The thing with The War of the Beard books is that they are despised by a large portion of the Fandom for the obvious retcons like having an elven price telling the Dwarfs about the Dark Elves, having the Dwarfs burn several elven cities, or having Snorri being manipulated by a demon of Tzneech... were not even hinted in any of the previously released lore materials (guidebooks, novels, magazines...), nor have been mentioned ever since...
So the two most probable scenarios were that the author was a High Elf sympathizer, or that they realized that Caledor II (and the whole Elven race for association) took such an immense idiot ball with the whole "Let´s do the literally worst insult that can be done to any dwarf to this ambassador, who also happens to be a relative to the king" that it was pretty much impossible to sympathize with the High Elves, on the grounds of too dumb to live... so they tried to vilify the dwarfs instead.
The perception that most of the Fandom has with Malekith and his involvement in War of the Beard is done by applying Occam´s Razor... I mean he may have planed EVERYTHING, but it seems much more likely that he started that false flag operation to prevent the United forces of the Alliance to crush him, he probably knew that being Caledor II such a fucking idiot he would screw things up diplomatically, but most likely so that the alliance would be compromised or at worst broken... I am pretty sure that not even the Lord of Change Itself could have predicted that things would end up escalating to a full-blown extermination war...
Plus I am pretty sure that he did not like the end result all that much because he wants to be the King of all Ulthuan, and that includes the colonies that were destroyed.
I'm pretty sure his intention was to avoid being destroyed by the Alliance yes, which would entail starting a war, and preferably a war to mutual crippling.
Because he knows dwarves well enough to know that once he did this he'd have to do it perfectly and never ever get caught, OR render them incapable of following through.
The latter is easier to achieve than the former.
That said I rather suspect he expected Ulthuan to win that war, but be gravely weakened in royal prestige.
That's not really true anymore, though, and that fills me with warm fuzzy feelings.
It was a height joke
That's interesting, and makes a lot of sense. It's a massive weakness for the Jades, however, which if known about enemies of the Empire could exploit. Being able to deliberately time campaigns and operations so the colleges are essentially down by 12.5% of their usual strength is a major advantage.
Meh. In this almost-medieval age, Winter is a huge problem for armies in general, not just for mages. If you can mount proper attacks through mud, snow and terrible supply lines, then Winter is the best time to attack because the Imperials will have trouble mustering armies in this season. The fact that the army's 1 or two useful Jade wizards are out for the count isn't significant compared to the fact that the soldiers, cannon, cavalry and sometimes even navy are also completely gimped.
True enough, though it's worth noting that plenty of the Empire's enemies (orcs, chaos, etc) are fully capable of engaging in winter campaigns, and that the loss would hit not just on the battlefield but off it (no Jade post-battle healing, support, etc).
An enemy campaigning exclusively in winter is a greater advantage than any number of Jade Battle Wizards. A lot of the Empire's enemies can survive a winter campaign, but they'd still be disadvantaged by it.
I could see a Vampire or Tomb King campaign having a comparative advantage, because their armies are less harmed than the Empire's attempts to gather armies themselves would be.
Still somewhat, but in every situation except when the Empire is on full defensive and only holding a city passivly with the troops already present it would hurt them more than the Undead.
Skeletons probably have trouble with their footing on ice. And never underestimate the downsides of trying to fight with a bunch of freezer-burned zombies.
I wouldn't underestimate Winter.
Look at the factions:
-Chaos is still mostly human cultists. Yes, their elites can ignore weather, but it takes very unusual scenarios for them to field an army of purely daemons and chaos champions.
-Undead don't die from hypothermia, but cold, wet weather is a lot worse for undead durability than warm flesh, and the rank and file are not known for great agility even in the best of climates.
-Orks FIGHT just fine, but the spores they'd be using to resupply units wouldn't thrive in Winter, and they'd need to burn energy to counteract the weather. Funny how most persistent Waaghs seem to stick to warmer climates huh?
-Skaven avoid the weather entirely, but there being less to forage can be a fatal problem for them strategically.
Not every cargo can wait for a convenient River Warden.
Ah, makes sense. Man, the other companies are getting freaking REAMED.
Mathilde and Panoramia were seated at a table sized for the large folk, in front of a bonfire and an attentive audience of halflings, flanked by the other judges on high stools. Around the fascimalie of a village green were several free-standing ovens, built in the days when the demands of feeding armies were more pressing. The former outdoor kitchen had since become the focal point of the budding community in the East Valley, both a reminder of their contributions to the Triumph, and as a practical place to hold important events. Such as this one.
Incidentlally, after this, Mathilde would smell delicious.
A guy in the story (long before the actual book happened) got god-like powers for a short time and tried to work with them.
He moved the planet too close to the star it orbited and since he noticed that too late to put it back in a better orbit and fix the issue he originally wanted to solve with that act, he instead quickly created a heavy and constant cloud-cover to keep the increased effects of the sunlight at bay.
It kinda worked in that the planet remained inhabitable, but eliminated sunny days forever.
At least that's what I remember from the top of my head.
Eliminating sunny days was secondary to the direct health effects of the cloud cover being mostly ash particles on the biome.
If the progress was the point, I think we'd be a lot more excited. Instead it seems like the satisfaction comes from checking all the boxes on a material safety sheet, with only the vaguest gestures as to what might happen after.
What do we expect it to be useful for? How would it be used? What makes it different than, say, some wyrmblood we happen across?
I think that it could be used to create and test analogues of the portals as the old ones created them, prior to the shattering, with an eye towards understanding how to put the portals back together. But I didn't see any support for that idea when mentioned.
People also seem to want to use it in enchanting, basically as a dye? I'm not sure. It's a magical liquid that changes to gas without residue, so I'm not even sure how to physically apply it to an object, much less how to keep it in a state where it would be a component and not just a temporary source of winds.
The enchanting work is based on figuring out condensation and stabilization for it first, which the first approach would be attempting the windstone methods, or deriving other forms of destabilization. The second that's been raised is using it as a source for non-Ulgu Winds, but that requires advancements in Windherder. The third is using it as a power source for non-Eight Winds forms of magic, but that's WAY behind more research.
We have basically only established the following:
-It can be destabilized by physical damage, but this requires quite a lot of damage. On the other hand any continuous mass will be destabilized because the Winds produced would destabilize more of it.
-It can be destabilized by people, but only because people unconsciously attract the Winds.
-It is inert to runecraft except Runecraft which specifically interacts with magic, in which case we know Valaya's repels it and Spellbreaking destabilizes it.
Look at it as something like petroleum. We have established that it burns when you apply a fire to it. We have estalished that it burns when you apply sparks to it. We have established the first use - burn it. We know distillates of it exist. We don't know what all possible distillates are yet, much less their applications. We know that you can get some of those distillates by other means, certainly you could get turpentine and tar from wood already.
For now, selling some to people who need fuel isn't really a problem yet. Habitually using it all would be though. Giving away the source doesn't make any sense unless Mathilde bites it right now, in which case Thorek is probably the most responsible recipient.
