Remove ads

Warhammer Fantasy: Divided Loyalties - an Advisor's Quest

Voted best in category in the Users' Choice awards.
Voting will open in 1 day, 20 hours
Reader mode
I think we can somewhat safely discount the idea that the specifics of the bomb are intended to be identified.
The barrel, shot, and gunpowder as a false flag suggests that the item would be able to be identified. The inclusion of a warp stone trigger would've been a needless arrow back towards the source in that case.
 
@BoneyM Can we write-in combination options? Essentially I think that the evidence points away from Skaven, but anything else is up in the air.
 
Scary thought, but could this have come from the empire? Attempting to more firmly cement dwarven alliance against Marienberg? It's a spooky thought and I'm not sure if I'm looking too deeply.
 
Barrels are usually manufactured near their use point, but they can be re-used. The barrel is from Ubersreik. But it seems odd that skaven powder would be transfered into a human barrel.

The next question is did whoever did this know that we would use Tale of Metal?
 
Basically, I'd say that the evidence available points to Marienburg, other than it being stupid. But stupid happens all the time, and they aren't in direct control of their catspaws.
 
I don't think the barrel and shot sources are that important, except in that they fail to point to anyone specific.
For all we know the barrel could have travelled around the empire 3 times, done a quick stop in Tilea before returning via Bretonnia.
There is a limited amount of shot towers as well, so they probably deliver around the empire.

I'm thinking inconclusive for now.
And as we had already agreed on overwork, use it, take the -10 for next turn, and see if we can make our new shiny spell even shinier.
 
Last edited:
@BoneyM Where does Mathilde feel the difficulty of the current spell is at? DC 50 sounds like it's at Fiendishly Complex level or easier, but that might be because of the difficulty reduction from the staff.
 
It is most likely a frame job, and I think the missing picture in the frame is the bandits who fired. I'll bet right now that they were hired by a Mysterious Cloaked Figure who spoke with a Marienburg accent, and I suspect the Jade Wizard interrogating the forest and river will come back with some info that results in tracking them down and finding that out. That, along with the circumstantial evidence of "assume Marienburg is behind attacks on shipping until proven otherwise," does a lot to point the finger at Marienburg.

We don't know who is doing the framing, but this doesn't make sense for a Marienburg-instigated op, and it doesn't make sense for a Skaven-instigated op.
Raikazin said:
Scary thought, but could this have come from the empire? Attempting to more firmly cement dwarven alliance against Marienberg? It's a spooky thought and I'm not sure if I'm looking too deeply.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
I think there's a reasonable chance this is a false flag by some asshole in the Empire who wants to reconquer Marienburg. Thankfully, the solution to that is "track the bastard down, nail him to the wall, and give the dwarves his head on a platter," which is something the Greys are really good at.
 
Rafin said:
@BoneyM Can we write-in combination options? Essentially I think that the evidence points away from Skaven, but anything else is up in the air.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

Added:
[ ] The evidence does not point to Skaven
The Dwarves could easily overlook the actual culprit if they're too caught up on their ancestral foe.

Derpmind said:
@BoneyM Where does Mathilde feel the difficulty of the current spell is at? DC 50 sounds like it's at Fiendishly Complex level or easier, but that might be because of the difficulty reduction from the staff.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

It would be Battle Magic without the staff.
 
I think we can safely rule out framejob; the whole point of a framejob is to create a clear culprit. Using warpstone infused gunpowder in a situation that points to Marienburg is too ambiguous. The hypothetical framer wouldn't know which way the Dwarves would jump, Marienburg or Skaven.

Someone can correct me if I'm wrong, but it seems unlikely Skaven would hire human bandits for an attack, they'd just do it themselves. They wouldn't use warpstone if they were using bandits to try to frame someone else for the attack. So probably not Skaven.

That suggests the following chain of events. Marienburg doesn't like the canal and wants to sabotage construction efforts. They also don't want to start a war with the dwarves, so they buy some warpstone infused gunpower looted from the former Skaven undercity in nearby Ubersreik to conduct their attacks with. They don't know that this particular transport isn't relevant to the canal construction efforts; it's very large and full of what look like dwarven craftsmen, so the hired muscle makes the reasonable but wrong assumption that they're related to the only huge construction project going on.

It also suggests that there are going to be future attacks, because Marienburg wouldn't assume that just one would be enough to do more than delay the canal a bit.

Thoughts?
 
Last edited:
I think we can rule out the skaven, there is no Ubersreik undercity anymore, so getting the barrel of powder from there would require going out of their way to acquire it, when a framework using normal gunpowder could work as well, easily acquirable in the same process of getting the barrel. the fact that shots were fired also disqualifies the skaven, at least their direct involvement, since the flash would allow any survivor to see the culprits, and thus risking the whole operation.

the direct culprits were human.

The best powder is apparently now sourced from Ubersreik, so even not Marienburg aligned mercs would probably get it from there, specially if they are going for hard targets, the location being close to Marienburg may then be just coincidence.

The framework theory is not very sound, none of the materials are actually sourced from Marienburg and they are only suspect because well, they are suspect, it's the context of the riverine trade war that makes us think about them at all.

so, I think the most likely explanation is Marienburg paid mercenaries to disrupt the canal efforts, but did not micromanage how to do it, mercs being mercs they decided they had a chance to take down a big target (maybe after seeing the "new" powder in action) and took it, expecting a larger payday.
 
Darkcrest said:
feels like a frameup whoever is behind this could not have banked on Mathilde being on scene or her windsight being able to detect the skaven blackpowder leaving the Dwarves to only be able to discover Marienburg or close to Marienburg sourced materials
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
That's a good point. Dwarves don't really cooperate with mages, and K8P magic shenanigans is not something I'd bet on as a mastermind.
BoneyM said:
Current events and tensions have made it so that anything targeting shipping on the Skull River is automatically attributable to Marienburg unless proven otherwise, because that's one of the two supply pipelines for the canal construction.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Assuming only dwarves investigate, which is really not enough to find out even this convoluted web of connections...

Yeah, Occam's Razor- dwarf ship goes KABOOM, dwarves mad, blame Marienburg, WAR. There, cunning master plan.
 
Shane_357 said:
So what you're saying is that this is entirely in character for the twisty schemes of Skaven?
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
I'm saying that if we're trying to think that twisty then we're automatically devolving into Tzeentch plot territory.

A frame job by cultists would make more sense than that scenario.

'Marienburg is just actually that dumb and unlucky' isn't a nice thought, when you consider that wars are bad, but there's no other reason why the materials would be sourced in the way they were. All the other reasons are just too convoluted.
 
TaliesinSkye said:
Using warpstone infused gunpowder in a situation that points to Marienburg is too ambiguous. The hypothetical framer wouldn't know which way the Dwarves would jump.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
The fact that the gunpowder was infused by warpstone is not a detail they could have expected to be noticed, though. It was only noticed because we have keener-than-usual Windsight and saw small traces of Dhar from the bits of the barrel that had gotten embedded in the monitor. The warpstone gunpowder is not part of the frame-up.
 
Man, what a blegh turn. I share Johann's frustrations with this spell, just once I'd like to get all the answers.

The important note for me is that this was definitely not an accident or a misaimed strike, these guys knew exactly what they were doing, and everything was orchestrated to kill as many elder dwarves as possible. That doesn't benefit Marienburg at all, it makes them either Ground Zero for War of the Beard 2 or a sacrifice that Ulthuan will abandon in a hot second. We didn't get a single sliver of Skaven involvement before Epic Tier Magical Bloodhound Mathilde sniffed out ambient Dhar in scraps of wood several hours old. The people who benefit from the Dwarves losing a ton of craftsdwarves and kicking off inter-racial tensions is absolutely the Skaven.
 
picklepikkl said:
The fact that the gunpowder was infused by warpstone is not a detail they could have expected to be noticed, though. It was only noticed because we have keener-than-usual Windsight and saw small traces of Dhar from the bits of the barrel that had gotten embedded in the monitor. The warpstone gunpowder is not part of the frame-up.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Why would this hypothetical framer use warpstone infused gunpowder at all, though? If they were human they'd just use regular gunpowder, which would work fine (if it's slightly less effective just use more of it) unless they were trying to frame the Skaven. But your theory of the framejob is that they're trying to frame Marienburg. So why go to all the trouble of getting illegal warpstone infused gunpowder? It doesn't fit.
 
What about a Double Frame Job? Marienburg order the bandits to frame the Empire so that the Empire gets a Grudging and stop the Canal construction or something. This at least prevents the Dwarfs from helping the Empire when they try to invade Marienburg. This depends on the Dwarves being able to identify the source of the barrel and the shot but the only loose thread in this theory is the powder which could be from the bandits they hired just buying the Super powder they heard about from a Black Market.
 
Last edited:
I think we should leave the spell well enough alone. It still does a good job on the strategic scale, offering us 3-6 hours of terrain ignoring movement. In a pinch, if we're facing an urgent need to flee we can probably use it for a shorter period (1 hour) to help us speed away or get across a significant obstacles.

Given we're a very mobile force (Steam cars and cavalry) that is more than sufficient.

We have a lot of things still on after the expedition is over and I don't fancy the global penalties. Just look at how bad our rolls have been the past couple of turns to see how even a -10 to everything could screw us up. Especially if we get another emergency situation.

We can further improve it once we get back, getting the narrative benefits from having seen it in action.

On the evidence. Inconclusive as everyone says.
 
@BoneyM Would it be possible to get the results of the other investigations to see if a more complete picture might point to a culprit? Our investigation is rather inconclusive, but it might not be the case when the results from Barak Varr and Karaz-a-Karak are taken into account. Otherwise, we can just say it's inconclusive, give our results to the holds and pass the proverbial bucket.

Another thing, are the Dhar emanations from the blackpowder prone to dissipating rapidly and become impossible to detect after a short period of time (a few hours)?
 
Last edited:
Time to swing for the fences, then ;)

On the investigation, I find the argument "the powder was never intended as a false-flag" compeling.

I sure hope the Hochlander rolled well in his investigation, as I'm kind of on the fence if someone couldn't have simply got this as the biggest boom in the smallest package they could get instead of it actually being a skaven plot.
 
Abhorsen said:
So with the point that ubersreik is right between Marienburg and the incident, here what I think happened.

Marienburg hired a bunch of people to harass shipping, especially dwarven. One of them, when picking up supplies, in Ubersreik, found out about this really good gunpowder that even works when wet. He then decided to get clever, and we know the rest.

Marienburg wouldn't want this, but the problem of using catspaws is you don't have direct control, and this shit happens.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Seems like a likely possibility. There's certainly evidence pointing that way. If we hunt down the supplier of the powder we could gain more information on confirming this. Especially when combined with Skull River's testimony.

Could also be Chaos stirring up trouble though. It would likely result in much the same evidence.
chocolote12 said:
It'd require the Skaven to know the secrets of the gold college well enough to be trying to avoid magical forensics, in a scenario with only dwarven victims in an area entirely outside the empire, just because they heard that two of them were living in a single karak, and so go out of their way to acquire all of their goods in a direct line of travel to the city they're trying to frame.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
It wouldn't surprise me at all to learn that the Skaven have some knowledge of Gold Wizard magic capabilities (even if just in a general sense). Skaven are known for their sneakyness, in one of the Gotrek and Felix books a Skaven actually had a Nuln Spymaster under his sway.
 
TaliesinSkye said:
Why would this hypothetical framer use warpstone infused gunpowder at all, though? If they were human they'd just use regular gunpowder, which would work fine (if it's slightly less effective just use more of it) unless they were trying to frame the Skaven. But your theory of the framejob is that they're trying to frame Marienburg. So why go to all the trouble of getting illegal warpstone infused gunpowder? It doesn't fit.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
because it has a bigger oomph, and it's already being sold, once you have decided to take on a dwarf monitor it makes sense that you are going all out, or vice versa, you are hired to disrupt dwarfs and are offered this cool super powder on your way there and think "oh this is so powerful it could blow right through the plating of a monitor, wait there's an idea..."
 
Khaos said:
@BoneyM Would it be possible to get the results of the other investigations to see if a more complete picture might point to a culprit. Our investigation is rather inconclusive, but it might not be the case when the results from Barak Varr and Karaz-a-Karak are taken into account. Otherwise, we can just say it's inconclusive, give our results to the holds and pass the proverbial bucket.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

No, those investigations are still ongoing and Mathilde's about to leave on the Expedition.
 
Reader mode
You must login or register to reply here.
Voting will open in 1 day, 20 hours
Remove ads
Back
Top