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Warhammer Fantasy: Divided Loyalties - an Advisor's Quest

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The horse is way out of the barn at this point, but...

Buying (or not) the nut or to a lesser extent the arm because it's a nut from the oak of ages or a lizardman artifact is pretty obviously metagaming. In character we have no reason to be considering wood elf relations or whatnot when considering buying them.


[X] HALL: No
[X] MEAT: Yes
[X] ARM: Yes
[X] NUT: Yes
[X] PAPERS: Yes
 
[X] HALL: No
[X] MEAT: Yes
[X] ARM: Yes
[X] NUT: Yes
[X] PAPERS: Yes

I hate to give these people money, but the idea of these seemingly dangerous magical artifacts going in other people's hands is a thought I find quite alarming. I think we'll be doing more good by getting the arm and nut out of here than we are doing bad by providing money to this scum.

Also, in-character, I don't think Mathilde would have any reason to think these items are politically dangerous.

The slavery is definitely something we have to do something about, but right now we just aren't equipped to do so without doing more harm than good. Best to avoid it... for now.
 
If we outright start blowing things up and trying to rescue all the slaves right now, we'll probably die and we'll probably not rescue more than maybe one or two people, and the damage we'd cause would probably not be too much for the Chaos Dwarves to easily recover from. While tempting, it's not the best way to help people.

And yes, this is Warhammer, there's enough bad things going on that if we try to prioritize we might never get around to Uzkulak. And no matter how we plan it we might fail. And planning takes time, which carries a cost in suffering of innocents. And this is a fictional quest we're playing for fun so we want to focus on doing things that are enjoyable to read.

All the same. I want to save people from slavery and destroy this evil place, and to do that as soon as we have a fair chance of success.
 
Nerdasaurus Rex said:
"Save some slaves"

That sounds like a pretty good reason to me. Also, rescuing slaves is "egotistical" now?

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.

As for making decisions, we're a Lord Magister. The only people who can countermand us is the Patriarch of the Grey Order and the Emperor himself, and neither of them are here. We don't need to get our permission slip signed to save people.
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Sounds like a pretty terrible reason to jeopardize the expedition to me.

Sure the Chaos dwarfs are enemies to the Empire but the issue is that isn't what the dwarfs or knights have signed up for. We are not here to save people, we are here to save a lost hold if possible and to rescue its inhabitants if not. If Mathilde was alone then sure she can say damn the consequences and do what she wants but as 8 peaks loremaster and contribution to the expedition she has responsibilities to said expedition and its goals.

I think you're forgetting Belegar, who can definately countermand us while we're working for him and on a dwarfen expedition to a dwarf hold?
 
You know, if we fuck with the Skaven hard enough while investigating them that their conflicts with Uzkulak go hot and give it a few weeks, things could be a lot safer to damage the dwarves when we come back through. Just a thought.
 
[X] HALL: No
[X] MEAT: Yes
[X] ARM: Yes
[X] NUT: Yes
[X] PAPERS: Yes

I also want to remind the faction that's wants to attack the Chaos Dwarfs what the consequences would be. They are functionally the most organized chaos faction and are able and willing to devote themselves to vengeance as can be seen with LM Grey. I'm not saying attacking them will be a game over or anything but they will be a thorn in our side forever because it isn't hard to discover the grey wizard buying plenty of food is the grey wizard in the expedition going through. I can see a case for eventually dealing with them but our area of interest is too far south-west to make it worthwhile.
 
So warhammer unicorns, have the high points
1 incredible selfish creatures and pity all other magical creatures for not being unicorns. They are the magical version of cats.
2 unicorns can stop most hostile magic cast at them.
3 unicorns are attracted to female mages.
warhammerfantasy.fandom.com

Unicorns

"They are one of the most beautiful themes in the song of the world and sacred in Loec's eyes. They are a reflection of all that is good. As they fare, so do we all. If the day should come that our people falter and the last unicorn falls, then Chaos will sweep over all lands and madness shall...
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Unicorn - Warhammer - The Old World - Lexicanum

whfb.lexicanum.com whfb.lexicanum.com
 
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I would like to take a moment to note that this slave debate is exactly what i was afraid of when coming here.
And that i am thankfull that Boney gave us a second vote on it.
 
BoneyM said:
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.



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.
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Thanks for clarifying that for me Boney.

I guess I just favour confronting the issue vs shying away from it.

Plus even if we only buy and free one person I would feel happier as opposed to doing nothing at all.

I do suspect the Elven Explorer may be on Sale, the one who wrote the Notes and took etchings and rubbings etc.

Also.... Yeah it is looking pretty unlikely we can succeed in a mass uprising and escape at this point. Still.... Scoping the layout/floor plan may be useful if we get it drawn up and write a Paper about the place.

[X] HALL: Yes

Lets buy 1 or a few and rescue at least someone from this place.... I also want to see if they have the Elf Lady Explorer on Sale here.

[X] MEAT: Yes

I have been swayed to buy this, given that we possess a Hysh Candle to purify it with.

[X] ARM: Yes

Too important for research and writing a paper on, let alone what we may learn for our own enchanting projects.... If nothing else it is made of Gold.

[X] NUT: Yes

An emergency heal recharge and a potential Chaos killer.... ALL MY YES!

[X] PAPERS: Yes

Of Course! Research Papers Ahoy!
 
Nurgle said:
So warhammer unicorns, have the high points
1 incredible selfish creatures and pity all other magical creatures for not being unicorns. They are the magical version of cats.
2 unicorns can stop most hostile magic cast at them.
3 unicorns are attracted to female mages.
warhammerfantasy.fandom.com

Unicorns

"They are one of the most beautiful themes in the song of the world and sacred in Loec's eyes. They are a reflection of all that is good. As they fare, so do we all. If the day should come that our people falter and the last unicorn falls, then Chaos will sweep over all lands and madness shall...
warhammerfantasy.fandom.com warhammerfantasy.fandom.com

Unicorn - Warhammer - The Old World - Lexicanum

whfb.lexicanum.com whfb.lexicanum.com
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Doesn't the Fey Enchantress have one of them?
 
[x] MEAT: No

Let's not get dodgy meat from dodgy dwarves. This meat is surely old and unfit for consumption even if we ignore the chaos aspect.

Why risk food poisoning or worse. Our deal with the tribes should be enough.
 
Mopman43 said:
Technically speaking, we don't know if those items are outright proscribed or if they're things that the Chorfs want first dibs on.
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Yeah, considering the general vibe of this place I'm pretty dubious that the customs check is because those items are forbidden. The purpose of a customs declaration requirement is not inherently to forbid certain items from being brought in. From Wikipedia on customs declarations:
A Customs declaration is a form that lists the details of goods that are being imported or exported when a citizen or visitor enters a customs territory (country's borders).[1]​ Most countries require travellers to complete a customs declaration form when bringing notified goods (alcoholic drinks, tobacco products, animals, fresh food, plant material, seeds, soils, meats, and animal products) across international borders. Posting items via international mail also requires the sending party to complete a customs declaration form.

The declaration form helps the customs to control the goods that entered the country, which can affect the country's economy, security or environment. A levy duty may be applied.
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And the same list of goods that you're required to declare can trigger different responses for different goods on the list; all that being included on the list inherently means is that some kind of special response is indicated. From the same wiki page, for one example:
The Kuwait Customs
  • Alcohol of all kinds is forbidden to enter.
  • Materials containing packaging. In quantities. Will be considered commercial and require a temporary import license
  • Fees for commercial materials 5%
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Alcohol is straight-up forbidden, another category requires a special license and may trigger an additional special fee. The same sort of breakdown by item of what kind of response gets triggered probably applies across the customs declaration list we got presented with in-game.

tl;dr - Uzkulak being Uzkulak, while maybe a few of the items with the worst ratio of risk to value (unshielded warpstone, anyone?) might be hard banned, for most of those items I strongly suspect that answering "yes" either means that whatever you want to sell gets automatically flagged for the Dawi Zharr exercising their right of first refusal over all goods, or that you have to pay some kind of "extra-hazardous materials" cover charge to take that into the city and you maybe get directed to set up in a special quarter for that or something (as I think another poster also suggested as a possibility).

Anyway, votes.

[X] HALL: No

Pass on triggering extra mental anguish and/or borrowing trouble we may not be able to pay back.

[X] MEAT: Yes

Literally it's what we came here for.

[X] ARM: Yes

I'm inclined to spring for the shinies. We do (technically) have a Vow of Poverty, and while that has a lot of loopholes (by design), the spirit of the rule is AFAICT still genuinely valued by the Grey College. So converting our giant pile of hard currency into less-tangible/fungible assets like CF and/or research artifacts seems like an IC choice to make, which I generally like. And if we do need more hard currency later, we have over 200 gp rolling in every turn between our salary and our EIC dividends (of which the latter will likely only keep growing). Taking advantage of probably one-time opportunities to pick up rare, interesting, and potentially powerful artifacts vs. resource hoarding for the sake of [???] - that's not that hard of a pick for me, ultimately.

[X] NUT: Yes

Basically, the same reasoning as above, overpriced through Druchii trolliness though it may perhaps be. And the worrying over "oh noes it'll for sure trigger an elf invasion, which would somehow be an IC thing for Mathilde to worry about even though she literally doesn't even recognize the item" seems misguided on more than one level to me tbh.

For one, as suggested in the quote in the last sentence (admittedly sarcastic/exaggerated though the quote is) even if that was a plausible fear it would still be metagamey as hell to base a decision on that. Which would be reason enough for me personally to discount it even absent anything else, though I'm aware not everyone shares my priorities on that kind of thing. For two, even if they became aware we had it assuming they'd rather invade with no warning than even try the casualty-free approach of asking first (even if said "asking" came in the form of an arrogantly worded ultimatum bc elves) is a very questionable assumption. For three, even if they came down with a crippling case of Chaotic Stupid alignment and wanted to invade without so much as sending a note first.... how would they actually do it, though? K8P is nowhere near any forest of significance, much less Athel Loren, and the one million greenskins of Waagh Birdmuncha could attest that it's not super besiegeable even if it was. Except they actually can't because we turned 90% of them into magical ash in a couple heartbeats with the superweapon we built into a mountain like a Bond villain who switched sides and works for the good guys, then pretty much hunted down the rest. And that was before the Okral spent 3 1/2 years making it even more fortified. But no, yeah, I'm sure the Asrai are terminally stupid enough to prefer pushing their face into that buzzsaw to saying "hey you may not be aware, but you have something of ours that's very important to us and we're gonna need it back." :rolleyes2:

Unrelatedly though, in relation to this:
REAPER35 said:
We could also roll the dice and mention the DE we turned over the HE to the seed merchant. I figure it's a toss up on weather it makes the price go up, down, or stay the same.
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I'm not interested in doing that before buying it. But after buying it, I am interested in dropping a line like "you know, it's funny seeing one of you again - the last time I bumped into a Druchii, I paralyzed them before donating their still-living body to Nagarythe. Small world, amirite?" just to see whether that dents their smirk or not. Even if they just smirk harder, I don't hate Mathilde getting that insight into the extent of Dark Elf backstabbery/callousness pre-elfcation.

[X] PAPERS: Yes

Lustria! 😁
 
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