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@Guile If searching the shores is such an obviously low priority action for which we have plenty of time, why do you think it even pops up on the list of important things between which Mathilde has to decide? To lure or trick us away from actually useful stuff?

There are no trap options here. What we are deciding is what results we want to make more likely and what risks we are willing to take to do so. And I truly think that arguing again and again that one option or another is pointless and trying to discuss this based on "facts" of how something obviously can't work or has zero time pressure just takes up thought space and makes things needlessly heated.


though explaining the risks might backfire because it'd be pretty alarming that you dragged 300 Dwarves through it.
As long as we don't mention literal demon summoning or Warp portal opening what we risked to do to each Dwarf still seems to be better than dying of hypothermia or drowning. But I think I get your point
 
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@Guile If searching the shores is such an obviously low priority action for which we have plenty of time, why do you think it even pops up on the list of important things between which Mathilde has to decide? To lure or trick us away from actually useful stuff?

There are no trap options here. What we are deciding is what results we want to make more likely and what risks we are willing to take to do so. And I truly think that arguing again and again that one option or another is pointless and trying to discuss this based on "facts" of how something obviously can't work or has zero time pressure just takes up thought space and makes things needlessly heated.
I think you are taking BoneyM's expressed "no trap options" policy in a direction he has explicitly disavowed.
The problem with the removal of bad options is that it means that we and so Mathilde can never make errors of judgement, only of execution. There should be options that superficially seems attractive but turn out to have been terrible mistakes, just like in real life.

Always just choosing what we want to succeed in, rather than choices influencing whether we succeed or not removes a large part of the point of decision making.
The 'no trap options' policy doesn't quite extend that far. There are sub-optimal decisions, there are potential research dead-ends and there are times you have to make a decision based on incomplete information. To steal an example from the Wissenland Quest, if there's smoke coming from the mountains, the existence of a '[ ] investigate the mountains' option doesn't tell you that it's necessarily significant. It could be that it's just a charcoal burner or a wildfire or something. But it's not going to be the annual Bloodthirster Barbecue that you stumble into the middle of and instantly get a game-over from.
'Trap options' is more along the lines of 'there was a monster hiding in Johann's bedroom and by letting him rest he actually GETS EATEN'. It doesn't mean that all given options are of equal utility. You still have to decide and debate for yourselves which option would lead to the better result.
There can absolutely be sub-optimal options on the list, or options that are almost strictly better than other options. "Trap" means "this is the option that, for reasons you had no way of knowing, a really awful outcome inevitably lies behind."
 
[X] Scour the river banks for anything the bandits left behind

Thinking it over. I think this is a good middle ground, we can search for clues about the culprits, while still being present for the possibility of an Ork assault.
 
But yeah, long story short, the original outcome sans our invention would be "At least six hundred people have to die to make this right, including one guildmaster equivilant." AKA "The decapitation of a small country and their noble dynasties" and the crippling of a Dwarfen Monitor (Which is a monetary cost).

As things stand, the grudge cost is now two hundred lives, injury and harm dealt to 400 longbeards in good standing, and the crippling of a Dwarfen Monitor. Only the first of those must be repaid in blood, and no blood purge will be necessary as long as the offenders are suitably chastened.

Which is to say, the ringleaders and their organizations broken, and great deals of treasure extracted to make good the harm. This is something that doesn't require a war to the knife whoever ends up holding the bag, and that makes things a lot easier on all parties involved. It allows the grudge cost to be directed at a single rogue element if worst comes to worst and this Is Marienberg responsible. It means one noble house gets annihilated and a very hefty fine is extracted--but that's a hell of a lot less likely to provoke War of the Beard 2: Monitor Boogaloo than "BTW we need to kill all of the guys in charge of your city-state, including having the head of your nominal ruler on a stake"
This reminds me alot of torpedoing lusitania.

The number casuelties dont matter, the fact that dwarven ships are being targetted does.

We've done the best we could.

Take a 30 min rest, warm ourselves up, and share our finding.
No need to make this a one woman show.

We dont have metal cutting equiptment, but perhaps somebody else on the shore have it.

Then either scout around and make sure there are no hostiles or rest up
 
The rest of the ships are beached, with a few Dwarves still manning their guns.
Did those other ships only have 20 dawi crewing them or are you counting them separately from the survivors that made it to shore?
Edit:Answered by @ReImagined
Small note. That is not how forgettable works, it does not edit you from reality, it makes your likeness hard to recall. Mathilde would still be the only wizard dressed in grey around.
My read of it was inverted prosopagnosia(face-blindness), instead of being unable to recognize other people's faces it's as if everyone else has a version of prosopagnosia which only applies to your face. As long as there are other cues (height, build, voice, hair color and length, clothing) they would still be able to tell it's you.
Or we could summon daemons on our parents. I have trouble recalling why that would be a bad thing.:whistle:
I wonder, what are they doing nowadays? They must know that she's gone up in the world, she's the most known wizard in Stirland after all. It would be an interesting unprompted social action if her parents, sibling, old friends, or nieces/nephews tried to make contact with her and try to form a social relationship with her, either trying to take advantage of her fame or genuinely trying to build bridges. Though that makes me wonder,@BoneyM, did Mathilde have any siblings before she was taken to the Grey College?

Edit: Additional question, would it be possible to tell if there's significant amounts of water in a sealed compartment by knocking on the bottom of a door/wall and hearing if it sounds like there's water or air on the other side, like how one can tell whether something is hollow or not by the sound that comes out when you knock on it?
 
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I think you are taking BoneyM's expressed "no trap options" policy in a direction he has explicitly disavowed.
In what way? I'm not saying that all options have the same result, or even the same "value", let alone the same risk. I'm just saying that none of them are not worth doing at face value. Every action has a chance at a benefit and probably none of those chances will be limited to 1 in 100.

Like sure, the shores might not hold any info because the ship was sunk by magic. Or the bandits might not hold any info because they were only hired to shoot at an exploding boat. Or guarding might be pointless because no enemies are actually coming to attack us. And any or all of those things might already have been rolled/decided before this vote got presented to us (though I doubt it, given how the Guildmaster's status was only rolled on this turn). But given the information we have all options are designed to have potential value and to make sense from Mathilde's current perspective and based on her current information. Options like "Ride back and get Johann's help" aren't available by default (BoneyM would probably allow a write-in while facepalming though if we don't want to heed his warnings) because Mathilde doesn't think it would be sensible or helpful.
 
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I think you are taking BoneyM's expressed "no trap options" policy in a direction he has explicitly disavowed.

Personally, I wouldn't mind if we had the occasional vote where Mathilde immediately regretted her choice and thought, "Wow, that was a lousy idea!"

Often my issue with quests in general is that there's not enough feedback to voters when they made a wrong decision and instead can only guess if a vote result was sub-optimal. The difference between "risky and not even slightly worth the risk" and "risky but the result was worth the risk" and "not risky but a worthwhile time expenditure" and "not risky but actually it was a waste of your time" isn't always apparent enough post-vote. How do you learn from decisions if you can't properly evaluate them afterwards?
 
The only other idea I can think of for further rescue (other than the Morse bandwagon) is to use an Ulgu PS to super charge Pall of Darkness thru the steel of the ship. I don't know what radius such a spell would have though. Depends on how many sealed doors are near each other. We'd only get one cast of PoD though so probably not worth it. Unless it was huge and covered several compartments.
Just imagine the terrifed dwarf noises if without warning, supernatural darkness started seeping through the gaps in the doors.
Hey, the monitor is underwater, right? This would've been an ideal opportunity for Dragon-Gargling to communicate with any trapped drakes, you'd think.
I just imagined Asarnil making the Jurassic Park T-Rex bugling.
That said, we do have our notes on obstacles in case we don't manage to encounter anything worth writing about on the expedition:

Comprehensive notes on possible terrain obstacles (FRESH)

@BoneyM would it not make sense for these to be timeless?
Mathilde having fresh memories of all the anecdotes and having recently spent a bunch of time considering terrain obstacles makes a paper written now better and easier than one written based on her notes in a few years.
Might get refreshed on a road trip across bad terrain I suppose.
That'd be one grumbly paper about a hundred miles of bad road....

We dont have metal cutting equiptment, but perhaps somebody else on the shore have it.
The Barak Varr navy will be here with the full salvage and rescue gear.

I'm still wondering just how the damage happened that the Guild had to lock themselves in the cargo hold rather than try to abandon ship to higher ground. Multiple breaches could do it but we only heard one blast reported?
 
I wonder, what are they doing nowadays? They must know that she's gone up in the world, she's the most known wizard in Stirland after all. It would be an interesting unprompted social action if her parents, sibling, old friends, or nieces/nephews tried to make contact with her and try to form a social relationship with her, either trying to take advantage of her fame or genuinely trying to build bridges. Though that makes me wonder,@BoneyM, did Mathilde have any siblings before she was taken to the Grey College?
It seems likely-
You spend some time looking down the even fainter dirt road leading off the village square, that you knew would lead to a too-small farm and too-busy adults and too many children and, somewhere, maybe, a carved wooden horse that had once been made to neigh.
The event was 25 years ago, her parents might very well be dead by now, and any siblings grown up with ten-year-olds of their own.
And Boney has previously said that Weber is a common Stirland name, so who knows if they'd have made the association, or if they'd have wanted to reconnect even if they did.
 
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I've changed my mind

[X] Try to track the bandits
[X] Scour the river banks for anything the bandits left behind
[X] Scout for any approaching greenskin forces

It really depends on the purpose of the justice system one is enacting, which is why I asked. The people who attempted murder usually did something just as morally bad as actual murder, they just were worse at it, which is a fair argument for equal punishment (with both having extenuating circumstances). I don't know if Dwarf Psychology would value them differently.

One of the reasons for lessening the punishment is to not put a criminal in a no lose situation where being successful carries no additional punishments. Another is basing punishment off of harm done, rather than intent. The first doesn't seem very dwarfy, but the second maybe.

I mean it doesn't seem very dwarf like to reward someone for shoddy work.

You were trying to kill me but you couldn't remember that I came in to work at 9:10 rather then 9:00 when you set the fuse, bah you can't get any kind of quality work these days, a beardling could have done a better job.
 
I mean it doesn't seem very dwarf like to reward someone for shoddy work.

You were trying to kill me but you couldn't remember that I came in to work at 9:10 rather then 9:00 when you set the fuse, bah you can't get any kind of quality work these days, a beardling could have done a better job.
...is it sad that I could actually believe something like this happening?
 
Personally, I wouldn't mind if we had the occasional vote where Mathilde immediately regretted her choice and thought, "Wow, that was a lousy idea!"

Often my issue with quests in general is that there's not enough feedback to voters when they made a wrong decision and instead can only guess if a vote result was sub-optimal. The difference between "risky and not even slightly worth the risk" and "risky but the result was worth the risk" and "not risky but a worthwhile time expenditure" and "not risky but actually it was a waste of your time" isn't always apparent enough post-vote. How do you learn from decisions if you can't properly evaluate them afterwards?

You make friends or characters who can rack you over the coals in the narrative when they find out what dumb thing you did this time; for example when we foolishly told a witch hunter that you needed wizards to fight the forces of the undead or again when we asked for our paycheck ten seconds after meeting the steward.
 
[X] Scour the river banks for anything the bandits left behind
With a small lantern brought from the shore on the far side of the compartment and a stack of benches casting your half of the compartment into shadow, you take the first Dwarf's hand, envelop the pair of you in Ulgu, and pull him through the hull of the ship. It only takes a moment to recognize the moving Chamon of the chain and you place the Dwarf's hand upon it, and it only takes a few grasps for the spell to recognize his intentions and for his hand to make contact with the metal. They disappear into the Windsight-obscuring murk of the water and you step back through the hull, step atop another stack of benches to be out of the water, and release the spell.

And repeat.

And repeat.

[Rolling...]

And repeat.

You can't claim to have done it all perfectly. Several times the spell escaped your control and you were unable to discharge it in time, and your ears are plugged with wax, a milky film is covering your vision, and your muscles ache in a way they shouldn't. But these are the most minor and temporary of manifestations of magic run amok, and after what can't have been much more than two hours but felt like a lifetime, the compartment is finally empty of living Dwarves - an unfortunately necessary qualifier, as three Dwarves heavily injured in the initial blast did not survive the wait. Knowing what you know of Dwarven beliefs surrounding death you try to think of a way to recover them too, but unfortunately one of the many quirks of Substance of Shadow is that it is much easier to apply to living beings than inanimate objects, including formerly living beings. An entire body is beyond your capabilities.
I am so, so glad this turned out so unbelievably well.

Mathilde just chain cast a Fiendishly Complex spell ~300 times in 2+ hours, around once every 20-30 seconds depending on circumstances, and didn't experience the rather common result of "-and then the Battle Wizard exploded." She looked into the eyes of three hundred Dwarves condemned to die in a flooded steel tomb, and did not flinch or fail. That is some Grade A+ Heroism.

I credit Abelhelm.
 
I wonder, what are they doing nowadays? They must know that she's gone up in the world, she's the most known wizard in Stirland after all. It would be an interesting unprompted social action if her parents, sibling, old friends, or nieces/nephews tried to make contact with her and try to form a social relationship with her, either trying to take advantage of her fame or genuinely trying to build bridges.
I mean, given their last interaction, if they've come to the conclusion that the daughter they abandoned to the pyre is the Dammerlichreiter, I'd expect they live in terror of her deciding to visit one day and take revenge.
 
Mathilde just chain cast a Fiendishly Complex spell ~300 times in 2+ hours, around once every 20-30 seconds depending on circumstances, and didn't experience the rather common result of "-and then the Battle Wizard exploded." She looked into the eyes of three hundred Dwarves condemned to die in a flooded steel tomb, and did not flinch or fail. That is some Grade A+ Heroism.
I wonder if there are any lessons/insights/tips she can pass onto the Duckling Club, or if this falls under Things A Lord/Lady Magisters Does (And Someday, So Can You!).
 
I am so, so glad this turned out so unbelievably well.

Mathilde just chain cast a Fiendishly Complex spell ~300 times in 2+ hours, around once every 20-30 seconds depending on circumstances, and didn't experience the rather common result of "-and then the Battle Wizard exploded." She looked into the eyes of three hundred Dwarves condemned to die in a flooded steel tomb, and did not flinch or fail. That is some Grade A+ Heroism.

I credit Abelhelm.

Easy sidestory omake material. A dwarf observer remembering what he saw, the slow rising of impossible hope as the casualty list is halved before his eyes. Then, the last dwarf comes up and she appears on shore, absolutely exhausted, limbs shaking, and barely able to stand. She's quickly given a chair and has quiet words with a visibly concerned King Belegar, before getting up and staggering up and down the beachfront.
 
My read of it was inverted prosopagnosia(face-blindness), instead of being unable to recognize other people's faces it's as if everyone else has a version of prosopagnosia which only applies to your face. As long as there are other cues (height, build, voice, hair color and length, clothing) they would still be able to tell it's you.

So could a hypothetical barer of this Arcane mark mitigate the effects by wearing a distinct mask? Or is the mark too conceptual for a gesture like this to conceal?
 
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