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Warhammer Fantasy: Divided Loyalties - an Advisor's Quest

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veekie said:
We have established that the list of individuals capable of this attack isn't large, and this changes the capability ranges.
Marienburg could do it, but it would take a substantial commitment of skill and resources. Said commitment would be tracable and worthy of special attention. A degree of attention which also would mean they should know who they were hitting, it would not make any sense if they invested so much resources to hitting an ironclad monitor with a sea mine and wind up blasting the wrong target. And the Okral have literally no reason to be involved in the canal, something which the dwarves on their council would have advised.

The Skaven could do it, are known to be previously active in the region, and would benefit from starting up a conflict between the Karaz Ankor and Marienburg, who'd be the first suspect.

The Chaos Dwarves could do it, but its the wrong body of water and they're largely uninvolved in these parts.

The Greenskins, Bretonnia, Border Princes, etc cannot do it.
The Empire could do it, but at a resource cost that largely rules out a Lone Gunman scenario, which would require someone to go against both state religion and national alliances with a powerful organization backing it.

The Vampires could do it but again, nontrivial effort, WHY would they do it other than be evil?
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You rely too much on everything being neat and logical.
People aren't.
Skaven could do this, but why would they? No, "to inflame tensions" is not good enough, because we are not sure they even know about that, or have resources to do it in place, or knew about the Okral timetable.
Why would the skaven be doing so much more than just this?

We do not have enough information to rule out anyone conclusively, Marienburg is the most obvious target simply because they do have the means, and a motive, and we are not sure of anyone else, but they would be stupid to do this, but people often are stupid, or ignorant, or miscommunicate.
But we can't point fingers at anyone, this is too big to go on a hunch or "it makes snese", we need evidence.
 
WorldSlayer said:
@BoneyM what if we tested adjacent cargo holds with a stick? As I see it there's 3 likely possibilities when we test with a stick that's under Substance of Shadow.

1. Safe Passage: The stick safely goes through which shows the area is in shadow. Mathilde can pass through and rescue anyone inside.

2. Merge: The stick merges with the wall. Mathilde can't enter but the situation is no worse than before.

3. Explosion: The stick explodes possibly injuring any dwarfs and creates a breach. However, dwarfs are tough and Mathilde has the seed so with the new breach Mathilde will able to have the lights shut off and be able to enter the room and rescue any dwarfs.
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3 has a higher chance of resulting in dead Dwarves than waiting for Barak Varr to perform a more conventional rescue would. SoS merges are unpredictable and usually dangerous.
 
The Phoenixian said:
As far as scouring the riverbanks goes, I'm assuming there's a reason Mathilde in particular is thinking of doing it herself, but not so much grasping why. Would it just be that her windsight gives her night vision gives her a better edge for scouring the riverbank than a team of dwarves would have, or is there more to it than that?

Or is that just something that's being put to the thread's judgement?

[X] Scour the river banks for anything the bandits left behind
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I'm hoping that there might still be some residual Ashqy on some of the scattered components/fragments of the mine[1] that will clearly stand out to Mathilde that might be washed away later (as in, either the components are washed away or the Ashqy is), so that she can pick them up and then Johann can cast Tale of Metal [insert suitable lies to hide the existence of that spell here].

[1] Assuming this was a mine, of course.

Also, depending on the bandit's reasoning that lead them to leave, they might have lost something in their panic that could give us a lead (again, Tale of Metal)
 
[x] Scour the river banks for anything the bandits left behind

I think at this point Mathilde kinda deserves and needs a break. Our orders from Belegar were specifically to try and rescue as many as we can and we ended up rescuing literally half the ship and the Guildmaster, if in the course of doing so we greatly taxed ourselves I don't think anyone here would begrudge us sitting out for a while or taking on a lighter yet no less important duty mostly relying on Windsight more than casting. Nobody here really knows a human wizard's limits and frankly Mathilde doesn't really know her own either, so I'd rather not accidentally overstep them aiming for an extra few dwarves in a more magically-complicated situation than our last attempt when Barak Varr's navy S&R is on the way in a few hours.

I'm also inclined to agree that while there would be benefit to tracking down the "maybe-bandits", trying to identify any fragments of the explosive that took down the monitor with Windsight so we can hand them to our Gold Wizards will be vitally useful. Because I just don't believe bandits would have the know-how and lack of self-preservation to construct, transport, and lower such a thing into the river -even if it was funded by an outside party- without a far more canny representative of that party keeping an eye on things so it didn't all blow up in their faces - literally, so at some point in this bomb's "life" there will be an identifiable "non-patsy" interacting with it.
 
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[ ] Despite the risk to yourself, attempt to save any Dwarves left in the ship.

wonder if there are any other important to dwarves inside. Guildmasters are important. But the secret gold calls out to me.

not sure if worth risking underwater exhaustion
 
Thinking a bit more about the investigation, I wonder if we can get a gyrocopter to Altdorf saying we need to get a Jade Wizard who can cast River's Whisper her ASAP.
 
BoneyM said:
You could simply step through the hull of the ship with Substance of Shadow, but if any survivors inside have a lit lamp or any other source of light - unlikely, but possible - that would cause your messy and probably painful death.
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Couldn't this be solved by virtue of simply bringing along a stick and waving it through the wall before trying to step through herself?
And then possibly by casting Pall of Darkness if the stick fails to survive the experience?

Either way, it's looking like developing a spell of "Darkness and/or mist that passes through walls to block light and make Substance of Shadows safer" might be something we need to look into
 
Tomcost said:
Hmmm. Let's try to use lateral thinking...
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Marsh lights to make a shadow and Burning shadows to melt through a door.

Iirc, Burning Shadows works by partially transforming a person or thing into shadow and dissipating it, resulting into something that looks like Acid damage. So it might work on Steel.

But if it worked at all, it would take a lot of time and focus to get through a single door, and we are not in the best shape to even try this. 300x chaincast of Substance of Shadow, followed up by Chaincast Burning shadows? No thanks.
 
mastigos said:
Couldn't this be solved by virtue of simply bringing along a stick and waving it through the wall before trying to step through herself?
And then possibly by casting Pall of Darkness if the stick fails to survive the experience?

Either way, it's looking like developing a spell of "Darkness and/or mist that passes through walls to block light and make Substance of Shadows safer" might be something we need to look into
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Already brought up. The "messy death part" applies to the stick and the door as well. So you might end up with a neat hole, or you might end up with an exploded door and shrapnel.
 
Damm boney, I think this is a real highlight of the quest so far. Very interesting dilema to wheigh the risks of rescue now v.s. answers for the potential thousands of causulties in a war.

I really would like to both try to rescue the remaining dawii and to persue the attackers, but we also need to weigh the chance of goblin attack and the change or our own death against the change that those last 5 to 50 dawii are suffering hypothermia or not and have lights on.
Considering that as a Lady Magister of the Grey Order and veteran of 2 campains (Vampire & Expedition) Mathilde is willing to suffer causulties now to hopefully prevent larger harm later, and that Belegar's orders are Lives, Answers and then Vengeance in that order, I think the following:
- the last survining dawii in the ship may be only 5 that are safe enough to wait for Barak Var, or 50 that are suffering from hypothermia and will die before Varr arives. We don't know, and we can not know if it will be safe to rescue them.
- They goal is to at very least save the survivers that are on land, and a potential greenskin attack endagers a larger number of lives. This attack is unsure, bot a potential danger
- finding out how and why is who is very important on geopolitical scale, and might endanger thousands of lives, both dawii and imperial.
- while searching the riverbanks we are on hand for a potential attack (saving Lives) are getting Answers, and collect the pieces for later Vengeance. (also, pray to the gods the greenskins don't come before reinforments arrive. because that would be horrible.

thus:
[X] Scour the river banks for anything the bandits left behind
 
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Someone had to plant the mine/bomb.

That can't have been just some bandit, that needs expertise.
Gotta catch them before they go to ground.
 
And if it was skaven, any warpstone explosives residue should shine like a beacon.
Or maybe not, it might be too late for that, still better to check.
 
Any more exploration for survivors would be too dangerous in my opinion.
I'd also rather try and confirm who did this, although the bandits are probably too far away to to track easily.

So scouting. Maybe get gyrocopters up at daybreak, if we can figure out what mounts (if any) the enemy had we can figure out an approximate search pattern.

I don't think we need to scout for orks, dwarves know how to defend against orks better than anyone else alive.

@BoneyM are there still other ships in the water that can provide fire support if attacked? Or was it a lone transport?

[x] Scour the river banks for anything the bandits left behind
 
mastigos said:
Couldn't this be solved by virtue of simply bringing along a stick and waving it through the wall before trying to step through herself?
And then possibly by casting Pall of Darkness if the stick fails to survive the experience?
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Other things that may not survive the experience: the wall, the Dwarf.

Admiral Kol said:
@BoneyM are there still other ships in the water that can provide fire support if attacked? Or was it a lone transport?
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The rest of the ships are beached, with a few Dwarves still manning their guns.
 
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