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Warhammer Fantasy: Divided Loyalties - an Advisor's Quest

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picklepikkl said:
I really don't think we should buy the arm -- it's a large amount of money for something we won't be able to use -- but whatever, questers love shinies. Hopefully we don't turn out to need that money for anything in the future.
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Briefvoice said:
So money continues to come in. Might as well spend it on unique artifacts that we'll never have another chance at, right? Whatever my doubts, I'll suck in a deep breath and vote "yes" on everything.
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Plus the arm is at least solid gold, and must be worth several hundred gold just from the material weight alone. Simply melting it down would recoup a significant portion of the purchase price- depending on the chance of Slow Lizardy Vengeance following it, I don't see any significant downsides to buying it.

[x] HALL: No
[x] MEAT: Yes
[x] ARM: Yes
[x] NUT: No
[x] PAPERS: Yes
 
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Nerdasaurus Rex said:
And rescuing some slaves isn't going to cause the war between the dwarfs and chaos dwarfs to escalate anymore than it already has. If they could send armies to besiege the Karaz Ankor, they would already be there.

I'm sure the knights don't care who they fight—chaos dwarfs, chaos humans, chaos demons, they are all threats to the Empire. Most of the dwarfs probably feel similarly.
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The war between the Chaos Dwarfs and "the Dwarfs" in general? Of course not. Violence between the Chaos Dwarfs and the expedition? You bet they'll attack if we provoke them like that!

We're already down our Slayer contingent from the Vlag sidequest. We need to avoid unnecessary casualties - we don't know how many, if any, we can afford to lose before we get to Dum.
 
Briefvoice said:
@BoneyM

Incidentally, it's somewhat hard to figure out Mathilde's per turn income. EIC income wasn't listed on either the character sheet or the Collection of Important Information or the Organizations posts that I could find. I had to look into the EIC summary on the Turn posts for it. And I couldn't find Mathilde's Loremaster salary at all.

It might be good to put that somewhere so that people can look it up and think in terms of "how many years worth of funding is this" for themselves when/if another vote like this comes up.
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While that's a good point for ease of accessibility, I do like the thematicness of having to dig through a bunch of threadmarks to figure out the income streams that are flowing right through the Vow of Poverty. I'll consider it and revisit the matter when we return to normal turns.

Mathilde is paid 120 gold coins per year as Loremaster, and you may want to also factor in the income from her fief.
 
Deathbybunnies said:
The Chaos Dwarves pile up money without using it because their God is literally the god of greed, and our income outstrips our purchases by, like, a lot. If we don't spend it in situations like this, we basically never will.
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Exactly what is our income then? I'd gotten the impression that Mathilde's gold reserves have been going down since the Expedition's ridiculous windfall, and we have been turning down basically every opportunity for monetary reward ever since in favor of other stuff. Is this completely wrong?
 
BoneyM said:
There is no way to predict what state the Expedition and Mathilde will be in when/if they make their return journey, so there's no way to predict whether an impromptu raid against a stronghold built to host the most steal-happy people from around the world by Dwarves dedicated to the God of Greed would be in the cards.
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That is fair enough, conditions of expedition are very much up in the air at that point as we could suffer considerable fatigue and or attrition.

There are mental states between 'perfectly serene' and 'unwilling to continue living'. Mathilde would likely fall somewhere between those two extremes after looking upon actual living breathing humans doomed to a terrible death and doing nothing to help them.
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I think that is my concern. The doing nothing.
Would not looking at those sights and sounds, with determination to save one person or a plan to return and address the situation later, deal with the "doing nothing" part?

That's a very loaded argument to make when everyone with internet access is able to browse through the full range of human suffering happening in the world at any given moment.
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I don't know.... Are they really the same thing? We don't have Magic like Mathilda, or Favour with Dwarf Holds or the Imperial Colleges of Magic.

She is physically present on site where suffering is happening now. The Chaos Dwarfs will not oppose her buying a slave or slaves. They also cannot stop her doing Recon for a future raid as they would have to stop all potential customers from looking. Mathilda also has the Magic to inflict considerable damage and lower case chaos if she awakens the angry dead.

Us humans on the internet lack her capability to wield magic and are usually far away from events as they happen. About the only thing we share with her in this situation is the ability to do recon and intel gathering.

It may cause guilt, but it does mean she doesn't have the sights and sounds of the people she's unable to save etched into her memory.
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Guilt could happen either way I guess, but by viewing it and interacting she could save one or a few, even begin plans to save more later. Or just go hogwild and raise the hordes of angry dead.... As Hilarious/Awesome/Unwise/Terrible as that may be depending on rolls.

Worshipping Ranald is not a suicide pact.
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True.
I just have concerns that we may regret not saving someone later on, or will lack info on how to plan a raid/attack at a later date.
 
Koraan said:
Good idea... Even if that things not prohibited, that would just mean CDs want that for themselves... And unlikely would pay the "full" price, even assuming they will not confiscate the item for breaking the rules.
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Nah. This is Uzkulak. You can buy anything here. The items are likely not forbidden, but under heavy tax due to associated risks of the former owner coming there with an army to take it back. I am pretty certain the elf would laugh in our goddamn face and doubled the price because he paid the import tax on dangerous items.
 
ChronOblivion said:
Exactly what is our income then? I'd gotten the impression that Mathilde's gold reserves have been going down since the Expedition's ridiculous windfall, and we have been turning down basically every opportunity for monetary reward ever since in favor of other stuff. Is this completely wrong?
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No, you're correct. Our cash on hand has been dwindling. We've currently got about 2800gc by Imperial reckoning, 2400 by Dwarf (different purities of coin).

That said, our income just got a shot in the arm: we get 60gc/turn from being Loremaster, 175 gc/turn from the EIC, and we no longer have to tithe any of it now that we're a LM. We regularly spend into the red when buying books, which is our major expenditure, but BOOKBOON will probably reduce that, assuming we go for it.
 
ChronOblivion said:
Exactly what is our income then? I'd gotten the impression that Mathilde's gold reserves have been going down since the Expedition's ridiculous windfall, and we have been turning down basically every opportunity for monetary reward ever since in favor of other stuff. Is this completely wrong?
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Mathilde's income recently got a pretty big increase, actually, since she finally paid off the loan from Stirland that she took out to pay for her third of the EIC - so all of the money that was going straight to paying off the loan now accumulates for her.
 
BoneyM said:
"That plant Wizard?" You shake your head. "Then- oh." He looks over his shoulder to check for listeners. "I'd considered it long ago, but no Dwarven force would reach it intact - anything small would be enslaved by raiding parties long before they reached the supposed safety of Uzkulak, anything large assumed to be an invasion force and opened fire upon. But I suppose you have both the mobility and the required flexibility."

You nod. "It's not uncommon for my Order to be faced with two evils and forced to choose. We're adapt at weighing them up and finding the lesser."
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Huh. Well, there go my concerns, and good on Borek for knowing how to prioritize.

"As are many Dwarves of late." He shakes his head and gives a sad chuckle. "Was a time we were making our own miracles. Now the Karaz Ankor is so fallen that an Umgi who by our standards would be barely old enough to begin an Apprenticeship is doing what we apparently cannot. I'm sure arrivals in the Underearth must be greeted with the overwhelming disappointment of our Ancestors, if we're even considered worthy to be admitted at all."

It's a troubling thought that you consider in the back of your mind as you hold a clear stone up to the sun. Dwarvish ego is very easy to laugh off as a foible of their race, but just like the Elves it's something they take deadly seriously. Of the fifty dead Slayers being watched over in the Urmskaladrak, you've no doubt that at least several shaved their heads over failing to meet an unreasonable standard they had imposed upon themselves. And you're just as sure that should the Expedition turn back, Borek will make good on his implied promise to continue alone and on foot. He would rather die pointlessly than live with failure.
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Poor guy.

"The greatest accomplishment of Karak Vlag's Rangers. For millennia the east was considered lost to us because you can't follow the mountains without hitting Uzkulak, and you can't cross the Dark Lands without encountering traitor patrols. But this was the Golden Age and we never gave up back then. Karak Vlag's Rangers eventually managed to chart a path through the Zorn Uzkul from lake to lake and reached the Mountains of Mourn without the traitors ever catching on. The mountains were rich and had never seen a pick, and Karak Vrag, Karak Azorn and Karak Krakaten rivalled the riches of the Old Holds for a time. The range seemed wide enough that we could expand into it for a thousand generations and still have room aplenty.
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Nice.

He barks a humourless laugh. "That's a question I've been asking myself a lot lately. Clan Redbeard of Karak Kadrin watched the mountains to their north, and Clan Grimsteel of Karak Vlag watched them to their south. They saw a lot of each other and had good relations, and three of my eight great-grandparents were from Grimsteel. After Karak Vlag vanished Clan Redbeard scoured the pass for them for years, and then it was decided they were to hold it on behalf of the Karaz Ankor, as Karak Vlag no longer could. But that put us in a tricky spot. A Clan is part of a Karak, a Karak is part of the Karaz Ankor. So in the eyes of many, a Clan that has no Karak is no Clan at all. You'll find many these days that refer to us as the Redbeards, rather than Clan Redbeard. We see Karak Kadrin maybe once a decade, and there's Longbeards twice my age that have never walked Peak Pass. So until everything that happened back there, I would have said that we were more a park of Karak Vlag than we were anywhere else, and I'd have never given it much more thought than that if you'd never plucked it out of the clutches of Chaos."
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Huh. Well, this is Divided Loyalties quest.

He looks at you, snorts, and produces a clipboard from behind his beard. "Name, alias, or pseudonym?" he asks, sounding as bored as any gate guard you've ever met.
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@BoneyM .

Bored Chaos Dwarf Customs Official is my new favorite minor character.

He's perfect.

You scramble for anything that's not your actual name or 'Grey'. "Gabriella," you land on. "Gabriella von, er, Nachthafen."

"Gabriella von Ernachthafen," he repeats, carefully scrawling runes with a quill. He looks you up and down. "Grey, Black, Thrall, or incognito?"

You blink at him. "Incognito," you say.
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Von Ernachthafen. Excellent. I like how he casually sizes up the possibilities for someone who is obviously an Empire Grey Wizard so quickly.

"Have you brought any of the following goods to Uzkulak: bound Daemons, precious stones or metals from Nehekhara, any seed, bud, fruit, or cutting from Athel Loren, unshielded warpstone, spherical devices made of brass, Vampire body parts, any item created or possessed by the Skaven Clan Pestilens, gilded skulls made of black bone, anything from the Temple-City of Zlatlan, any mummified bodies of large, frog-like beings, unshielded wyrdstone, any kind of projectile capable of moving on its own, any of Kadon's Scrolls of Binding, golden whistles, instruments stringed with unicorn hair, keys made of crystal, or any sort of stone that glows with a green light?"
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:lol: :rofl: :lol: :rofl: :lol: :rofl: :lol: :rofl:

What's hilarious is that every item on this list is something the Chaos Dwarves have presumably learned, from experience, not to allow within Uzkulak.

Including slann Relic Priests, vampire body parts that presumably revived in the city, plants from Athel Loren, and (I say this as a very happy member of Cuttlefish's Zlatlan Quest) "anything from the Temple-City of Zlatlan."

I don't actually recognize some of the items or why they'd be on the list, though: "spherical devices made of brass... gilded skulls made of black bone... any kind of projectile capable of moving on its own... golden whistles, instruments stringed with unicorn hair, keys made of crystal." What's up with those?

"Have you brought any slaves with you with any of the following qualities," he looks up at you, "well, do you have any slaves at all?"

"No."
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Hah!

You also spot signs and doorways leading to ancillary halls dedicated to specialty goods that, for various reasons, aren't suitable for sale in the trade hall. There's a Hall of Livestock, which you visit very briefly as you find an empty room that will likely smell of dung for the rest of time; an extremely weary-seeming Officiant tells you there's nothing currently in, as an Ogre tribe pushed out of their hunting grounds bought everything there was.
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:(

Darn.

There's a Hall of Slaves, which you spend some time looking at with a churning gut. Slavery in the abstract is a detestable practice, but actually seeing slaves, chained and suffering and waiting to be bought, is something you're not sure you can witness up close without breaking the restrictions you're currently under. Sure, maybe it would be all greenskins or Chaos Marauders enslaved and sold by their rivals, but it's very possible that they'd be innocents taken in raids on the Old World's coastlines and sailed to Uzkulak to be sold. What do you do then? Beggar the Expedition and then burden it with a swarm of hungry noncombatants? Do something drastic and bold that gets you killed for nothing? Try to match your skills at thievery and deception against the greed and paranoia of the worshippers of Hashut, who have spent millennia at Uzkulak honing and practicing their skills and procedures to prevent that exact occurrence?
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Frankly... yeah.

Finally you find what you're looking for in a corner stacked high with ropes and sails: a slimy chunk of brined meat that has long since oozed out its moisture into a growing stain on the table. You ask the price, and it'd be slightly high if the barrel had just been sealed, let alone for something that was shipped for an unknown time, stolen in an unknown location, shipped an unknown distance to Uzkulak, and has been sitting in storage for an unknown period. But it's meat, and the quantity the Officiant says is available would feed the Expedition for about one and a half weeks, leaving you slightly better off than the original schedule.
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Bleh. On the other hand, it's about the best we're going to get and it's better than nothing... probably.

...a map to 'Elven treasure' that would, if your memories of geography are correct, land the treasure-seeker near the foot of the Dragon Spine Mountains, which you're sure Caledorians would disapprove of quite strongly and almost certainly violently.
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To be fair, there might legitimately be elven treasure there. It's just that you'd never live long enough to find out. :p

The first piece that causes your eyebrows to rise is a four-fingered arm made of solid gold and covered in sigils you don't recognize. You can sense dormant power within it, and a lot of it - but too tightly contained to tell what sort, except that it's not Dhar. The fingers are razor-sharp talons and the palm has a raised circle you're sure is where that power you sense is output. But though the Norscan selling it does not seem to know anything about its magical properties, he does know solid gold when he sees it, and that puts a solid floor on the price. Eight hundred gold coins is a shockingly exorbitant price for a complete mystery and it's not like you're short of strange things to prod at, but you suppose if all else fails you could resell it for melt value.
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Likely origins: lizardmen, dark elves, chaos dwarves, Far Eastern humans (Ind/Cathay/etc). I don't think it's worth the pile of money.

The second is from a Naggarothi Corsair that won't stop smirking at you, and among the goods scattered haphazardly across the table is some sort of nut that glows so brightly with Ghyran that it gives you a headache in your soul to focus on it. Your questions uncovers that the Corsair got it from 'somewhere', where it belonged to 'someone', and was stolen 'a while ago'. You're starting to understand why the Ulthuani don't get along with these people. The price is a jaw-dropping one thousand gold coins, and your shock and outrage at that only seems to make the Corsair more delighted, which leads you to suspect that's why they gave you that price. But you must admit you've never seen so much magic concentrated in so small a form.
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Pan would love it. Might somehow be used to supercharge our healing artifact, dunno? Really expensive.

The third and final curiousity is a set of books and papers apparently taken from an Ulthuani explorer who ventured into Lustria and the Southlands to investigate the strange lizard-folk that are said to reside there. That she took rubbings and sketches instead of the golden plaques themselves might be why she survived so long while engaged in such a dangerous endeavour, but it was no protection from the other hazards of the world, and apparently a Chaos Dwarf ship caught her vessel off the Shifting Mangrove Coastline on the eastern side of the Southlands. Her fate is unknown and probably tragic, but her rather extensive writings have been sent here to see if they can find a buyer. If they don't, they're likely destined to feed a forge somewhere.
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Poor explorer. :(

I would like to buy the books. They're books. And the source is wholesome.

[X] MEAT: Yes
[X] ARM: No
[X] PAPERS: Yes
 
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I'm seeing a lot of extremely casual references to raiding Uzkulak. To properly gauge how viable this might be, mentally replace 'Uzkulak' with 'Barak Varr' and then crank that up even further because all their visitors are violent thieves and they worship the God of Not Getting Their Shit Stolen.

TheOmnimercurial said:
I think that is my concern. The doing nothing.
Would not looking at those sights and sounds, with determination to save one person or a plan to return and address the situation later, deal with the "doing nothing" part?
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You're coming at this too rigidly, like looking at the slaves is +5 to sadness, so is committing to a vague future plan enough negative sadness to nullify that? It's not that simple. Mathilde has a mental state, and the things she sees will affect that in ways that can, to an extent, be predicted, but can't be measured. Mathilde can walk away now to minimize that, or she can go in there and confront it. That's what the vote is for.
 
pucflek said:
Nah. This is Uzkulak. You can buy anything here. The items are likely not forbidden, but under heavy tax due to associated risks of the former owner coming there with an army to take it back. I am pretty certain the elf would laugh in our goddamn face and doubled the price because he paid the import tax on dangerous items.
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I suspect they actually do ban Relic priests from being brought into the city. Because one of those waking up a bit inside would be... bad. Very bad. And they probably require shielding on warpstone, etc.
 
Nerdasaurus Rex said:
You know what, fuck it. I say we go in, raise hell and liberate as many slaves as we can. Who cares if it results in negative consequences for the expedition? We're best friends with the god of freedom from tyranny! Are we really going to ignore the plight of slaves just because it's politically convenient? Is Borek's expedition to a hold that's probably doomed more important than the lives of those suffering not two streets away? Can Mathilde really look at herself in the mirror if she chooses a dwarfs mad ambition over ending the suffering of innocents? Ignoring their plight, pretending they're not there, isn't going to be a balm on that wound.

"Oh sorry slaves, you're not important enough to save right now, it's too difficult and scary." Fuck that noise. We kick down the door, blast spells everywhere and flee with all the loot we can carry—like a proper Ranaldian should. Does not the Gambler take risks? Does not the Night Prowler attack the strong? Does not the Protector defend the weak? Does not the Deceiver trick the confident? Who is stronger or more confident than a chaos dwarf in his hold. What is riskier than rescuing slaves, who need our protection? We are not a Sigmarite, who makes sacrifices for the greater good. We challenge authority and tyranny no matter where it hides, no matter the cost.
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You seem certain that we will be able to free the slaves, defeat the guards of a Dwarf fortress, and then lead this unspecified number of slaves to safety despite being in the Dark Lands.
Where does this certainty come from?

You speak of "the loot we can carry" - IMO we can barely carry ourselves out of that situation, let alone another human being. We'll already be desperately relying on invisibility + teleportation to escape, after all.
 
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