Warhammer Fantasy: Divided Loyalties - an Advisor's Quest

[Fnx002]

[X] Preceptor Joerg von Zavstra
[X] Citharus, Barbitus, and Timpania
[X] Use Rite of Way to ease the ascent
[X] Investigate the 'Windfall' with the Light Wizards

 

[vsh]

One thing i hate about the "just try something new" advice, is how useless it is.
Something new? What? Farting at the runes? Showing an awl up your nose? Dying my beard purple? What?
Kragg is using known (and proven to work) principles in new ways, slowly mapping what does and does not work, and that is super important.
Problem with Kragg is not that he is doing research wrong, it is that he refuses to take apprentices to teach what he learns.

Click to shrink...

This quest's Kragg's not against the experiments, by the way. We're talking about the guy who casted an ancestor rune at undumgi, and partially made Eye of Gazul. What's newer than that?

 

[soulcake]

About the whole RHUNRIKKI STROLLAR crossover thing, I really don't like how the worldbuilding of that quest reflects on this quest's Kragg the Grim.

Over here in Divided Loyalties, our first introduction to Kragg was him forging the Belt of the Unshackled Mountain, which does something completely absurd in having each of its three runes being themselves combinations of two normal runes. The Belt is something outside normal lore/tabletop rules, and Kragg forged it in, like, a month. DL's Kragg breaks the normal canon limits of runecrafting, and that's why he's the best.

But in Rhunrikki Strollar, that's tuesday. The entire premise of the quest is to go far beyond canon's runecrafting limits. Snorri is constantly learning new runes and new rune variations, sometimes entirely by himself. And even the things he churns out with his Productivity trait are more powerful and/or more advanced than what's seen in modern-day runed items.

So when it comes to a comparisson between the two? Well, in DL canon (and similar to some warhammer canon) the Master Rune of Kragg the Grimm is a revolutionary innovation and the master work of a 1,500 year old Living Ancestor. In RS canon, (and similar to other warhammer canon) it's a rediscovery of the Master Rune of Conduction, and an inferior version to boot. Snorri invented his own master rune, the Master Rune of Purification, in only 160 years of research while juggling multiple other projects simultaneously. Snorri wouldn't just break the setting, he's from a setting where the Dwarf's Golden Age runecrafting was fundamentally more advanced than DL's Golden Age runecrafting. Compared to that, this quest's Kragg isn't just massively less knowledgeable, he's also massively less skilled than someone 600 years his junior.

The comparison between the two characters is always going to be unfair because they both come from essentially different settings. And I really like Gandpa Kragg and his grudgingly friendly relationship with Meowthilde.

Click to shrink...

/undwarf

This is accurate, I went into Rhunrikki with a lot of things in mind, like the Santa meme, the Runelore and such, but in regards to power scaling well...

I wanted to, (at least try to)do to Warhammer what the Silmarillion did for LOTR in regards to the power disparity between the First and Second Age compared to the Third and Fourth. Something that canon Warhammer already does, but I sorta have to put the substance behind the words it spews. It's a giant piece of High Fantasy where neither the elves nor the Dwarfs are in decline. This is them reaching their apex; when wonders were made every Tuesday and stuff that was crazy was really crazy. So a lot of what I do is make sure you can see how this became canon and make sure stuff feels like it should.

Something I found was that Aesthetic and Thematic unity is key here, because Rhunrikki is frankly a completely different setting to canon so I can't rely on the stuff from canon to ground it to the Warhammer World.

But also it's just as much my inability to scale power properly IMO, but also to make canon look really really tragic in comparison.

Thanks for coming to my TED Talk, but anyway back to your regularly schedule Umgak posting.

/Redwarf

THE LAD DID WELL GIVEN HE'S LITERALLY BEEN LEARNING FROM THE DREGS OF THE DREGS OF A FAR GRANDER AGE.

WOE IS THE DWARF WHO LIVED IN THOSE ELDER DAYS AND IS ALIVE NOW, THE SORROW IS CRUSHING BEYOND ALL DOUBT.

 

[Mopman43]

WOE IS THE DWARF WHO LIVED IN THOSE ELDER DAYS AND IS ALIVE NOW, THE SORROW IS CRUSHING BEYOND ALL DOUBT.

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Well, that's just Grombrindal, and he seems to be getting along fine out of spite.

 

[DragonParadox]

It's not just that; the whole runesmithing was in most part made by people called Ancestor Gods; everyone else including golden age smiths builds on their work. From the very beginning it was largely mindset that defined whether you would call that work transformative or original, not the substance of work.

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I think it also depends which part of that you emphasize. The dwarfs of the Golden Age would have placed more of an emphasis on ancestor than god. After all some of them would have been the children and grandchildren of those examplars. By comparison during the dark age and the silver age into which Kragg was born they were much more remote figures, that were fundamental part of what it meant to be a dwarf in a world gone mad. I don't think it's fair to judge any modern runesmith by the standards of the Golden Age anymore then you would judge the civilians of that age to modern standards. Why, they aren't even wearing chainmail. Shameful lack of caution that.

 

[Valmond]

This quest's Kragg's not against the experiments, by the way. We're talking about the guy who casted an ancestor rune at undumgi, and partially made Eye of Gazul. What's newer than that?

Click to shrink...

Well, yes.
But then that is exactly what Kragg is described as doing.
Taking what is known, and using it in new ways to see what works, that's experimenting.
The Eye of Gazull is a bit more grandiose, but even then it operates on the same idea, known principles, in new ways.

 

[Deathbybunnies]

"If the greatest runelord for the past two millenia would just do this one simply thing, he too could be almost as great as our OC".

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I am pretty sure that things Kragg calls "oh that? Nothing new, just recombining ancestors' stuff" a more radical runesmith would call "COMPLETELY NOVEL INSIGHTFUL INVENTION".
Kragg's not dabbling in novel fields like firearms runes, but I really doubt his method for making new runes is really that different from what, say, Thorek is doing, just marketed conservatively.

Click to shrink...

I don't really want to clog up the thread with an argument about Kragg's skills, but I didn't pull this concept out of my ass - there was a WOG a while ago about how Kragg is, in fact, sticking to existing Runes and their components rather than trying anything truly new, to the point where he's probably not going to find much else unless something is rediscovered for him to add to his repertoire.

Like, that's his whole deal. He's absolutely convinced that the future of Runesmithing lies in rediscovering the glories of the past, not beardlings haring off into untested waters.

EDIT: Found it:

Kragg's been known to be the best Runelord of the Karaz Ankor for possibly a thousand years. At the top of the Dwarven skill path, there are two branches: seek further skill, or train apprentices. He's yet to find an apprentice he considers worthy, and the whole religious baggage of Runes means that it's considered that there is no such thing as a New Rune, just rediscovered old Runes or new applications of known Runes. He's been sitting in his workshop trying to find new ways to put together the same legos for centuries. It's kind of a dead end, and only pride, stubbornness, and bitterness has kept him going.

At its height, Karak Eight Peaks rivalled Karaz-a-Karak in wealth, beauty, and prestige. There's no question of whether it's a worthy project for him, only whether it's a possible project. He's seen at least a dozen generations of Belegar's ancestors try and fail, so his initial assessment of Belegar's chances was no different than that of his predecessors. But when a hundred thousand Dwarves, men, and Halflings marched down the South Road, he reassessed.

He still thought it would fail. Remember how long he clung to that modified gyrobomber? He was making sure that one of the few remaining Anvils of Doom wouldn't be lost with him. But he thought it would be an attempt worth dying for.

Click to shrink...

Kragg isn't less talented than the Runesmiths of the past, he's a tragic figure who's just convinced he is, because the knowledge has been lost and he won't try and invent something truly new when there's all the lost stuff he feels he should be using.

 

[storryeater]

One thing i hate about the "just try something new" advice, is how useless it is.
Something new? What? Farting at the runes? Showing an awl up your nose? Dying my beard purple? What?
Kragg is using known (and proven to work) principles in new ways, slowly mapping what does and does not work, and that is super important.
Problem with Kragg is not that he is doing research wrong, it is that he refuses to take apprentices to teach what he learns.

Click to shrink...

"Hey Kraaagg?"
"Thorek? What new radical madness is this, why did you dye your beard purple? The Ancestors ..."
"Never mind that, just check my new rune"

 

[SuperSonicSound]

Thing is I doubt very much that Thungni gave every single rune to the runesmiths and that there was zero innovation during the golden age, the conceit that there is no tolerance for innovation as it's wrong is probably essentially a long term dwarven heresy due to their warped perception of what is traditional and right.

 

[Valmond]

I don't really want to clog up the thread with an argument about Kragg's skills, but I didn't pull this concept out of my ass - there was a WOG a while ago about how Kragg is, in fact, sticking to existing Runes and their components rather than trying anything truly new, to the point where he's probably not going to find much else unless something is rediscovered for him to add to his repertoire.

Like, that's his whole deal. He's absolutely convinced that the future of Runesmithing lies in rediscovering the glories of the past, not beardlings haring off into untested waters.

EDIT: Found it:

Kragg isn't less talented than the Runesmiths of the past, he's a tragic figure who's just convinced he is, because the knowledge has been lost and he won't try and invent something truly new when there's all the lost stuff he feels he should be using.

Click to shrink...

Again, "try something new" is potentially useless advice.
"New" is an infinite possibility space and no actual idea what may or may not work.
Kragg sticking to known runes and their components is a perfectly valid research tactic, and we, the questers, have fuck all idea how easy or hard it is to make "new" runes, compared to new ways to use the old runes and components (which Kragg is doing), or how useful it would be in advancing runelore compared to what Kragg is doing.

 

[Nerdasaurus Rex]

Is anybody else worried about the wheels on the steam-wagons? Gotrek's been complaining about them since, well, since Karak Kadrin. They're probably our biggest point of failure right now, and if anything happens to them, we're literally scuppered. If there's a traitor in the expedition, all it'll take is a couple of blows with an axe or hammer (and those are not in short supply) and we can't move. That'll leave us vulnerable to raiders.

Alternatively, if a band of raiders slip past our scouts, then they could get messed up in the resulting battle (I know that was a concern during the battle for Vlag). Sure, between magic, grapeshot and dragon, it's highly unlikely any mortal warrior will get close enough to do any damage, but uh, that's something I don't want to leave to chance. Especially since there's no guarantee that chaos warbands only have mortal warriors.

 

[Deathbybunnies]

Again, "try something new" is potentially useless advice.
"New" is an infinite possibility space and no actual idea what may or may not work.
Kragg sticking to known runes and their components is a perfectly valid research tactic, and we, the questers, have fuck all idea how easy or hard it is to make "new" runes, compared to new ways to use the old runes and components (which Kragg is doing), or how useful it would be in advancing runelore compared to what Kragg is doing.

Click to shrink...

He's been sitting in his workshop trying to find new ways to put together the same legos for centuries. It's kind of a dead end, and only pride, stubbornness, and bitterness has kept him going.

Click to shrink...

I promise that "a challenge of unknown difficulty" is more possible than "a literal dead end". The problem is that Kragg won't even try. He's a tragic figure!

You're throwing your hands up and saying "you don't know what doing something new would look like", but these runes got invented the first time around so it's clearly not impossible. I'm afraid I can't actually go into any more detail than that, because this is a fantasy profession and so the details of such do not actually exist.

 

[EVA-Saiyajin]

Changed my mind a little. When it comes down to it, I'm the kind of person who would want to stack the deck, and things are too uncertain on how this expedition will turn out to slack off.

So I'mma go for scouting the Iron Wolf lands.

[x] Sir Ruprecht Wulfhart the Younger
[x] Use Rite of Way to ease the ascent
[x] Scout the lands of the Iron Wolves
[x] Investigate the 'Windfall' with the Light Wizards

 

[vsh]

Kragg isn't less talented than the Runesmiths of the past, he's a tragic figure who's just convinced he is, because the knowledge has been lost and he won't try and invent something truly new when there's all the lost stuff he feels he should be using.

Click to shrink...

I think it's entirely possible that "inventing new runes" and "combining and rediscovering known runes" are the same process just described differently (much like one artist might call original track what other would call a cover or a tribute).
There's nothing to suggest inventing new runes isn't as much a dead end as what Kragg does; there's nothing to suggest that religious baggage about runes is wrong either.
Kragg is a tragic figure, no doubt; it's just I don't think it's solved by "hey did you try to Invent something new?"

 

[Deathbybunnies]

I think it's entirely possible that "inventing new runes" and "combining and rediscovering known runes" are the same process just described differently (much like one artist might call original track what other would call a cover or a tribute).
There's nothing to suggest inventing new runes isn't as much a dead end as what Kragg does; there's nothing to suggest that religious baggage about runes is wrong either.
Kragg is a tragic figure, no doubt; it's just I don't think it's solved by "hey did you try to Invent something new?"

Click to shrink...

Thorek apparently managed it. Kragg proceeded to style on him using only pre-existing components, but Thorek's rune is described as being something new.

In the absolute worst case scenario where every rune has once existed and has just been lost since, it's still possible to reinvent those lost Runes however they were invented the first time around.

 

[das_slash]

Kragg does have an entirely unknown rune in his workshop, he just can't look at it because it might be chaos made instead of the lost work-runes or whatever they are called.

By figuring it out, we could unlesh a revitalized Kragg upon the world.

 

[Valmond]

I promise that "a challenge of unknown difficulty" is more possible than "a literal dead end". The problem is that Kragg won't even try. He's a tragic figure!

You're throwing your hands up and saying "you don't know what doing something new would look like", but these runes got invented the first time around so it's clearly not impossible. I'm afraid I can't actually go into any more detail than that, because this is a fantasy profession and so the details of such do not actually exist.

Click to shrink...

Yet, somehow, that dead end has produced Kraggs master rune.
And other runelords are not doing much better as far as we can see.
Something is missing, and i doubt "just try something new" is as simple and advice as some seem to think.

 

[tapkomet]

There's nothing to suggest inventing new runes isn't as much a dead end as what Kragg does; there's nothing to suggest that religious baggage about runes is wrong either.
Kragg is a tragic figure, no doubt; it's just I don't think it's solved by "hey did you try to Invent something new?"

Click to shrink...

Considering the runes got invented the first time around somehow, it should be immediately obvious that attempting to invent new runes is not in fact a "dead end"

 

[Techmarine]

Is anybody else worried about the wheels on the steam-wagons? Gotrek's been complaining about them since, well, since Karak Kadrin. They're probably our biggest point of failure right now, and if anything happens to them, we're literally scuppered.

Click to shrink...

While its true that the dawi engineer is grumbling about the wheels they will hold against Karag Dum, its dwarf engineering after all. Him grumbling most probably means that it isnt as good as it could be if he had another fifty years.

 

[Deathbybunnies]

Yet, somehow, that dead end has produced Kraggs master rune.
And other runelords are not doing much better as far as we can see.
Something is missing, and i doubt "just try something new" is as simple and advice as some seem to think.

Click to shrink...

Yes, Kragg invented his Master Rune before he ran out of things he could do. No, that does not invalidate the literal WOG I quoted.

And no, Thorek made a new rune.

 

[Glau]

Hey y'all! Most of the endgame is now worked out for U-K8P:SftS, so should have the rest of that out soon. Also have more Panpan fluff cooking.


I did want to say that I am concerned about the plotter. It's been mentioned that we should be on its radar, so examine the Lord of Change we are dealing with for a moment.

Look at it from the sequence of it's actions -> our actions:

Joins the final assault on Vlag when invited -> we wait longer until the Karag reverts.

(Potentially starts the demonic infighting?)

Leaves immediately upon reversion -> demonic forces are weak enough for us to win against.

(One major demon on the field instead of two or three, slaaneshi already bloodied.)

Burns supply cache -> Borek sends us to the chorfs for food

Attacks the skaven -> we pick up enough money to cover the cost of the artifacts we bought from the chorfs.

So if I were the suspicious sort, I'd say the plotter's actions have been directed at keeping us alive, delayed, and carrying some artifact from the chaos dwarf city on this trip.

Yeah, Kragg's deal is that he can apply what he has perfectly, he just never invents anything new. He'd rather spend literal centuries sitting in his workshop trying to put the same Runes together in different ways - even when he's almost certainly run out of new ways to put them together - than try and invent something new.

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I'm actually unsure there is such a thing as a "new" rune. Thrungi found them in the Glittering Realm, right? So it does make sense that there are a limited number of base units available, to correspond to those that exist in the former warp.

All the arguments about how "there's no reason for anything to happen" seem to conveniently ignore that having the Ice Witches clear the pass and yanking Karak Vlag back into reality are both very noticeable things could be brought to the attention of any tuned-in Chaos sorts.

Click to shrink...

True, roughly, but distance and disunity are both important considerations. K8P might notice a magical explosion in Tilea, but I doubt we'd substantially change what we were doing to intervene in force. It's just too far and also someone else's problem for now.

In addition to what others said, questers in quests with preexisting universes are almost always obsessed with getting noticed by the big figures of the setting (notice the endless stream of "What does x think of us/what we just did" questions after every big feat in every warhammer quest). The harder their approval is to get according to lore the better, and there are few people on our side who approve of less than Kragg the Grimm.

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Is there a conservation of headpats rule in the same way that ninjitsu is conserved?

People's certitude that nothing is going to happen, that internal threats are much more pressing than external ones, seems...misplaced.

Click to shrink...

More that if anything happens, we lose, so it is best to keep as low, small, and quiet as we can and hope that we get treated as an anomylous caravan rather than a military force.

It really doesn't even need to be the chaos champion leader or a dragon ogre. Just put 5000 cavalry against us and we will drown from tarpits and attrition.

So for once, we need to think like a grey and try not to provoke notice. Going out scouting is begging to get tangled up in something with a good chance of going loud.

I am pretty sure that things Kragg calls "oh that? Nothing new, just recombining ancestors' stuff" a more radical runesmith would call "COMPLETELY NOVEL INSIGHTFUL INVENTION".
Kragg's not dabbling in novel fields like firearms runes, but I really doubt his method for making new runes is really that different from what, say, Thorek is doing, just marketed conservatively.

Click to shrink...

Ironically, it seems to me as though Kragg is doing this like an elgi mage and thorek like a human one. The elgi develop and learn to cast new spells by meditating on them for decades to examine all points of failure and possible variations before it is actually cast, the umgi throw down some symbols and equations and get close, then experiment to see what needs to be adjusted in practice.

 

[Nurgle]

Ok so My idea is that the demons did not attack the skaven. I think the civil war is going bad or went bad for Moulder and we are seeing the fallout from it. I think k the Tzeentch demon is ahead of us and planning something.

 

[vsh]

Considering the runes got invented the first time around somehow, it should be immediately obvious that attempting to invent new runes is not in fact a "dead end"

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Lore of DL and parts of original whfb lore suggest (do not state but it's possible) that runesmithing was made rather than discovered: Thungni cut a part of warp called Glittering Realm and routed its power to the runes (and runes are more like preset artificial homing beacons for that power rather than something you can rediscover).

If that's true then completely new runes can be made but it requires to replicate the process of cutting up warp which is beyond Kragg or anyone mortal for that matter; all that's left is tweaking homing beacons and looking at what will home in.

If that's not true it's still possible that circumstances of the world changed since the time of Ancestor Gods and what worked then won't work now. E.g. there's just less magic in the world. Dwarves with different runic systems, chaos ones and north ones, live up north where there's more magic and in one case back it up with divine power.

 

[Ericwinter]

You know what I want to see in our unofficial titles section—or maybe even official titles, who knows—when we get back from the Expedition? Dawi. Just that.

 

[storryeater]

I just need to voice that , while I was initially in the "Kragg inventing new runes? who are we to know better than a master runelord " camp, @Deathbybunnies has swayed me to the other side.

If Thorek's rune is new, it is by definition something that Kragg cannot replicate due to his philosophy (at least not until he learns it is possible due to Thorek). In that aspect, Thorek's runes may be inferior but the legacy they leave is, like all things on Thorek vs Kragg, far superior. Kragg makes better stuff, Thorek makes a better legacy, as usual.

Its not that our OC knows better, its that, if Thorek can, Kragg definitely can, unless the reason for him not is psychological.