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Warhammer Fantasy: Divided Loyalties - an Advisor's Quest

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Ouch. Those were not good rolls. Thankfully the opponent also rolled low, leading to this weird slapfight between our scouts and the door guards where I was expecting sudden annihilation of some sort.
Of course in this case "door guards" meant "superhumanly killy daemonettes + temptation magic" and "scouts" meant "elites + Lady Magister", but that's what you get when the stakes are this high.

Borek's comeback is great, of course, but I think he's right. The only possible solution to this that I can think of is having our Light Wizard Choir (Go Horstmann, we believe in you!) use the power this is drawing from to attempt to disrupt their magic - and at best that would just lead to a massive fight against who knows how many daemons, so let's not do that just yet. The many negative outcomes are even worse.
Why Egrimm? He's probably better than us at manipulating huge quantities of magic, what with his choirmaster experience and all. And even then he's not actually a full choirmaster, so we could probably find better for a follow-up expedition.

Briefvoice said:
Well, probably not so much "skill" as "superhuman strength and toughness and natural weapons" is what their bonus represents.
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IIRC Daemons actually are innately superhumanly skilled as well as superhumanly strong and fast.
They're tough opponents, even against a Lady Magister with bullshit weapons.
 
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This got lost in the posting-tide when I edited it in:
BoneyM said:
You heft your staff warily, trying to watch the entire mountain at once while Snorri barks out quick orders to the Rangers, who spread out to different firing positions, crossbows at the ready. In the back of your mind you're trying to make guesses as to what's going on back at the steam-wagons. How long would it take someone to tell Asarnil the significance of the horn? How long would it take him to don his armour, for Deathfang to get aloft? Seconds pass
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"Seconds pass" and it cuts off. I mean, it could just be missing just a period rather than a full sentence, of course. Making it just a typo rather than a cut off sentence.
 
vsh said:
Worst case is that that the active effect was portal from realms of chaos to normal space, and not vice versa. Then cuttingagic off will close the portal and leave Vlag trapped forever.
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Possibly, but frankly not too different then what's already going on, and it would cut off a sally gate that's currently threatening our advance and eventual retreat.
 
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Okay, here's a thought. Look at this bit of text:

and in the magic-thick aftermath of an entire Karak appearing and disappearing again, the bodies of the Daemonettes remain where they lie, their blood slowly boiling away into free-floating magic.
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Right now we are not in the Chaos Wastes. Any daemons pulled into reality will just plain dissolve away with a little time. That means that Karak Vlag is their refuge. They can only hold it so long as it stays in the aethyr. Which means that if we could force the whole thing back to reality and hold it there for long enough... hours, maybe days, then all the Chaos demons inside it would... dissolve away. Remember that they captured the place when Chaos had extended far to the south, allowing daemons to operate in this area freely. That's no longer true.

It also seems pretty sure that the Waystone energy is what's being used to keep the karak in the aethyr. That means that if we could disrupt the energy flow and hold it long enough, the hold should reappear. Keep it disrupted and the daemons inside dissolve. It's "a lot of energy for one wizard"... but we have a lot of wizards with us?

@BoneyM is that a viable plan? Disrupt the flow of energy, keep disrupting it to force the hold back to reality, hold off any daemons long enough for them to "naturally" dissolve, result of one empty karak?
 
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BoneyM said:
with a strike from the pummel
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pummel here should be pommel.

For what we can do here and now: let's discuss the problem. What are our objectives with regard to Karak Vlag?
  • We need to let people know what the fuck is going on. This is already being done.
    • @BoneyM, is there a way for Mathilde to send a message to the Colleges with the packet Borek is talking about?
  • We want more information.
    • Are there spells we have in the toolkit of us and our local wizards that can gather information without melting anyone's brain?
    • I assume that if "stand there and stare at it with Magesight" were viable we'd already have that as an option, so let's leave that out of the discussion.
  • We need a clear path back when we return.
    • Is there anything we can do to set that up right now?
  • Reclaiming it eventually would be nice.
    • We can fuck around with the waystone at Dum, maybe, but that's not a here-and-now thing.
What am I missing?
 
vsh said:
Worst case is that that the active effect was portal from realms of chaos to normal space, and not vice versa. Then cuttingagic off will close the portal and leave Vlag trapped forever.
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The worst case is the portal is permanent and can't be closed.

At any rate the knowledge about Vlag is still quite valuable. At least there won't be a chaos portal randomly popping up in the future.
 
Imagine Belegar Quest.

The expedition you send your Loremaster out on has barely started and you get a message:

Vlag trapped in Warp by Chaos, occupied by Tempter forces. Waystone network powering ritual. Continuing to Dum.

What kind of reaction would that cause? Hell, how does Thorgrim Quest react?
 
Jyn Ryvia said:
[ ] yes 'Send a letter to the colleges to contact Teclis. Let's see if the demons can hold the spell against a very embarrassed high loremaster.
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Yes! We need this!
Not just for fixing the whole thing, but proving that we've one-upped Teclis can be worth a ridiculous amount of elf-rep once we head that way.
 
Well. I'm guessing that Karak Vlarg is/was the site of the "Sally Port Of Gazul".

We did know that the Karaks were the site of mega-projects powered by the waystones. And the sally port is the one that makes the most sense here.

Edit: posted to soon.
 
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Gentlemen, we need a throng ready for when we take over Dum

The expedition be damned. We need a throng. We might even have to use our favor with Nagarythe to show this into Teclis' face so that he comes too to help.
 
Agh, yep, confirmed that I really hate the idea of standing there and trying not to die for multiple minutes as our opening move. What a stressful thing to read.

If we can find something to weaken the barrier between the Hold and reality, or at least jam a crowbar in the door, then maybe that'd be worth it. Something that would materially assist a future Expedition that the Tempter wouldn't be able to nullify by the time they get there, and it can't take too much resources. If someone comes up with a great idea, then sure, but otherwise let's just head onward.
 
DragonParadox said:
I think we should get the light wizards to try to send a signal, though I'm not sure what kind of signal dwarfs in the depths of the warp would trust... maybe a message in Runesmith Khazalid, assuming a runesmith would be willing to share a few words and the defenders still have runesmiths of their own to translate.

@BoneyM could we get a message to Thorek to share the Runesmith Khazalid words for 'help is coming' and does Mathilde think he would share those words with the Light Wizards for the purposes of maybe giving hope to a embattled hold?
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No. The return time on that message would be very long.

Garlak said:
This got lost in the posting-tide when I edited it in:

"Seconds pass" and it cuts off. I mean, it could just be missing just a period rather than a full sentence, of course. Making it just a typo rather than a cut off sentence.
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Sentence got cut off prematurely. Fixed.

Briefvoice said:
@BoneyM is that a viable plan? Disrupt the flow of energy, keep disrupting it to force the hold back to reality, hold off any daemons long enough for them to "naturally" dissolve, result of one empty karak?
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If Vlag is returned to reality and it's cut off from whatever magic was keeping it in the Warp, that will start a clock on how long those daemons can remain manifested. How long would be on that clock is difficult to predict, but it's probably measured in days.

EVA-Saiyajin said:
And to be clear, she has the knowledge to unstopper it as well?
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Yes.

picklepikkl said:
@BoneyM, is there a way for Mathilde to send a message to the Colleges with the packet Borek is talking about?
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Yes.
 
So, I know that the elves only gave us permit to be among them for a hundred days or so for our services rendered, but do you think its possible we could reach out to Teclis instead, trying to leverage it that way? The fact that Karak Vlag escaped his notice right under his eyes should nettle him enough that he might decide to pay it a visit if he learned of how it is now. And if Teclis visits, well, i don't think anyone needs to worry about few shoddy daemonettes.

Its probably too much pay for lot of nothing, but i felt the need to throw this out there.
 
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Well, we now know what all that magic is being used for. (Assuming that it's an active effect.) And... yeah. That will take a fair bit of research and work, to undo this. Time for Mathilde to make some notes on this.

Also, for all that Asarnil is pouting, Deathfang just earned the draconic version of headpats.

As for things to be done... I don't think so. Maybe if van Horstmann knew Eyes of Truth, that might help... but it sounds like the Karak-as-a-concept was physically taken into the Realm of the Tempter... which does not sound like something that can be easily bypassed.
 
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