The bolded part is a serious problem. Because it means, that the most knowledgeable, most accomplished dwarves rarely pass on the knowledge and techniques that made them such great artisans.
...which explains in part how the dwarves lost so much knowledge. Because the greatest craftsmen rarely pass on their knowledge and the "top level" techniques have to be rediscovered every generation.
Which in is all fine if your pop base is growing and becoming progressively wealthier and thus able to dedicate themselves to their craft.
...but if you're locked in eternal total war and have a stagnating population you have a problem
In fairness, from 70 to 120, that's presumably 50 years of apprentice-teaching.
Not every single human who enters a craft will spend half or a third of their life teaching.
You probably want a balance of things -- a balance of "spend of your precious time to teach" and a balance of "spend your precious time to advance the craft even further, and make the most high-quality items ever." If nobody gets taught, the art doesn't get passed on. But if nobody strives and advances the art, then the art does not advance.
If they spend their whole life teaching, then that means they don't have a part of their life where they're dedicated solely to advancing past normal-mastery or pushing the envelope.
Or maybe mastery/grandmastery is considered a private endeavor and affair? Something that you are meant to strive towards yourself, after your teacher has taught you to the level of 'post-journeyman.'
If the dwarves have a bunch of captured Skaven writings, do they also maintain a bunch of captured elves writings?
I'd be specifically interested in those on magic.
I'd also wonder about getting leave to study captured elven artefacts.
Or convincing some dwarven lore masters to compile notes from observations of different types of magic the runesmiths have encountered.
How much dwarf favor would it cost to get the Colleges access to this kind of stuff?
If the dwarves have a bunch of captured Skaven writings, do they also maintain a bunch of captured elves writings?
I'd be specifically interested in those on magic.
The bolded part is a serious problem. Because it means, that the most knowledgeable, most accomplished dwarves rarely pass on the knowledge and techniques that made them such great artisans.
...which explains in part how the dwarves lost so much knowledge. Because the greatest craftsmen rarely pass on their knowledge and the "top level" techniques have to be rediscovered every generation.
Which in is all fine if your pop base is growing and becoming progressively wealthier and thus able to dedicate themselves to their craft.
Though note that often apprentices aren't capable of handling top level knowledge and techniques. The solution is not so much "grandmasters need to take apprentices" as "grandmasters need to work more with masters and help those who are on the cusp of greatness achieve it".
The thing is, what would be the motivation for a false metaphysical teaching that would trick the dwarves? Who benefits from this? I could see Ranald playing a trick, but that doesn't really benefit him as it could result in Mathilde going to the dwarven afterlife instead of Ranalds.
I can see plenty of ways that Ranald could benefit from having a loyal soul inside the Underearth. Just as Mathilde gives him a point at which to act in the world, she would give him a point to act within that realm. Not as good as a priest making it there, but she's still a point of access.
I feel an impulse to ask for more elaboration on why.
Is this because of the whole 'no spending dwarf favor in Karaz a Karak' Thing?
Or is it because dwarves don't want foreigners looking a their trophies?
Or is it a generalized distaste for attempting to breach secrets, even if those who hold said secrets are the damn elves?
On a related-but-different note, have the dwarves ever tried to figure out Ithilmar? Or managed to figure any insights into how the elves would make it, even if they can't do it themselves?
(I'm wondering if someone can just hand dwarf insights to the gold order, then leave the Empire able to produce the stuff)
I feel an impulse to ask for more elaboration on why.
Is this because of the whole 'no spending dwarf favor in Karaz a Karak' Thing?
Or is it because dwarves don't want foreigners looking a their trophies?
Or is it a generalized distaste for attempting to breach secrets, even if those who hold said secrets are the damn elves?
On a related-but-different note, have the dwarves ever tried to figure out Ithilmar? Or managed to figure any insights into how the elves would make it, even if they can't do it themselves?
I feel an impulse to ask for more elaboration on why.
Is this because of the whole 'no spending dwarf favor in Karaz a Karak' Thing?
Or is it because dwarves don't want foreigners looking a their trophies?
Or is it a generalized distaste for attempting to breach secrets, even if those who hold said secrets are the damn elves?
I mean, waltzing into the capital of a foreign nation and asking if you can take a peek at the contents of their vaults for no reason other than 'I want to' is kinda sketchy.
Heated, if fascinating, multi-threaded discussion.
Edit: um. Saw boney asked us to drop this after I posted, so spoilering and will not reply further.
I'd like to say that I am on the side of chucking out the orientalist caricatures as what is actually going on in the setting- but I think that's the same thing as reading the in-setting information we have that is a racist caricature critically as real to the setting. After all, the real-world caricatures that were drawn on mean that the kurgan caricatures given are just as false, and likey in very similar ways.
So we start from geography. Nomadic tribes in an area where magic is easily available but only in flood-quantities. Food and culture is horse-centered, so we can probably look to real-world horse nomad culture. (Steppes of eurasia, early sweden inland, great plains america after spanish contact?)
Then we take the 'facts'- they worship chaos (among other things), they raid caravans and join invading armies, they run brutal grotesqueries as part of their warfighting. They have populations only sufficient to support armies in the tens of thousands from an area three or four times as large as the empire?
So far so mild, for the setting. Mostly self-contained and stable, no big changes for thousands of years despite contact with the wider world.
Then we get into the stuff that might have been transposed onto them by an in-setting writer. The more extreme and self-destructive chaos practices that need the unreality of the true wastes to sustain. Some norsican cultural elements. Sheer ignorance of who they were as opposed to what they had done.
The problem isn't that they believe her to be Dawi and thus legally she is, that's clear, I was arguing against the idea that Mathilde actually literally has a dwarven soul, since Silent was responding to Jyn, who commented that she didn't actually have a dwarf soul after people seemed to be assuming that Mathilde actually had one. It's not about debating legalities, it's about debating if Ranald actually literally stole a floating Dwarfs soul (?) to put into a human (??) who then ended up worshipping him, either so he did it retroactively or things just lined up that way (???).
Ok, real question: do we know a dwarf soul is actually a different type of thing from a human soul?
We know dwarf bodies work differently w/r/t magic, but we also know that stuff like runic ability is tied to blood, not soul. Magic, on the other hand, is frequently noted to require a mutation or genetic trait, but DOES seem to be tied to a soul directly: getting an arcane mark, changing a piece of your soul for a wind as it is described, should very much carry over between incarnations, right?
So we know at least some 'dwarf' souls can use magic (firedwarves), why do we think there is a difference in what the souls are rather than what the bodies are?
I mean the person that lied could well be Ranald. I wasn't joking when I responded to some one earlier saying the source for the information was Ranald. Assuming it is Ranald that is the source of the information chances are he lied and that Mathildes soul is just a normal soul.
Which, honestly, I would kinda love if it were the case. Ranald just flat out lying to boost his rep, get all the squares mad at him and secretly help out the friends of his favorite? Yes please.
Plus, you know, I kinda do think dwarf souls are normal souls.
Do the write-ups talk about child birth or infant care AT ALL for anyone? Skaven yeah, and it's made super squick, but everyone else is just kinda assumed and the descriptions go straight into early education. It makes sense to me that there's a lot going on in that temporal and cultural space that was just in a blindspot for wargame and fantasy writers.
...Khorne absolutely is the chaos God of childbirth. Not fertility, childbirth- where an enormous amount of mortality happens in low-tech environments, so removing that bottleneck in particular is likely to allow population blooms.
In particular, I think kurgan are likely to be most limited by childbirth-related mortality, because they are a herding culture. As long as they can breed more animals, they can support more people, and the grasslands are essentially an infinite resource. (I think norsican pop is more bottlenecked by cold tolerance and starvation periods?)
But Khorne wants blood, right? And death in honorable combat- in fact, it seems you could say his blessings are designed to prevent his champions from falling to not-honorable combat... So if he regards dying in childbirth like dying to magic, and just kinda nopes it for his faithful, then it makes a lot of sense to me. Blood and pain and screaming to pull his attention, but he wards off death because it is not a worthy way to die.
Anybody else have any responses or thoughts about the gun and bullet ideas as I figured some of them might be neat. (Polish, Clean and Gleam isn't my own idea; Enchant Item is an old idea, just one that is now being applied to a gun; and Illusion is the 'How do we make this silent and give no flash of light when firing?' thing which was figured out a while back. I included those in that post anyway partly for convenience and stuff.) Like the Silence bullet, which makes a person unable to talk. Doesn't prevent them from making any noise at all of course. But does make it harder for them to communicate.
How about a gun for killing at night or in the dark, where the barrel casts a variant of substance of shadow on the bullet, where entering flesh breaks the effect and the overlapping of matter explosion thing is used to deal damage that bypasses armor and toughness?
I was trying to thing what would work well with minimal magic in the bullet, because we know higher magic density in small objects is really hard.
I definitely believe that it is honest. It is not the sort of thing a human would call a political fiction, where you say something that is obviously false, everyone knows is false, and that you don't even believe is true, for the sake of providing a veneer of cover to something you've decided to do. But we don't know what reasoning they applied to arrive at this conclusion; the thread has postulated a bunch of things that might have happened, but we won't know until we're told what went down.
The "certain confidential information" might be, as some have hypothesized, a deity (be it Ranald, Gazul, Grombrindal, or other) sending a message of some kind and the dwarves running with it. It might also very reasonably just be "Thorgrim told us that Karak Vlag has been reclaimed and we have decided that this is the best explanation." I suspect it is more likely the latter, but the former is possible, if only because blaming Ranald specifically for the crime of theft of a dwarf soul and putting it in the Dammaz Kron is a very extreme step to take if the only thing you're sure of is "Mathilde has to have a dwarf soul." There are a number of alternate metaphysical explanations that, while unlikely, don't involve Grudging someone on purely circumstantial evidence, which quest canon has determined that dwarves don't like to do; witness how they didn't Grudge Chaos for the disappearance of Karak Vlag, even though circumstantial evidence pointed to it. So I'm pretty sure something turned up to make them blame Ranald specifically.
I'm sticking with dwarf souls *are* just regular souls with a dwarf life most recently, and Ranald knows this, so he lied to the dwarves's faces about 'stealing a dwarf soul' knowing they never be able to call him on the bluff. But it's a lie that works for them, is just as impossible to prove false as true, and coolest of all...
It sets the dwarves up for a new Ancestor God of Humans! This is a brand new domain for dwarves, relatively, so no ancestor laid to how to Human before, which means there is unclaimed space in the pantheon! We can bring in desperately needed innovation as 'humaning' and it'll actually fit into the dwarf cultural framework!
Call it the Iron Age, to represent descent from the gold and silver ages yes, but also to date it to the reconnection of Karak Azul, and the bettering of tools and weapons that humaning allows. Gold is most valued, silver is beautiful and easy to create with, but iron stops a spearthrust.
But a normal rock moon isn't more or less there just because it glows more or less. Mannslieb's protection should only matter in a "stone is an excellent insulator" way when ot partially covers or eclipses Morrslieb.
Personally, I think the Chaos Dwarfs make more sense than Dark Elves or Skaven.
They're specifically stated to have a small population, they lack most of the backstabbing other evil factions are known for, they stay behind an army of chaff in battle, and they make sure their reach doesn't exceed their grasp- compared to the Dark Elves constantly raiding half the world and invading Ulthuan, the Chorfs have exactly one major expedition outside of the Dark Lands on record.
I'd actual propose that slaaneshi cults of fertility and childbirth are very likely amount the druuchi- an endless increasing cycle from the extascy of conception to the agony of birth, with more and more lives added to the cycle each time.
Take a 'middle class' caste of druuchi who have kids and raise/train them up to early adulthood- the men mostly as teachers, drill instructors, and studs; the women mostly focusing on slaaneshi worship, midwifery, and early childcare.
The kids raised up and discarded would become the core of the raiders and armies, and the nobles would mostly manage slave industry/agriculture and scheme, and if you made it past 50 years old as a druuchi kid you'd join the middle class, but despite being able to live thousands of years the majority of the population would be under 30.
I mean, waltzing into the capital of a foreign nation and asking if you can take a peek at the contents of their vaults for no reason other than 'I want to' is kinda sketchy.
To be fair, when that someone is the direct responsible of retaking two Karaks (old holds at that), the construction of the greatest runic superweapon on centuries, and the translation of Queekish... If she would ask for something like that, because it can be useful in a project thst would benefit the whole Karaz Ankor I would expect a lot of grumbling and raised eyebrows, but also Snorri response.
To be fair, when that someone is the direct responsible of retaking two Karaks (old holds at that), the construction of the greatest runic superweapon on centuries, and the translation of Queekish... Ask for something like that, because it can be useful in a project thst would benefit the whole Karaz Ankor I would expect a lot of grumbling and raised eyebrows, but also Snorri response.
To be fair, when that someone is the direct responsible of retaking two Karaks (old holds at that), the construction of the greatest runic superweapon on centuries, and the translation of Queekish... If she would ask for something like that, because it can be useful in a project thst would benefit the whole Karaz Ankor I would expect a lot of grumbling and raised eyebrows, but also Snorri response.
Snorri is a ranger and is therefore, professionally a weirdo. He also a member of an expedition that can be charitably described as radical-leaning.
At the end of the day, dwarf-souled or not and Loremaster or not, she is still a human born and raised by the Empire and a high ranking member of an Imperial guild that dabbles in powers Dwarfs fundamentally don't trust and operates in a manner that is practically anathema to the Dwarven mindset. Karaz-a-Karak is the gold standard of conservatism and there's serious beef between it's leader and our boss. Asking for secrets with a nebulous 'it could be useful for the Karaz Ankor' is not and never will be a good enough reason to get them.
How about a gun for killing at night or in the dark, where the barrel casts a variant of substance of shadow on the bullet, where entering flesh breaks the effect and the overlapping of matter explosion thing is used to deal damage that bypasses armor and toughness?
A brilliant idea with one problem: the explosion propelling the bullet is going to snap it out of substance of shadows.
As for dwarven souls being different, we do know that Dwarves believe them to be different, and we have no evidence saying that they should be the same. I mean we already know that a wizards soul is different that a non wizards, so why should the old ones, who created humans and dwarves, used the same type of soul to do different things?
There's an argument that dwarves and wizards are a match made in heaven. Dwarves don't like zhuf nonsense, so if they team up with specialists to deal with it for them, it covers a critical weakness.
Personally I don't like the idea of Mathilde actually believing this humbug without proof or reservations and I also don't like her lying to all her Dwarf friends that she does believe it if she actually doesn't.
I don't believe that Mattie's going to believe it, but it's worth noting that it's pretty easy to talk about this without lying.
Mattie in particular is very good at implying untrue things without lying, but this is honestly a fairly easy one. Just go "legally speaking" and "this is what the Ancestor Cult declared" and "hypothetically, these are potential reasons that something like this might have happened" etc, etc.
Carefully avoiding lying in a way that goes along with someone's untrue beliefs is Grey Wizard 101.
True enough, but remember that Mathilde is very devout and that her relatioship with Ranald is personal, a friendship. I know I'd certainly be offended on behalf of my friend if they were besmirched.
I think we should check on if the Grudge is going to be resolved and Ranald's thoughts first. If Ranald is fine with this and the Grudge is resolved on it's own .... there is a potential path where this is actually good for Ranald.
With the words of a trusted superpower known for telling the truth backing up the whole "Ranald can steal souls thing", combined with Protector aspect ... it's not hard to imagine this spinning into "Ranald steals back souls stolen by Chaos", and this truth becoming one even semi-widely believe might actually give him hte power to do so.
It's ... I wouldn't exactly call this known in universe (I'm not sure how many people actually know about Arianka), but it is slightly more then OOC info. I remember reading one of the official things on Arianka where it was speculated that she might be providing power to the Ice Witches of Kislev, making it possible for them to cast their spells and Ice Magic. I don't think it was confirmed, but I remember it being brought up in actual official text.
Considering that I think (not actually sure, my Kislev Lore isn't the best) the Ancient Widow is another speculated source for Ice Witch magic, it's not hard to connect the two and say there's a possibility their the same deity, or even just connected somehow.
If Mathilde has a Dwarf soul then "having a Dwarf soul" doesn't actually mean anything tangible. Her behavior is (Ulgu) Human and her mental and supernatural abilities are (Ulgu) Human.
It is worth noting that there are Dawi Zharr Wizards, so Mathilde's ability to use magic does not neccesarily prove her soul to be non-dawi. You might argue that her ability to not turn to stone is, but considering that in this case she'd literally have Ranald looking out for her since Day 1 combined with a standard issue human body, it is not unthinkable that that particular trait isn't getting carried over.
Most of her experience has been K8P dwarves, however. (Well, okay, and Zhufbar.) Maybe the "Old vs. New Hold" thing going on would've made a difference if she'd been dealing with a different set of dwarves.
