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Warhammer Fantasy: Divided Loyalties - an Advisor's Quest

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Alectai said:
Even unrealistic expectations have been shattered, this was thought to be a near writeoff, we saved the vast majority of the Dwarfs who didn't die outright in the sinking, including the critical VIP.

Mathilde's not in any shape to potentially roll into trouble, if she has to investigate, we should investigate the shore for clues--because again, the Bandits smack of being a red herring.

And you want to know why?

Because they didn't fucking take anything.

The attacked a vastly superior target and fucked off. They didn't even attack with a lot of force, so much as it was a musket barrage after a gigantic explosion.

No, any clues to be found will be on the shore, figuring out how this happened, because no way those Bandits know more than "We were told to come here and fire shots after a big boom" If they do know more, I almost guarantee you its evidence aimed to point us at a target that isn't involved. The whole point of cut-out patsies is to do a thing without it being led back to the one involved.

Our answers will be determining how this happened, and that's stage two. The bandits I almost guarantee you are a red herring.
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Or they weren't Bandits. Even Belegar who put it forward was suspicious of the perpetrators being bandits.

BoneyM said:
"Part of the Okral's been attacked," Belegar yells over the sound of the engine. "Skull River, near the southern edge of the Forest of Gloom."

"Forest Goblins?" you say. You really hope it was Forest Goblins.

"Bandits." Even over the engine you can hear the suspicion in his voice.
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If it turns out that Marienburg is behind this.
Then we have now become the greatest hero Marienburg has ever had, or will ever have.
Because atleast now there is a change that the city can continue existing as something else than a pile of rubble.
 
NuclearConsensus said:
Or they weren't Bandits. Even Belegar who put it forward was suspisious of the perpetrators being bandits.
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Doesn't matter, musket fire isn't doing shit.

The answers we want aren't in the crowd of guys who took a pot shot. It's figuring out who could deliver a boom capable of one-shotting a Dwarfen Monitor in the dead of night, and how they did it.

Fast enough that no serious evacuation attempt could be made even, fast enough that very few of the people in the main passenger compartments could get out, and instead locked the door

That's a very, very short list, and our best bet of finding traces of how they did it while the scene is still relatively fresh.

Human explosives--in general--are going to have a hard time delivering that much firepower, that reliably. Which suggests it's Skaven of origin (Which means there might be warpstone traces around), or Dwarf-craft (Which suggests the Chaos Dwarfs, who would love a chance to cause a civil war between major Holds).
 
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DragonParadox said:
Worth keeping in mind. Mathilde cast one of the most demanding sub-battle magic spells out there 300+ times. Even for a lord magister that was a tour de force.
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our Magic 9 and Learning 28 at work :)
Horium said:
As for what to do now? Tracking bandits is tempting, but with Mathilde magically exhausted too risky imho.
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I think the problem was mostly casting the same spell again and again.
For tracking we likely need Shadow Steed at most, if it comes to a fight (which it shouldn't) we have the armor from the robes we don't need to cast.
It's more likely we'll see them first and cast invisibility to gather more information.
 
I'm in favor of tracking the bandits, that's time sensitive, inanimate objects left on the banks probably aren't going to sneak away while we're gone.
 
Valmond said:
If it turns out that Marienburg is behind this.
Then we have now become the greatest hero Marienburg has ever had, or will ever have.
Because atleast now there is a change that the city can continue existing as something else than a pile of rubble.
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Does a Grudge get reduced because someone else saved the lives you brought in peril?
I honestly do not know.

I suspect perhaps some, but not fully.
 
NexusEye said:
I'm in favor of tracking the bandits, that's time sensitive, inanimate objects left on the banks probably aren't going to sneak away while we're gone.
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I REPEAT.

The Bandits are 100%, absolutely positive, a patsy. They almost certainly have no idea who they're working for, and probably don't even know who they were attacking.

Chasing them is a waste of time at best, and getting led by the nose at worst. They are a red herring that has no real way of escaping in the long run.

The answer is not to chase the most obvious approach, but to figure out how this exploded in the first place.

Which means finding traces of the explosive before they all get washed away from the riverbank!

This is Doubly important if this was Chaos Dwarf work, and is designed to make it look like Eight Peaks did this to avenge the slight of the Okral fucking around. Because it means We need to set the narrative first.
 
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Is it possible to tell if a spell was cast around 3-4 hours after the fact? If it is, then we should search for evidence because I doubt anything but a really potent spell could be the reason for the sinking of a Dawi monitor.
 
Alectai said:
Doesn't matter, musket fire isn't doing shit.

The answers we want aren't in the crowd of guys who took a pot shot. It's figuring out who could deliver a boom capable of one-shotting a Dwarfen Monitor in the dead of night, and how they did it.

Fast enough that no serious evacuation attempt could be made even, fast enough that very few of the people in the main passenger compartments could get out, and instead locked the door

That's a very, very short list, and our best bet of finding traces of how they did it while the scene is still relatively fresh.

Human explosives--in general--are going to have a hard time delivering that much firepower, that reliably. Which suggests it's Skaven of origin (Which means there might be warpstone traces around), or Dwarf-craft (Which suggests the Chaos Dwarfs, who would love a chance to cause a civil war between major Holds).
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Musket fire doesn't matter against the monitor, no. Against Dwarfs? There is every chance the "bandits" had orders to leave no witnesses, to kill even those escaping from the wreck of the monitor, but buggered off when they noticed a gyrocopter in the are shadowing the Okral monitor.

I do agree we should look for clues at the scene of the crime first, but I disagree with instantly writing off the perpetrators as irrelevant because they're "bandits".
 
LightLan said:
Does a Grudge get reduced because someone else saved the lives you brought in peril?
I honestly do not know.

I suspect perhaps some, but not fully.
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Attempted murder vs murder.
Also, the loss of institutional knowledge could have been massive, which could be even bigger deal than the lives alone (which are a huge deal).
This still might mean war, but it might no longer be of leave a crate where a city was level.
 
Alectai said:
I REPEAT.

The Bandits are 100%, absolutely positive, a patsy. They almost certainly have no idea who they're working for, and probably don't even know who they were attacking.
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We do not have 100% certainties in anything here.

The degree of effectiveness of an action can be argued, but none of them look entirely pointless to me.
 
Alectai said:
I REPEAT.

The Bandits are 100%, absolutely positive, a patsy. They almost certainly have no idea who they're working for, and probably don't even know who they were attacking.

Chasing them is a waste of time at best, and getting led by the nose at worst.

The answer is not to chase the most obvious approach, but to figure out how this exploded in the first place.

Which means finding traces of the explosive before they all get washed away from the riverbank!
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If they've left behind evidence then they're probably carrying some evidence not left behind. I don't accept the assumption that the explosive is smoking gun, it's probably just barrels of gunpowder rigged into a sea mine, deployable by any faction with enough money and basic engineering skills.
 
I think we should go with the banks. Deploying something big enough to take down a Monitor, whether machine or spell, leaves traces.

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NexusEye said:
I don't accept the assumption that the explosive is smoking gun, it's probably just barrels of gunpowder rigged into a sea mine, deployable by any faction with enough money and basic engineering skills.
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That takes more know-how than you think. Gunpowder has a tendency to get wet, and an ignition mechanism would be pretty complex.
 
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If this was a mine, it took until quite recently that you could make contact detonated underwater mines. Until the late nineteenth century these kind of mikes needed to be command triggers, which means running an electrical cable to shore to send the detonation signal.
 
Alratan said:
If this was a mine, it took until quite recently that you could make contact detonated underwater mines. Until the late nineteenth century these kind of mikes needed to be command triggers, which means running an electrical cable to shore to send the detonation signal.
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That would not be hard to rig with magic, lightning or fire would do it even at apprentice level.
 
NuclearConsensus said:
Musket fire doesn't matter against the monitor, no. Against Dwarfs? There is every chance the "bandits" had orders to leave no witnesses, to kill even those escaping from the wreck of the monitor, but buggered off when they noticed a gyrocopter in the are shadowing the Okral monitor.

I do agree we should look for clues at the scene of the crime first, but I disagree with instantly writing off the perpetrators as irrelevant because they're "bandits".
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The point I'm making is that the timeline doesn't fit.

The number of people who could deliver an explosive capable of sinking a Dwarfen Monitor in seconds is very, very short. The fact that the gunmen retreated after only a volley or two is very telling.

Why?

Because it means they either had no idea who they were attacking and booked it as soon as they realized (Oh fuck we're not getting paid enough for this)

or they kept shooting without a care because they were elite regulars, and... To be honest? That's an absurd risk to be taking if it was Marienberg. You don't send your actual elites with actual discipline in to tweak the nose of a superpower, you use cut-outs and patsies, who you intentionally can set up to not know who their employer is. Or suggest your employer is someone else.

Either way, the trail goes cold there.

However, our attackers are... Unlikely to anticipate a very intelligent, very perceptive Grey Wizard is able to be on the scene within hours of the incident, with the best Windsight since Volans himself (Which Mathilde has kept under her hat). There is a chance that she could identify shenanigans going on before the water and currents wash away the traces of the explosive. Because guess what? Contact explosives are really, really fucking hard with this tech base! Firepower enough to send an ironclad vessel crafted by dwarf memes to the bottom before anyone could react? Very short list. To the point where there's only two factions I can think of who have both the technological know-how to set up the required detonator and the material science to create a suitable explosive, and both are likely to have telltale signs at the site of the boom.

That's worth the risk, that's a very depreciating asset. And it's why I take this obsession with chasing the obvious diversion with great terror.
 
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Alratan said:
If this was a mine, it took until quite recently that you could make contact detonated underwater mines. Until the late nineteenth century these kind of mikes needed to be command triggers, which means running an electrical cable to shore to send the detonation signal.
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the functioning of rl mines likely has only limited relevance to how fantasy mines work, especially if it was a magical one.
 
While its unlikely to be stated or gratitude beyond the minimum, the Okral's reaction to their Guildmaster's rescue being entirely because of the Wizard Loremaster has got to have an effect.
 
Shane_357 said:
That takes more know-how than you think. Gunpowder has a tendency to get wet, and an ignition mechanism would be pretty complex.
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Waterproofing is a thing and magic simplifies the trigger mechanism substantially, all you need is a spell to detect when something touches the mine hooked up to a spell that ignites a small flame in the gunpowder compartment.
 
Alectai said:
I REPEAT.

The Bandits are 100%, absolutely positive, a patsy. They almost certainly have no idea who they're working for, and probably don't even know who they were attacking.

Chasing them is a waste of time at best, and getting led by the nose at worst. They are a red herring that has no real way of escaping in the long run.

The answer is not to chase the most obvious approach, but to figure out how this exploded in the first place.

Which means finding traces of the explosive before they all get washed away from the riverbank!

This is Doubly important if this was Chaos Dwarf work, and is designed to make it look like Eight Peaks did this to avenge the slight of the Okral fucking around. Because it means We need to set the narrative first.
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Someone has to have put them up to this.
They weren't standing by the shore the moment the ship sunk on accident.

There has to be a point of contact, someone who hired the patsies. We can gain a valuable point to work from here.

The bandits are not the solution, but they are a corner of the puzzle, that can be used to work inwards.
 
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