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Warhammer Fantasy: Divided Loyalties - an Advisor's Quest

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chocolote12 said:
I mean, in terms of maximum emotional impact, I can understand a feeling of 'not having worked for it'. Getting the Dragon Flask took an insane amount of favor, which we accumulated by doing a lot of things the colleges liked, but because we bought it outright even a potion that gives us an exploding laser face was pretty boring.
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Right, so we have to have drama and tension before we can gain anything, how about the fact that some things can lead to drama and tension in the future. Having access to Arcane khazalid opens up plot avenues at Karak Dum that wont exist with out it, those plot elements themselves being the drama and tension that would be missing from learning the language in the first place although honestly.

Making every action require drama and tension is daft, some things just aren't dramatic and demanding every thing be dramatic and have tension would be counter productive. What should Mathilde have to learn Arcane Khazalid whilst Thorek and Kragg stare on disapproving and throwing rocks at her every time she makes a mistake to fill the scene with drama?
 
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chocolote12 said:
I mean, in terms of maximum emotional impact, I can understand a feeling of 'not having worked for it'. Getting the Dragon Flask took an insane amount of favor, which we accumulated by doing a lot of things the colleges liked, but because we bought it outright even a potion that gives us an exploding laser face was pretty boring.
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Fair, but it would warp the narrative for us to look for 'cool deeds that would give us X'. The system of abstracted favor and reputation exists for a reason and it is to give us some control on how we use Mathilde's hard fought influence. If we had t go out of our way for every reward the narative and character focus would be all over the place 'we need do hire a grey lord magister to learn a spell, guess it is time to drop everything and dive into courtly intrigue'.
 
SpaceSloth said:
We just need to blow up something cool.
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Pretty much.
SuperSonicSound said:
Right, so we have to have drama and tension before we can gain anything,
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Not really my point, no. Sorry for the misunderstanding. Cool things can be given at the start of stories or the end of them. We just need to use the dragon flask to tell a cool story and then it'll be alright again.

Think of drama and rewards like the carbonation and the syrup. A soft drink needs both in order to be the most satisfying. If there's no syrup the drink isn't sweet, but without the carbonation it quite literally falls flat.
 
Glau said:
It continues the story. Cashing out that favor-pot without furthering characters, relationships, politics, worldbuilding- pick one is what one AP (plus whatever about of dwarf favor is needed) gets us in basic word count. I want more from being granted the keys to the secrets of the ancients.
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I mean logically the act of learning it would have to get us both character interaction with our teacher, likely Thorek and worldbuilding from the anciant arcane tongue.
 
chocolote12 said:
Think of drama and rewards like the carbonation and the syrup. A soft drink needs both. If there's no syrup the drink isn't sweet, but without the carbonation it quite literally falls flat.
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Yea, but I already said as much.

Not every thing needs the drama and tension front loaded, learning arcane Khazalid is one of those things that could have it rear loaded in terms of what it means later on when we have to make decisions about what we do in the future.



Glau said:
It continues the story. Cashing out that favor-pot without furthering characters, relationships, politics, worldbuilding- pick one is what one AP (plus whatever about of dwarf favor is needed) gets us in basic word count. I want more from being granted the keys to the secrets of the ancients.

I think this is the core of our disagreement? I think the execution of a thing, rather than the motives behind it, is what makes it mercenary.
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Full honesty, I literally cannot comprehend your view point it feels so alien to me, that intent is irrelevant.

I feel like your definition of mercenary and the implications it holds are utterly different to mine and so I literally don't understand what you mean by it now. When I see that word I take the meaning "An action taken to earn money or further themselves, something that is self serving." So the intent not being self serving utterly precludes that.

Also I think you're over hyping the value of Arcane Khazalid for Mathilde. I don't believe it will be equivalent to being granted to the keys to secrets of the ancients. Ultimately I expect it to have a few niche applications and depending on how BoneyM world builds things it may be utterly worthless to Mathilde in the long run and only have value in what it means she can achieve in reconquering dwarven holds and maaaybe in the waystone project.
 
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That's fair, and I've said I'm comforted by the fact of the longer action chain.

Tell you what: I do think 'tell me how to sort the wheat from the chaff' is a reasonable request, hopefully to Kragg. I'll vote for spending an AP towards that as the first of an arcane khalazid chain, to get it started and to let the expedition invest us and the narrative into it's completion. (Maybe we meet a cool npc tutor along the way for the 2/3 level?)

I'll vote for it, but I want sword style and early meeting in pragg as well, so we'll see what options are.
 
Learning arcane Khazalid would be great, and I'm fully down for it. After the expedition. I just don't think the partially learned version is enough to justify the rush to do it before. Unlike Branulhune style, we can't develop it on the way, and any boosts we get for it probably won't materialize until we have the finished thing.
 
I think we have plenty of other actions to take that are more beneficial to the expedition than arcane khazalid.

Given people vote to have extended contact with the Kurgan, Kurgan Diplomacy increases in importance.
Seeing through Pall of Darkness is wanted for a chance at improving Windsight.
Joining the Expedition early is desired so we are there when that Melting Pot of Dawi, Knightly Orders, Journeymen, Ice Witch, Dragon and the Elf meet each other so we can be there for the unavoidable culture clash.
 
Kurgan diplomacy isn't useful as we'd need to get two AP into it to grab that skill and it's even more niche than Arcane Khazalid, we'd never use the skill again once out of the expedition at least Arcane Khazalid has the small potential to be more widely useable in Drazh and other Karak if we do solo scouting missions.

Like I'm usually for actions like that which would provide diplo boosts as I think it would be super helpful for the future elfcation but I think we're unlikely to ever go back to the chaos wastes and so there's no impetus to finish the skill off, I also think a partial learning in the skill isn't likely to help much, maybe I'm being unfair though?
 
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I mean, I understand and share Glau's feeling that it does feel a little out of nowhere for Mathilde to decide that she is going to request the secrets of a language that has never once been directly mentioned onscreen (though the fact that we have Esoteric Karaz Ankor books means we might, in fact, know it exists). That said, I expect that if the thread votes for it, the writing would look like this:
Pickle's BoneyM impression said:
You've spent some time chewing over your failure to recruit any runesmiths for the Karag Dum expedition. On the Karak Eight Peaks expedition, several chambers required Kragg's knowledge to unseal them, and while you didn't hear about any runic traps that required disarming, that doesn't mean that such traps don't exist and might not be lurking in Karag Dum, deployed as a defensive measure by the "Runemasters" and dangerous to your own people. It is of course impossible to learn to smith runes yourself, but it occurs to you that it might not be impossible to be taught to recognize them, and with that in mind you arrange a meeting with Thorek.
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As opposed to:
SkeletalN (BoneyM's evil twin) said:
You stroll into Thorek's workshop wearing robes with WILL TRADE DAEMON BLOOD FOR SACRED SECRETS printed on the front. "Yo, T-dog, gimme the deets on Arcane Khazalid," you say.
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Because Boney is a skilled quest-writer and is quite good at translating OOC planning into an IC train of thought that makes sense in the context of Mathilde's recent actions and experiences.

(That said, I remain skeptical that 1 AP's investment into a 2-3 AP task is a better use of our time than other things we can do, like "scout" or "other forms of self-improvement" or "hire other people." We can even, if we are sufficiently desperate, straight-up hire the services of a runesmith during the purchase round.)
 
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picklepikkl said:
(That said, I remain skeptical that 1 AP's investment into a 2-3 AP task is a better use of our time than other things we can do, like "scout" or "other forms of self-improvement" or "hire other people." We can even, if we are sufficiently desperate, straight-up hire the services of a runesmith during the purchase round.)
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Well if we're not going to learn Arcane Khazalid we should outright just hire a runesmith to go with us.
 
das_slash said:
The Skaven, who have been in a war with them for, well, a long time, think he is (was?) their foremost expert in fighting them.

I'm sure we could get more pointed advice.
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We're not going to be in charge of the martial side of the expedition so I don't think it makes sense to learn a martial skill Tactics I assume for chaos dwarves. It's also likely to take multiple AP as well so assuming it fits the basic - Advanced - etc then we'd need 3ap to get +5 to combat rolls.

Do you think it likely we'll be in charge of the military decisions for the expedition?
 
SuperSonicSound said:
We're not going to be in charge of the martial side of the expedition so I don't think it makes sense to learn a martial skill Tactics I assume for chaos dwarves. It's also likely to take multiple AP as well so assuming it fits the basic - Advanced - etc then we'd need 3ap to get +5 to combat rolls.

Do you think it likely we'll be in charge of the military decisions for the expedition?
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I think, that should the unexpected happen, It would be nice to have someone who knows how to fight them, some kind of master of the lore, who the commanders could turn to for advice.

And, yeah, if the past is any indication.
 
LightLan said:
Only three people need to die for that :V
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I guess but given we'll be ensconced in the wagons if those three people have died the expedition is probably over allready.


Mopman43 said:
To be fair, it's happened before. Twice.
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Yes, when Belegar literally left the Karak with his military advisors on a venture outside of K8P.

storryeater said:
Historical patterns indicate that yes
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Historical patterns don't fit here unless you expect Borek and every one to leave the expedition utterly unattended for some reason, but sure. I'm aware we were in charge when Belegar was dealing with Riverine piracy in the border princes.
 
SuperSonicSound said:
I guess but given we'll be ensconced in the wagons if those three people have died the expedition is probably over allready.




Yes, when Belegar literally left the Karak with his military advisors on a venture outside of K8P.



Historical patterns don't fit here unless you expect Borek and every one to leave the expedition utterly unattended for some reason, but sure. I'm aware we were in charge when Belegar was dealing with Riverine piracy in the border princes.
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We also took over the fight against Drakenhof when Abelhelm died, which is probably the more relevant example.
 
Given the very good results we had for scouting the steppes, I'm tempted to go for a "Scout the Road of Skulls" action next turn.

"Briefvoice, don't you mean Scout near Karag Dum?"

Nope! Given that we'd have to "ride in," I think that going that deep into chaos while alone might a little too risky for me. The Road of Skulls, though, seems like a good portion of the journey to get some first-hand experience with. We can look for parts of it that aren't a problem for ordinary trading caravans but might be troublesome for steam tanks. We can get a sense of potential resupply points and up-to-date information for recents raids or other events of notes.
 
das_slash said:
A more productive use of our time would be to get classes from Qrech about fighting chaos dwarves, just in case.
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More than that, a quick look at Qrech's first interrogation mentions that he was somewhere between Hell Pit to the northwest and Zharr Naggrund to the Southeast. Which is a long distance according to the silk road map, but could mean he was actually pretty close to the part of the silk road we'll be taking. It's not quite his area of expertise, but he may have picked up general knowledge of threats in the area in addition to his speciality.

SuperSonicSound said:
Do you think it likely we'll be in charge of the military decisions for the expedition?
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Gotri explicitly discussed the possibility we might need to mutiny with us. So, I'd say that's very much a "yes." And that's beyond the fact that we can just... share the results of our intel with Borek and the other expedition leaders.
 
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