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Warhammer Fantasy: Divided Loyalties - an Advisor's Quest

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So, if people want to nuke it, we probably can. Ulgu is the wind of confusion, and we have genetrated enough of that to blow up Malus, so we can probably pull off spells a tier beyond the storm of magic ones.
 
das_slash said:
[X] Theory: The Dwarfs have control over Cor-Dum and is likely being controlled by Karak Dum's King or Leader, They are doing this to protect the Waystone and keep the Karak Ankor safe, there is an ongoing siege to take control of the waystone with a nearby source providing power to the desert to weaken the defenders.
[X] Action: Look for the source of the desert.

As explained above, this are not the dwarfs doing this for themselves, this are they sacrificing themselves to keep the Karaz Ankor going, we cannot save them, but we can honor their sacrifice, we can allow them to hold for longer. There are likely living dwarfs inside the hold still, and everytime Cor-Dum dies he is reborn and reforged anew by a new wielder.
After we disrupt whatever is holding their forest back, we should make contact and ask if they wish to send a message or some relic back to their people.
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The issue I have with proposing this theory is breaching the secrecy of the waystone network. Letting that cat out of the bag seems worrisome.
Redshirt Army said:
I can imagine a sequence of events where Karag Dum agreed to help the wood and high elves seal away Cor-Dum, or something of the like, only to bust out their pet sealed evil in a can as their final contingency when it looked like all other options had failed.

The shame of Dum would thus be threefold - that they had worked with the elves to bind a respawning chaos puppet, that they hid this from the rest of the Karaz Ankor, and that they resorted to actively deploying their bound evil to keep themselves alive.

I suspect that the forest we're seeing was created through wood elf magic, either through direct cooperation with said wood elves or through the runemasters redirecting wood elf magic that had previously been used to seal Cor-Dum.
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Make a [ ] THEORY: vote and I'll support it.
 
065tdsa said:
And those people were reminded that that is not how Dwarves work, and any amount of magic enough to mutate a baby catching them unprotected would turn them into a statue instead.
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And those people disagreed, that it's a dubious assumption that Dwarfs are totally immune to such things in the middle of the Chaos Wastes. The wards could be failing incrementally, they could be (or were, in the past) flickering on or off intermittently, it could have been literal divine intervention of some sort (and probably not the nice kind) given where they're situated.
It could have been the result of some dubious experiment to tamper with fertility rates, or sheer dumb luck. We just don't know, and I'm not writing it off because these things don't typically happen to Dwarfs.

Given Boney's take on canon and Dwarf culture, I'm not even convinced Dwarfs don't occasionally spawn Beastmen when outside of the protection of their holds and their associated wards - it would be exactly the sort of thing that they'd hush up and never speak about.
 
[X] THEORY: The specifics are hazy, but this is a known contingency plan that Borek is entirely aware of, but hoped hadn't been enacted. The result breaks all Dawi notions of acceptability, but Karak Dum survives in some capacity and continues to inflict attrition on every local and visiting Chaos force that want to take a swing at them, so it is considered a lesser evil by the pragmatic Karak Dum.
[X] ACTION: Gain more information.
 
Redshirt Army said:
What would Dum have gotten out of it? The High Elves would be happy to have a semi-permanent solution to Morghur, but...
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"Hey Dawi, couldn't help but notice you were in a bit of a pickle with all the hordes of chaos being at your doorstep and the Shadowgave being born to your hold. We have a solution that will require about fifty leagues of forest around your mountain. You won't like it though."
 
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das_slash said:
The herdstone, it was placed to provide a better environment for the Beastmen so they can better protect Dum and the Waystone within.
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HungryHamadryad said:
The ambient effect of the Waystone being modified into a less-evil Herdstone to attract cannon fodder, that the hold's tame Cor-Dum can command by virtue of being 12 stories tall and made of radiation.
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It's not a real Herdstone.
BoneyM said:
If the mountain was literally a Herdstone, then the energies flowing to Karak Vlag would have been stopped or corrupted. That was me (and/or Mathilde) being poetic.
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BoneyM said:
No, she thinks Morghur is acting like it is, rather than it literally being transformed into an enormous monolith.
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Valarauko said:
The bottom line is that no matter precisely what is going on here, whatever the answer is, it would be entirely unacceptable to even the most radical of the Karaz Ankor. We know enough. Learning more only satisfies our our personal curiousity; it means the response of the Karaz Ankor will be that much worse. We're better off not knowing.
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Care to vote for this then?
Abhorsen said:
[x] [THEORY]: There are no dwarves to save. Either the "Cor-Dum" we saw is somehow fake, in which case the dwarves hold the place, and need no help holding it; Cor-Dum is real and allied somehow with the dwarves, in which case the dwarves are not worth our trouble as they have allied with chaos; or Cor-Dum is real and conquered Karag Dum, in which case there are no dwarves left to save.
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Valarauko said:
The bottom line is that no matter precisely what is going on here, whatever the answer is, it would be entirely unacceptable to even the most radical of the Karaz Ankor. We know enough. Learning more only satisfies our our personal curiousity; it means the response of the Karaz Ankor will be that much worse. We're better off not knowing.
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The only question that really needs an answer is "does this pose a threat to the rest of the world?"
Cuz that makes it out problem
Because that makes it our duty to at least mitigate.
 
I do not think this is the real Cor-dum. It's lacking too many of his known traits to be the real thing, and the behavior is entirely off. That Borek didn't go slayer on the spot indicates that whatever happened here while he doesn't want to talk about it he does not think it violates any of his own oaths or bring sufficient shame to his person. This means it probably isn't falling to chaos or something else evil and corruptve.

[X] ACTION: Gain more information.


This is a trick and a trap. Something to allow Karak Dum to still hold despite being in the chaos waste. It is something that dwarves would not approve of, but is not so horrific Borek turned slayer.
 
...Sacre bleu.

[X] THEORY: Through either Pact, Binding or some other venue the dwarfs of Karag Dum have installed Morghur as some form of defensive guardian, supported by the fact that Morghur is treating the mountain as a giant herdstone while to my vision it is not. The confounding factor here is that the energy flowing out of Karag Dum is uncorrupted. Morghur himself would almost certainly be using it for his own ends, so it means the occupants of the hold either don't know how to use it, don't care to use it or still consider themselves part of the Karaz Ankor enough that they let the energy flow uninterrupted.
[X] ACTION: We need information. The Yusak have been in this area for long enough, they must know something of what happened. The wagons will pull back to their territory, and while they are en-route I will attempt to directly ask Morghur (From a distance, using a spell) what has become of Karag Dum. If the worst comes to worst we will already be retreating and I will be fast enough to catch up. We will figure out our further course of action once we know more.
 
[X] THEORY: The specifics are hazy, but this is a known contingency plan that Borek is entirely aware of, but hoped hadn't been enacted. The result breaks all Dawi notions of acceptability, but Karak Dum survives in some capacity and continues to inflict attrition on every local and visiting Chaos force that want to take a swing at them, so it is considered a lesser evil by the pragmatic Karak Dum.

[X] ACTION: Investigate further.
[X] ACTION: Gain more information.
 
[X] THEORY: The Dwarfs have control over Cor-Dum and is likely being controlled by Karak Dum's King or Leader, They are doing this to protect Dum and keep Chaos from getting hold of it, there is an ongoing siege to break this defense with a nearby source providing power to the desert to weaken the defenders.
[X] ACTION: Look for the source of the desert.

Edited the theory to keep secrets safe.
 
[ ] Theory: Karag Dum warned the Karaz Ankor of the coming of Chaos for a long time prior to the great incursion, but were rebuffed. Perhaps instead of simply accepting it, they sought help from other polities outside the Karaz Ankor - the elves. This forest is too regular and unmutated to be the work of Chaos, and I doubt that it's runework. I suspect that Karag Dum made a deal with the elves to help seal and bind Cor-Dum, keeping him from simply being reborn and continuing to plague the world, in exchange for the elves giving assistance against the coming tide. As the situation grew more desperate, Dum unleashed their sealed evil, puppeting or controlling it through radical runework of some kind.

I'm not actually X'ing this in yet, because even if it's correct, I'm not sure that sharing this theory is really a good idea? At worst it might end with the dwarves declaring another grudge against Ulthuan.
 
[X] THEORY: The specifics are hazy, but this is a known contingency plan that Borek is entirely aware of, but hoped hadn't been enacted. The result breaks all Dawi notions of acceptability, but Karak Dum survives in some capacity and continues to inflict attrition on every local and visiting Chaos force that want to take a swing at them, so it is considered a lesser evil by the pragmatic Karak Dum.
 
Redshirt Army said:
I'm not actually X'ing this in yet, because even if it's correct, I'm not sure that sharing this theory is really a good idea? At worst it might end with the dwarves declaring another grudge against Ulthuan.
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It's also obviously not correct because people do not share gestures of affection with their bound nuclear-equivalent weapons.

'Morghur' is a Dwarf. Their disguise is amazing thanks to the Runemasters being great at costume-making, but the person underneath it is still a very bad actor because they are a Dwarf and Dwarves don't have an Actors' Guild.

They couldn't be more obviously a Dwarf if they had a perfect, immaculate beard.
 
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HungryHamadryad said:
If you're willing to read the whole thread and distill the essence down, it's a very interesting experiment; Godspeed, that's not a light workload you've taken on.
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Tip: When you look at the vote tally, scroll to the bottom, the "Manage votes" option let you collect votes into clusters by dragging a vote onto another vote and to the right (indented) so it's sorted under the other vote.
Once they're sorted like that, the tally will show the top-level items only and add the count of indented votes to the top-level.
Obscure little technique that's useful for putting together votes that differ by phrasing, and sorting from the tally rather than the thread, though I wouldn't want to do it often.
 
[x] [THEORY]: There are no dwarves to save. Either the "Cor-Dum" we saw is somehow fake, in which case the dwarves hold the place, and need no help holding it; Cor-Dum is real and allied somehow with the dwarves, in which case the dwarves are not worth our trouble as they have allied with chaos; or Cor-Dum is real and conquered Karag Dum, in which case there are no dwarves left to save.
[x] [ACTION]: Turn back.
[x] THEORY: Karag Dum is fallen, and has made a pact with Morghur.
[x] THEORY: Karag Dum has somehow tricked or compelled Morghur to fight the Kurgan tribes.
[x] THEORY: Karag Dum has turned to forbidden arts, and Borek left in shame.
 
Redshirt Army said:
[ ] Theory: Karag Dum warned the Karaz Ankor of the coming of Chaos for a long time prior to the great incursion, but were rebuffed. Perhaps instead of simply accepting it, they sought help from other polities outside the Karaz Ankor - the elves. This forest is too regular and unmutated to be the work of Chaos, and I doubt that it's runework. I suspect that Karag Dum made a deal with the elves to help seal and bind Cor-Dum, keeping him from simply being reborn and continuing to plague the world, in exchange for the elves giving assistance against the coming tide. As the situation grew more desperate, Dum unleashed their sealed evil, puppeting or controlling it through radical runework of some kind.

I'm not actually X'ing this in yet, because even if it's correct, I'm not sure that sharing this theory is really a good idea? At worst it might end with the dwarves declaring another grudge against Ulthuan.
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At the least now that it's written, even if it gets no votes, I reckon Mathilde will privately theorise it.
 
[X] THEORY: The specifics are hazy, but this is a known contingency plan that Borek is entirely aware of, but hoped hadn't been enacted. The result breaks all Dawi notions of acceptability, but Karak Dum survives in some capacity and continues to inflict attrition on every local and visiting Chaos force that want to take a swing at them, so it is considered a lesser evil by the pragmatic Karak Dum.
 
[X] THEORY: Karag Dum has fallen.
[X] ACTION: It's a forest. We have a fire breathing dragon. Burn it and run, let the Kurgan bleed to death against the foe.
 
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