There is no way to learn more about this place and what they have done which doesn't greatly hurt the Karaz Ankor in the short term. I am not against investigation. I think Order could come out with an extremely strong overall win here even if there is a Karaz Ankor civil war because of it.
I.
Them staying Order despite all that has happened? Order but radical (and atraditional) in the extreme? It's maybe the worst outcome for the Karaz Ankor (as we know it) possible.
How many longbeards and elders would go slayer if the established traditions are found, without a shadow of a doubt, to be significantly weaker and less effective than radical adaptation? How much shame would weigh the hearts of the Dawi knowing that their rigid traditions have made them weak to the point of breaking. To the point where one Zhufi of a species only recently civilized with only a small magical history can do more for the Karaz Ankor by the time they're a plaitling than all of dwarfkind can do for themselves in centuries of toil?
Longbeards might despair and be horrified and ashamed, but not for the reasons you list, I think.
They won't be going "What fools we are, to think of how much more effective you might be if you foreswore sanity and propriety!"
They'll be horrified and ashamed because: "Oh god, look at what they have been reduced to. If we had only given Karag Dum the support it needed when the Great War Against Chaos hit, they might not have had to resort to this."
Though they might just double-down on "You can't be blamed for not trusting the message, if the messenger is not trustworthy." That, if Karag Dum were willing to do this sort of thing, weeelll...
But then, part of the premise of your post is "Imagine if they were accepted as Order" which means
this particular version doesn't fly. Which means it goes back down to "Oh my god, look at what our brothers and cousins have been forced to resort to, in order to survive! If we had only listened to them and helped them, things might not have come to this..."
So a lot of these theories are inconsistent with what we actually know about quest-reality.
why do we think there was any chaos-taint burning?
The crater could equally be the result of some other form of magic, or from Morghur teleporting here.
Because the temperature is hotter than normal, which is something that might be the result of tons of Dhar being burnt in fire; and because there is far less Dhar here than there should be; there's less than in the rest of the Chaos Wastes that Mathilde has seen. (When, really, if Morghur is here the place should have way the hell more Dhar than even the Chaos Wastes we've seen.)
Ergo, it might be the case that the Runes of Valaya are hustling hard to burn a
lot of Dhar. And this causes the temperature to heat up a bit. And burns away excess Dhar.
I mean, this was actually the exact thing and reason that made me think it might be the case, and I list it at the top of the particular post where I lay out the theory. (Though, I've made several posts in here, so. And I myself had like 50-60 pages unread still, having had to skip to page 70-80.)
"It is also hotter here than anywhere else in the Steppes."
+ "There is less ambient
Dhar here than other parts of the Chaos Wastes Mathilde has seen, though still more than outside of it."
+ Mathilde's belt's rune: "Rune of Valaya's Vengeance: The third, the largest and most intricate of the three incorporates elements of both the Rune of the Furnace and the Rune that Valaya gave to the dwarves that allowed them to weather the coming of Chaos. It will grant you such resistance to flame that you could wade through lava, and burn off any taint of chaos before it could even touch you."
= "Maybe the Dwarfs did something with the Runes of Valaya to burn away all this Dhar? Possibly affecting Cor-Dum and the Beastmen in a positive fashion, possibly just making Morghur 'safer' to use or be around, not sure."
