Not quite that clear cut.
Spending 6 favor hires one for a job.
Not necessarily risking their lives for said job.
Hmm. I have to admit that hiring someone for a civilian job and hiring the same person to something risky like a military expedition should not cost the same. Especially since jobs arw usually "do a specific thing" or "teach me something". I guess if we hire A Runesmith for the expedition on normal Runesmith hiring terms it would be only fair if they literally sit in a Steam Wagon tinkering on their own project whenever their specific expertise isn't directly requested by Mathilde.
Hiring with favour is basicly us trading aid to dwarves in general, to a service by one dwarf in specific.
In theory that dorf in question could probably say no, but someone has to do it.
So by handing AV for a runesmith we are kinda making a large donation to dwarves in general, and turning around and making one dwarf to pay for it.
I'm happy to do it for stuff like the magic rooms, or help with towers, but asking someone to walk into the wastes to pay of a racial debt feels wrong.
Are you sure that's how it works? Because it sounds wrong to me. Like that would mean that if we return the fortunes of one specific Dwarf from an abandoned Karak, then travel to the other side of the Karaz Ankor and ask for, say, someone to oversee some construction for months in some Imperial mudhole, then some poor shmuck would be pressured into volunteering for that while the guy who is now rich again can just not bother repaying his debt?
No. I'm pretty sure that the Karaks that benefited from our actions will be paying for specific jobs from a common fund and that specific Dwarves that we aided will in turn be expected to repay those that settle their debts on their behalf.
The only thing that makes Dwarf favor to outsiders different from favor trades within their own community is the mix of racial honor, cultural secrecy and complicated politics that makes Dwarves want to seem like one monolithic entity from the outside while repaying their debts to non-Dwarves as swiftly as possible.
@BoneyM, care to weigh in? What does it actually mean in practice when Mathilde tries to spend Dwarf Favor to hire an expert she never met for an unfun job? How does the expert get selected and informed and what kind of compensation can he hope for?
Also, how does Dwarf Favor held by outsiders differ from just general favors held between Karaz Ankor Dwarves? Do both just get traded like currency or is it more complicated?
Lastly, how much concerning DF is game mechanics that you made fluff canon and how much is an abstraction for convenience that shouldn't be considered to be reflected in the lore or Mathilde's IC experience? Dwarves being what they are, I've been treating it as a literal number in a literal ledger somewhere.
