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I wonder how many survivors there are. Mathilde couldn't have exactly gotten a good read on them as bolted down as they were.
 
"Are you okay?" you ask in Eltharin.

"I should be asking you that question," Asarnil says with a laugh. "If that had worked, the poets would be fighting each other for the honour of putting that maneuver of yours into verse."

You grimace. "I'm aware. But my ego will heal."

Hahaha. "That would've been extremely dope of it had actually worked." I almost hope that Mathilde will continue to have almost Amazing Moments but not quite cross the finish line herself but still contribute enough for other people to finish it out.

"It'd be underappreciated too. Everyone thinks Bloodthirsters are the pinnacle of Daemonic opponent, they don't appreciate how fast a Keeper of Secrets is, or how tough a Great Unclean One is, or how hard it is to get a Lord of Change into actual battle." Asarnil shakes his head. "There's an elegance to getting your appreciation in coins and ingots and gemstones. If someone doesn't pay what you're owed, it's a lot easier to burn their house down and loot the ruins than it is to pin them down and demand accolades."

You laugh, and thank Asarnil for his time and his insight.

I definitely hope for more Asarnil in the future, his extremely high place on the power ladder and centuries of experience make him speak with a confidence and clarity that few others can replicate. He is indeed all out of fucks.

Plan B it is, then: reconnaissance in force, with a line of shotcannon and rifles in defilade to retreat to. You're the natural choice for such a project, but your recommendation that you go in alone and invisible is rejected for Dwarven reasons. First contact with the lost Hold must be made by a Dwarf, so that they can either be welcomed back properly or the Grudge for whatever has happened to them can be properly witnessed and later recorded. You grumble, but by now know which battles can be won and can't be when it comes to Dwarves, so you simply add Johann. If the group can't have stealth, it should have firepower.

Yeah, makes sense, you don't send anyone it there alone, that's dumb.

Actually

Wait a minute


THE DWARVEN INFECTION SPREADS.

"Let's go," you say to the group as you rejoin them.

"What, all that talk and then you're giving up?" Snorri asks.

"I'm not giving up, I'm changing the engagement. They're not going to trust anything we say. You know how you befriend a paranoid stray? You don't grab it by the scruff of the neck, you just leave some food out and leave it to it. Eventually it realizes that you're not out to hurt it."

"So we leave?"

"We leave. Send word to Praag for them to send word to Karaz-a-Karak, and they'll have a gyrocopter full of Longbeards trying to coax them out by the time we get back. Best we can do. Look, I won't pretend that I know the inside of a Dwarven head better than you, but I do know how to manage paranoia. I grew up in a College dedicated to it."

"She's right," Johann says. "Like long-tailed cats in a room full of rocking chairs, the lot of them."

Ending with a great character moment, demonstrating a niche expertise that comes from her background that lets her outperform everyone around her at their goal. Always my favorite moments.
 
Become involved with:
[ ] Ranging far ahead of the convoy
- With the Knights of Taal's Fury
[ ] Scouting near the convoy
- With the Winter Wolves

Other:
[ ] Visit Uzkulak, the Chaos Dwarf equivalent to Barak Varr
[ ] Visit the combes that Qrech told you about

Can we try to aim for specifically looking for Trade Caravans that are on the road at the moment.

Don't need to convince the Dawi to send people to the city to pick up food if we manage to find a trade caravan full of food instead.

"Here, I think I've got an idea. Budge over." A moment later, a much louder voice asks, "what about the Elgi? They turn up for this Great War of yours?"

You smile. "They sent three people and they still act smug about it."

It's honestly even worse then that, because it implies that that was, like, their official decision, on a government level.

Nope.

Teclis just decided to come on his own and dragged two people with him. The collective response from the rest of Ulthuan, as a whole, was "no, we aren't doing anything."
 
Snorri, you get wizards :D
Mathilde poking a waystone and bringing back the karak does give her some good street cred.

I am having fun imagining Thorgrim's efforts to get the survivors to integrate back into society.

"We are messengers sent from the High King!"

"No, you are not!"

"Are you questioning our honor as dawi?"

"You aren't dawi, you cant trick us. You already tried that one 37 years ago."

Returns to Thorgrim
"My king they are mad. They think we are demons impersonating dwarves! At least they still hate Chaos.
Thorgrim: facepalm.
 
I don't want to sound ungrateful because holy fuck what a feather to our cap but in all the excitement, we didn't get to have a chat with Gotrek yet, @BoneyM.

Also the one thing that intrigued me and I didn't voice is thus: Did the Slaaneshi Slayers have any part of their limbs turned to stone? It's not textbook whether pledging alliance to a Dark God and gaining their blessings starts the stonification, I think.
 
Can we try to aim for specifically looking for Trade Caravans that are on the road at the moment.

Don't need to convince the Dawi to send people to the city to pick up food if we manage to find a trade caravan full of food instead.

People aren't trading food between Kislev and Cathay. What food they would have would be only enough for themselves to get to the next place they could buy more.

I don't want to sound ungrateful because holy fuck what a feather to our cap but in all the excitement, we didn't get to have a chat with Gotrek yet, @BoneyM.

Gotrek was still pending when Karak Vlag happened. You've got +1 choice this time so you can pick Gotrek again and have not lost actions, but it didn't make sense to me to lock you in to socialing Gotrek after all that happened.

Also the one thing that intrigued me and I didn't voice is thus: Did the Slaaneshi Slayers have any part of their limbs turned to stone? It's not textbook whether pledging alliance to a Dark God and gaining their blessings starts the stonification, I think.

No, it's exposure to magic turns Dwarves to stone, not allegiance. Slaanesh would refrain from granting blessings if it made the Slayers less fun.
 
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Can we try to aim for specifically looking for Trade Caravans that are on the road at the moment.

Don't need to convince the Dawi to send people to the city to pick up food if we manage to find a trade caravan full of food instead.



It's honestly even worse then that, because it implies that that was, like, their official decision, on a government level.

Nope.

Teclis just decided to come on his own and dragged two people with him. The collective response from the rest of Ulthuan, as a whole, was "no, we aren't doing anything."
to be fair, the Dark Elves were at the time ravaging the inner kingdoms with the Everqueen driven out of Avalon
sending to much help could have resulted in said help returning to find Ulathan conquered
which would have been worse then he Empire falling.
 
...holy shit, this is a big deal. I'm surprised Borek isn't overjoyed. Even if Karak Dum is nothing but a tomb, his expedition will be regarded as stupendously successful because it rediscovered/broke the siege on Karak Vlag, which seems intact enough and still populous enough to still hold its own against anything short of an army. It's a weird case of a Karak being thought lost entirely and permanently suddenly being back again--something alien to the dwarves, no doubt, but in a very good way.

And Mathilde was using the Protector side of the coin when she did this.

Assuming none of our friends die on this expedition (and it doesn't end in disaster), when we get back, Belegar will be caught between vindication and exasperation.
 
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...holy shit, this is a big deal. I'm surprised Borek isn't overjoyed. Even if Karak Dum is nothing but a tomb, his expedition will be regarded as stupendously successful because it rediscovered/broke the siege on Karak Vlag, which seems intact enough and still populous enough to still hold its own against anything short of an army. It's a weird case of a Karak being thought lost entirely and permanently suddenly being back again--something alien to the dwarves, no doubt, but in a very good way.
If Dum is lost Borek wouldn't care if Vlag came back converted into solid gromril with rediscovered Golden Age Runelore, he'd still despair and go Slayer.
 
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Did the Slaaneshi Slayers have any part of their limbs turned to stone? It's not textbook whether pledging alliance to a Dark God and gaining their blessings starts the stonification, I think.

I think it's specifically doing magic that starts stonification. If their just regular, non-magic Slayers ... they might have been fine. Especially if they've been in the mountain this entire time, the stone does protect them from from magic, and they were still technically in reality .... sort of.

People aren't trading food between Kislev and Cathay. What food they would have would be only enough for themselves to get to the next place they could buy more.

Yeah, that makes sense.

Hrmmm, maybe go with some of the knights? They won't be thrilled about it either, and the Dawi won't like it no matter what, but it's still probably preferable to straight up bringing Dawi there.

to be fair, the Dark Elves were at the time ravaging the inner kingdoms with the Everqueen driven out of Avalon
sending to much help could have resulted in said help returning to find Ulathan conquered
which would have been worse then he Empire falling.

I know. You don't have to convince me, I like the Elves ... I'm just not sure if anyone in the Old World knows/believes that, or even if they'd care if they did.
 
[ ] Visit Uzkulak, the Chaos Dwarf equivalent to Barak Varr
[ ] Visit the combes that Qrech told you about

You know that giant research backlog we just took a chunk out of by pawning it off? What if we made it bigger again?
 
Seriously though, this is really freaking cool. We did it. We got Karak Vlag back, it's still inhabited by uncorrupted dwarves and likely will be for the foreseeable future, And for the cost of less than a hundred lives. They're traumatized and it will take a while to really accept they're back, but... damn. We did good.

@BoneyM can Mathilde tell if the Vlag Waystone is working again and sending energy down the line? Or is there too much magic in the air to be certain?
 
Alexandra is the other unaccompanied Journeymanling and thus your second stop on the circuit, and in contrast to Cyrston's calmness she's very clearly still riding an adrenaline high. As she enthusiastically gives you a blow-by-blow account of the various forms of fire she threw at Daemonettes, you carefully examine her under your Magesight to make sure it's nothing untoward, and you can't see anything but roiling Aqshy. Just high spirits, then, probably reinforced by the influence of her Wind. All in all it's probably a good thing that their first taste for battle made her eager for more instead of the opposite, considering it's very unlikely to be the last time the Expedition encounters hostile forces. You congratulate her and have a quiet word with the Rangers that would have been nearby, and confirm that while her recollections of mowing down waves of Daemonettes with fire don't quite match reality, she definitely accounted for some of them.
"So are you sure she isn't secretly a Khornite?"
"Milady, she's a wizard who is currently bragging about killing things with her wizard powers"
"Yes, I know that, but are you sure?"

...holy shit, this is a big deal. I'm surprised Borek isn't overjoyed. Even if Karak Dum is nothing but a tomb, his expedition will be regarded as stupendously successful because it rediscovered/broke the siege on Karak Vlag, which seems intact enough and still populous enough to still hold its own against anything short of an army. It's a weird case of a Karak being thought lost entirely and permanently suddenly being back again--something alien to the dwarves, no doubt, but in a very good way.
Rcovering a lost Karak is a nice consolation prize, but Borek has not been secret about the fact that what he wants is not to rescue lost Karaks, but Karak Dun.

This is the equivalent of getting a rolling several SSRs in a single Gacha-pull without getting the one on rate-up.
 
I want to do some dark web shopping, could pick up interesting things, perhaps long lost dwarven treasures, actually if we can pick up ancient elven treasures that would even better to gain future favours, honestly its not like Chaos Dwarves can tell if the items important same goes if you slap an Ancestor item to their faces.
It would be great if we could buy elven or dwarven slaves but they would have enter into Chaos Dwarves hands already.

"A few score of them," you reply. "What was Karak Vlag's population?"

"About thirty thousand," Borek says.
Say about this, is 30,000 is average size population for a Karak or this is larger than expected?
 
can Mathilde tell if the Vlag Waystone is working again and sending energy down the line? Or is there too much magic in the air to be certain?
She'll check after she turns the flow back on next update.

Forgive me for putting words in the mouth of the GM here, but, would it hit Ungor and stop? Unless each hold had their own line to Karaz-a-Karak, but rather went along the underways, then it would hit Ungor and stop because Ungor isn't reclaimed, and god would it be hell to even try that. Drunken Dynasty almost fuckin broke trying.
 
Power from Vlag's waystone network gets added to the greater one and Thorgrimm gets the notification.

Que much happiness and confusion on his part.

No need to send a runner to the South, he will be sending scouts within hours of seeing the added flow of power.

I doubt this. Remember the interlude where we learned about Thorgrimm and the failing power levels of the Rune of Valaya. The power and connection didn't get recognized until the completed crown of K8P got within detection range of Karaz a Karak. I'm betting the same thing is going to be required here.

So no insta-notification, unfortunately.
 
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