such a thing come up on-screen.
Oh that's simple: they have absolutely no leverage on the Dwarves at all. They are leaning on the Empire as hard as they can in the hopes that they can convince the Dwarves to stop, because their only other option is just to let it happen. They have no good moves.
Is one of them the fact that she's not currently anyone's ancestor?
(Well, she'd have to be a married dwarf, yeah.)
Their good move would be individually finding suckers to buy their Araby Tilea and Estelia trade investments off them and reinvesting that windfall in the New World. Elves still dominate the Cathay trade and their relationship with Ulthuan means they'll still have that going for them, the new world is where their geography shines becaues it doesn't have to deal with all the fucking pirates on the Black Gulf.
You make it sound like the Marienburgers would want to provoke a full Dwarf-Elf conflict.
It seems to be down for everyone in this thread, I've posted a bug report in the main vote tool thread.
It wouldn't. Dreadnoughts would goomba stomp anything Marienburg has, and Ulthuan would want at least Dreadnought-Dragonship parity to even consider the risks of deploying what are irreplaceable super weapons. And Barak Varr has next to no actual naval commitments at the moment besides curtailing Sartosa and patrolling the Blood River.
We're not paying Marienburg money, we're taking our economy and going to our dwarf friend's house. They get nothing from it. And when the canal is done, they never will again. And they know that. They're just trying to get us to pick a fight with them so that their elf friends will come and beat us up again.
As the main person banging that drum and using those specific words, here's what I said on the subject earlier:
So I resent the misstatement of my position when I had in fact explicitly acknowledged this factor. What I was saying in my posts was that this wasn't appeasement, a misconception I saw in a lot of places, and in fact see again in your most recent post. Why on earth do you think this is a Danegeld? Are you under the impression that Marienburg is getting money off of this? Because they're not! Explicitly, they're not! The economic aid from Barak Varr and Zhufbar goes to the Empire. Barak Varr and Zhufbar lose a lot of money, the Empire suffers a recession, but Marienburg gets fucking nothing. No tolls, no fees, no incidental purchases, nothing. It's not a Danegeld, it's a boycott. They want to play chicken because they think they can survive without the Empire for longer than the Empire can survive without them. And they'd be right, unless we get aid from the dwarves.
Their actions mostly make sense if they think the Empire will capitulate immediately (which Graf kind of wants to do, but can't) or if they think this canal will destroy their economic stranglehold and so they have to crush it now or they're doomed, in which case they'll hold on to the bitter end.
Great, now I'm imagining the incipient Second War of the Beard in the context of dwarfporn.
The chapter showed that what seems obvious to us is not so much obvious to the diplomat who approached Karaz-a-Karak and recieved a meh about the whole canal thing, but we know the Barak Varr Dwarves will not say meh, so we gotta tell him that.
