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Warhammer Fantasy: Divided Loyalties - an Advisor's Quest

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guyfromtheplace1 said:
Historically sieging a city with a river or marsh around them has been all about starving them out, or you've had maybe one spot where the ground is dry enough to set up cannons and you're stuck trying to batter the walls down from extreme range.
The plus here is that dwarven guns are good enough to handle what are probably pre-gunpowder walls at extreme range, but with our terrible luck the only angle to bombard the walls will be dropping shot directly at the elven quarter, which is a problem.
Maybe a rule where any elves can leave the city(and they get a warning of the siege force's intention to attack before anything starts) but they're not allowed back in? Something along the lines of: this elven city(inside a city) is under embargo against incoming travel due to fears that they could smuggle any incoming goods to the besieged city of Marienburg.
If the elves can just leave when they get hungry or uncomfortable, and we Idunno, promise to feed them if they leave?(or would that injure their pride?) promise to throw a feast whenever a certain number of elves leave the city all at once? They'd probably mostly leave the city over the siege. The problem is the ones that don't because they want to fight for their land. Get some kind of leverage on the head of the elf community over there and get them to disavow those who fight against the siege?
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They're not allowed into their own city which is part of their sovereign territory? You're putting part of the High Kingdom of Ulthuan under blockade and trying to prevent its elven citizens from freely travelling to and from their own territory. This is the fantasy British Empire you're trying to deny freedom of navigation to and one of their own cities you're threatening to starve them out of.

Also, remember that the Empire has used cannons for at least several hundred years, as they were used in the vampire wars against Vlad von Carstein three hundred years ago. The Marienbergers (probably) aren't stupid. In the centuries since then it seems very unlikely that they wouldn't have modernised their defences, particularly after they declared independence and the Empire built Nuln's School of Gunnery.

Now, by word of QM, it's apparently possible for the Empire to overcome the many advantages that the Marienbergers have on the defensive, but I don't think he's said how costly this is.
 
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Glau said:
Wait, what? Are you thinking that we'd be trying to track them from a gyrocopter? Enormously noisy, several hundred yards above any trail they will have left?
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Skywalk. And all the other tools a master shadowmancer presumably has at their disposal to not lumber right through the trail she's following like a drunken orc.
 
SuperSonicSound said:
let's just hope this wasn't a false flag operation by the Empire....
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There's a reason Greys swear first to the empire, then to the emperor. If someone in the empire did this, the answer is to cut out the rot, just as was done with the Lahmian conspiracy. Doing this is on the same level of acting against the Empire's interests as messing with Chaos or practicing necromancy. No matter how high such a conspiracy went, it would need to be destroyed.
 
Guile said:
Skywalk. And all the other tools a master shadowmancer presumably has at their disposal to not lumber right through the trail she's following like a drunken orc.
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Skywalk goes about 20 meters a cast and the they have a lead of over five hours- we are talking maybe a dozen miles of tracking. And Mathilde would have the choice of moving at speed or preserving the trail for others, so I'm assuming the vote for immediate pursuit will prioritize speed.
 
Glau said:
Skywalk goes about 20 meters a cast and the they have a lead of over five hours- we are talking maybe a dozen miles of tracking. And Mathilde would have the choice of moving at speed or preserving the trail for others, so I'm assuming the vote for immediate pursuit will prioritize speed.
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Does a quasi-real shadowsteed even impact the ground over which it rides though?

adaer said:
There's a reason Greys swear first to the empire, then to the emperor. If someone in the empire did this, the answer is to cut out the rot, just as was done with the Lahmian conspiracy. Doing this is on the same level of acting against the Empire's interests as messing with Chaos or practicing necromancy. No matter how high such a conspiracy went, it would need to be destroyed.
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That's why we really need to hope that it wasn't a Grey College op.
 
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Glau said:
Skywalk goes about 20 meters a cast and the they have a lead of over five hours- we are talking maybe a dozen miles of tracking. And Mathilde would have the choice of moving at speed or preserving the trail for others, so I'm assuming the vote for immediate pursuit will prioritize speed.
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That's 20 meters at running pace right? I wonder, @BoneyM, is it possible to use Shadowsteed and Skywalk at the same time? I suspect the answer is no but I'd like to make sure.
 
I have very strong doubts than a official mission would come from the Empire.

Now, a unofficial, rogue element/AWOL from within the Empire? Hoping to start a war with Marienburg? Maybe?

For all we know, it may not have anything to do with Marienburg, and it just a very strong convenient set of events that lead to this mess we just found ourselves in.

People gone back and fourth about who could have done this, and why, and I won't add too much right now. Right now, find survivors and then try to find who did this attack and make them suffer.

I actually hope this isn't Marienburg. I don't what this to turn into a war while we're away in the North with Karak Dum.
 
Glau said:
Skywalk goes about 20 meters a cast and the they have a lead of over five hours- we are talking maybe a dozen miles of tracking. And Mathilde would have the choice of moving at speed or preserving the trail for others, so I'm assuming the vote for immediate pursuit will prioritize speed.
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...Out of curiosity, but why are we assuming Mathilde wouldn't follow the trail from beside it? Like, if this is a physical thing such as footprints or whatever, you just walk or run a few feet to the right or left and voila! The trail is undisturbed. Hell, even if she did walk directly over the trail, unless doing so returns it to a natural state where someone can't tell she went the same way, then it's basically the same exact trail, just made by Mathilde instead of the bandits. Leads to the same place, so... I don't understand this concern about "destroying" the trail.
 
[X] Use Substance of Shadow to check the wrecked passenger ship for survivors

I am changing my mind; nailing whoever did this to the wall is extremely important, I still think that, but the more I chew this problem over, the more the key piece seems to be the explosion. Explosion below the waterline means sabotage or pretty impressively-applied external explosives, to sink a monitor, and so I think getting physical evidence of what was actually done to the ship is a very good route to figuring out who did this, especially with our incredibly good engineering library and the possibility of Tale of Metal. S&R might retrieve people who can tell us what happened, but most importantly, the faster the ship is confirmed clear of survivors, the faster a salvage operation can start to recover the ship and examine the damage.
 
Ericwinter said:
...Out of curiosity, but why are we assuming Mathilde wouldn't follow the trail from beside it? Like, if this is a physical thing such as footprints or whatever, you just walk or run a few feet to the right or left and voila! The trail is undisturbed. Hell, even if she did walk directly over the trail, unless doing so returns it to a natural state where someone can't tell she went the same way, then it's basically the same exact trail, just made by Mathilde instead of the bandits. Leads to the same place, so... I don't understand this concern about "destroying" the trail.
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It's dark, so she won't be seeing the actual trail but presumably anything her windsight can latch onto. It's going to be pretty much impossible to avoid screwing up things she isn't even noticing.

Plus, having tracked things, it's hard to do from a remove.
 
Glau said:
It's dark, so she won't be seeing the actual trail but presumably anything her windsight can latch onto. It's going to be pretty much impossible to avoid screwing up things she isn't even noticing.

Plus, having tracked things, it's hard to do from a remove.
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Even just a few feet removed? Like, presumably you're going by sight, so unless you move so far away you can't even see something that seems a little weird. But putting that aside you're basically saying Mathilde will be following an essentially invisible trail—relying on her mystical sight, which nobody else has—and in the process making a much more obvious, physical one, especially since she would want people to follow her... and this is a problem? Unless she gets the wrong trail and heads in a completely different direction, in which case you can't really mess up a trail you're not even on...
 
TotallyNotEvil said:
Lets seriously not fall into the rabbit hole of Melkoth bombing the dwarfs?

'Cause that's kind of treasonous. The Empire can't have its oldest and most reliable alliance threatened like that.
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True. However the same principle applies to any other mid-to-high Ulgu user. You don't need to be that deep in the wind of ambiguity to make your trail near impossible to follow.

Additionally there is the issue that an Ulgu user, like Mathilde, isn't actually any better at finding such a trail than a non-Wizard. You want Celestial or Light for investigation.

TotallyNotEvil said:
Because then we can track down the ones who hired then, then the ones who hired the ones who hired them, and so on and so forth.

It's what's called a lead.
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I very much doubt it. "The one who hired them" is more than likely some anonymous guy in a cloak who left no record of their identity or allegiance.
Or quite possibly they were 'hired' by a message in their leader's handwriting explaining the job they agreed to and a bag of gold paying them for it. Reminder: Mathilde had the tools to pull that off as a fresh Journeyman.
 
The attackers have a few hours head start anyways - if they split up they'll be almost impossible to catch.

Maybe if Karaz a Karak finally sends its airforce out - they might be a bit farther than K8P (or not depending on where the ships sank) but they've got the airpower to actually send patrols in the Border Princes.

Also if a pretty average roll of 7 means the leader of the Metalsmiths Guild might be dead there's probably enough high ranking Dawi in the Orkal that Thorgrim will send the airforce.
 
So I know part of the reasoning to track the bandits first is efficiency and pragmatism so the coming Grudge doesn't devolve into unnecessary conflict. I'd like to point out what Boney said about using the Coin on Protector though:
BoneyM said:
It would be part of the new one. It'll be decided normally but I'll let Protector apply retroactively to whatever happens here if that's chosen.
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If we manage to save a bunch of the Okral here and use the Coin on Protector, Mathilde will be held in very high esteem amongst Dwarven Traditionalists, not just the Radical/Moderate faction.

That is a huge coup for Mathilde to influence the investigation and Dwarven response to the attack.
 
Angelform said:
I very much doubt it. "The one who hired them" is more than likely some anonymous guy in a cloak who left no record of their identity or allegiance.
Or quite possibly they were 'hired' by a message in their leader's handwriting explaining the job they agreed to and a bag of gold paying them for it. Reminder: Mathilde had the tools to pull that off as a fresh Journeyman.
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Wizards have more tools than that, provided they have a starting point. Even something as simple as "where were you hired" might make all the difference.

Honestly, all the arguments that any of the options is obviously pointless and ineffective are kind of stupid ones. If it were so obvious, Mathilde, being on the ground, would know it better than us and not think of doing it at all. And on a meta level, BoneyM wouldn't give us a trap option. All choices have a clear chance to be helpful, a chance to fail, and probably a chance to not have been needed after all, either because the problem in question was small enough to not need us, or because the problem turned out to also be solvable after.
The question is, what is our priority. Where are we willing to invest more into and what are we willing to risk.
If we choose to track down the bandits there will definitely be a chance that we don't find any lead. And there will also be a chance that we can find a lead in some other way, despite not hunting bandits right now. But if we track them now then our chances will be significantly better, at the cost of increasing the chances for bad outcomes regarding everything else.
 
So I wonder what a mobilization of the dwarves would mean for the expedition? If this thing blows up big would there be pressure to preserve resources for the fight or would a group as small as the expedition be sent on its way?
 
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