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Warhammer Fantasy: Divided Loyalties - an Advisor's Quest

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[X] Scour the river banks for anything the bandits left behind

Alectai said:
Yeah, we're looking at either Battle Magic level stuff, Skaven lolscience, or Chaos Dwarf bombs here. Either is going to leave residue that we can identify if we can find it before it all gets washed away.
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What we really want is pieces of the case to give to Johann.
DragonParadox said:
Random radical dwarfs could. It's not anymore far fetched than a steam powered helicopter.
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Actually, I have to disagree here, for the same reason that the Imperial Engineers can build clockwork horses but not machine guns. It's in-theme for Madlads to make impossible mad science that wouldn't work in the real world, but not really for them to make relatively mundane technologies that aren't visually obvious.
 
Alectai said:
So, you're suggesting that there are super radical Engineers who stuck around long enough to be introduced into the Deep Lore of their guilds...

And then fucked off to sell to the private bidder?

(Because stuff like this is Guild Deep Lore, only told to masters. These are not Dwarfs who need to take shady side jobs to make a living)
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Steam powered helicopter is not merely unlikely, it borders on impossible.
Sea mines are lot simpler in comparison.
The assumption that Marienburg (or Empire) would not have access to the tech needed to do this feels undeserved.

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[X] Scour the river banks for anything the bandits left behind

Look for evidence now, try to find remains of the explosives (if any) once we have rested (unless the dawi find them before that).
If we were not so tired i would leave riverbank for later and go after bandits, but we are in no shape to fight.
 
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Alratan said:
What we really want is pieces of the case to give to Johann.


Actually, I have to disagree here, for the same reason that the Imperial Engineers can build clockwork horses but not machine guns. It's in-theme for Madlads to make impossible mad science that wouldn't work in the real world, but not really for them to make relatively mundane technologies that aren't visually obvious.
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Boom

Right there, that's our wincon.

Get a piece of the case, have Johann do Johann things to it, we now know who assembled it. And that narrows things down drastically

[X] Scour the river banks for anything the bandits left behind

This wasn't some saturday night special, one-and done barrel bomb. Not with this level of damage.
 
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Alectai said:
Instead? We got a salvo or two, and then them running like bats out of hell. That's not professional quality, that's "Grab a bunch of dispossessed randos (Which the Border Princes are lousy with), give them shitty guns and tell them you'll pay them well to shoot at a boat after it gets blown up. These aren't people who are going to scout their targets, or be particularly picky about who the nondescript guy with a chest of gold is working for.
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You speak with too much certainty in a situation where it does not exist.

Also not relevant: They shot at a Dwarven Ship. They ARE targets of a Grudge whether they were duped or not.
 
Alratan said:
A gunpowder explosive in a wooden barrel isn't going to be sufficient to sink a steel ship in this way.

I don't even think you could cast a spell through meters of water and the barrel walls.
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Google tells me that black powder has a density of 1.72g/cm^3 and a barrel(unit) is 42 gallons which is presumably reflective of how much a typical barrel can hold. Putting those together gives us 273.5kg and further googling tells me gunpowder has an energy density of 11.3MJ/kg, for a total energy of 3.091GJ. Even after dividing by three to account for any inferiority in Warhammer-tech gunpowder that leaves 1.03 GJ, almost a quarter ton of TNT. Somehow I doubt even Dwarven designers overengineer their vessels to withstand that kind of energy especially on a civilian ship.
 
[X] Scour the river banks for anything the bandits left behind

The Johann idea has a lot a merit. Find any piece of the device and we may have good odds of figuring where it came from.
 
Alratan said:
Actually, I have to disagree here, for the same reason that the Imperial Engineers can build clockwork horses but not machine guns. It's in-theme for Madlads to make impossible mad science that wouldn't work in the real world, but not really for them to make relatively mundane technologies that aren't visually obvious.
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Fair point. I still a shaped charge of the sort you could use for mining is on theme for dwarfs and orintation could be done with something like a move cantrip.

[X] Scour the river banks for anything the bandits left behind
[X] Scout for any approaching greenskin forces
 
NexusEye said:
Google tells me that black powder has a density of 1.72g/cm^3 and a barrel(unit) is 42 gallons which is presumably reflective of how much a typical barrel can hold. Putting those together gives us 273.5kg and further googling tells me gunpowder has an energy density of 11.3MJ/kg, for a total energy of 3.091GJ. Even after dividing by three to account for any inferiority in Warhammer-tech gunpowder that leaves 1.03 GJ, almost a quarter ton of TNT. Somehow I doubt even Dwarven designers overengineer their vessels to withstand that kind of energy especially on a civilian ship.
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That force isn't being delivered in a single direction though, which is the problem.

It's not "The ship gets hit with 1.03 GJ of force" it's "The ship gets hit with a small portion of that amount of force, distributed across much of the face of it's hull" Even if this isn't an ironclad monitor, Dwarfs don't fuck around with safety measures--a barrel bomb isn't going to do it.
 
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[X] Scour the river banks for anything the bandits left behind

Yeah, not running after the bandits in our current state. Even if they can give us useful information, I'm not sure we actually can reliably catch up to them with aching muscles, limited hearing and white film over our eyes.
 
@BoneyM Are there any dwarves that specialize in S&R for situations like this? Because I was wondering if we could do a few more trips, only this time we're carrying volunteer rescuers into the wreck that can search for any other survivors.

...or would the theoretical S&R volunteers need to carry a lot of equipment that there's too much chamon that can disrupt Substance of Shadow?
 
NexusEye said:
Google tells me that black powder has a density of 1.72g/cm^3 and a barrel(unit) is 42 gallons which is presumably reflective of how much a typical barrel can hold. Putting those together gives us 273.5kg and further googling tells me gunpowder has an energy density of 11.3MJ/kg, for a total energy of 3.091GJ. Even after dividing by three to account for any inferiority in Warhammer-tech gunpowder that leaves 1.03 GJ, almost a quarter ton of TNT. Somehow I doubt even Dwarven designers overengineer their vessels to withstand that kind of energy especially on a civilian ship.
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Probably would not dent a dreadnaught, might cause issues to an ironclad, no idea about a rivermonitor, but would not bet on the monitor.
 
The attackers managed to hit a place that manages the highest amount of kills by immediately cutting off the escape route.
For now discounting luck.
An outside attacker would need pretty decent knowledge of the ships architecture, or a mark to know where to hit for the best effect... and well the cannon/spell power to do it.
But what if it was done from the inside? The amount of explosives to pop a vessel from the inside is significantly lower and it can be placed for maximum effect. The only question remains proper timing.
A saboteur on board? Those initial 20 survivors, how suspicious are they?
...but then an internal explosion would be obvious to any dwarfen investigator. I mean I assume armor piercing rpgs don't exist^^.
 
Alectai said:
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.
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Why does the timeline not fit, exactly? Because they ran after a couple of volleys? I've already put forward an alternate hypothesis to answer that, that they spotted the gyrocopter shadowing the Okral, reasoned that reinforcements are likely to show up soon, and booked it.

Alectai said:
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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Like I mentioned, I am entirely on board with scouring the shore first, it makes sense. I am not "obsessed with chasing the obvious diversion." I am pushing back against your seemingly blanket assertion that chasing down the bandits is absolutely useless because they're just patsies.

[X] Scour the river banks for anything the bandits left behind
 
defenestrator said:
Are there any dwarves that specialize in S&R for situations like this? Because I was wondering if we could do a few more trips, only this time we're carrying volunteer rescuers into the wreck that can search for any other survivors.

...or would the theoretical S&R volunteers need to carry a lot of equipment that there's too much chamon that can disrupt Substance of Shadow?
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Barak Varr as the Dwarf Naval Hold probably would but they won't be here for a while yet.

Anyways:
[X] Scour the river banks for anything the bandits left behind
 
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