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Warhammer Fantasy: Divided Loyalties - an Advisor's Quest

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[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: The Dwarves of Karag Dum did something to burn away the taint of Chaos, much as your Belt of the Unshackled Mountain does, but on a far grander scale. Perhaps it had an effect on the Beastmen here, Cor-Dum included.

[X] ACTION: Infiltrate Karag Dum to gather information.
[X] ACTION: Gain more information
[x] ACTION: Investigate further.
 
Burned_Cookie said:
Really? How do you find the time theres like a hundred posts a day in here.
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More! I also read every post, I don't think it's right to vote (personal opinion) unless I'm reading what every one else that participates tells us they think, in a collabarative venture like this. I wouldn't be surprised if a number of people do the same. Does mean you can't participate in as many quests I read others ofcourse but as I don't read all the player discussion I don't vote. Covid lockdown has helped a lot with this not having to travel to work frees up a surprisingly large amount of time.
 
SuperSonicSound said:
More! I also read every post, I don't think it's right to vote (personal opinion) unless I'm reading what every one else that participates tells us they think, in a collabarative venture like this. I wouldn't be surprised if a number of people do the same. Does mean you can't participate in as many quests I read others ofcourse but as I don't read all the player discussion I don't vote. Covid lockdown has helped a lot with this not having to travel to work frees up a surprisingly large amount of time.
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I certainly do so. I don't really agree that you have to do so to participate, but it certainly enhances the experience for me. I mean if I did not do so I might have missed the inspiration for Mookery of Death and that would have just been tragic.
 
I too read all the posts, or at least now I do. Can't remember exactly when I started. Took me 2 hours to get through the 50 page explosions of last update that happened while I was asleep. Once you're fully caught up, it's pretty easy to just check in every few hours and read the half-dozen pages that sprouted up in the interim. I concur that insomnia + free time counts for a lot, though.
 
Finally awake.

How did we come to the hypothesis that the dwarfs burned out the dharr? I mean its not a bad hypothesis but i am uncomfortable with how wild it goes from the get go, before we have any more information that "there is something that appears like Cor-Dum" there. I am especially uncomfortable because it throws out beastmen interaction into the mix, which is something we have never studied. Beastmen are a big window in our knowledge.
 
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pucflek said:
Finally awake.

How did we come to the hypothesis that the dwarfs burned out the dharr? I mean its not a bad hypothesis but i am uncomfortable with how wild it goes from the get go, before we have any more information that "there is something that appears like Cor-Dum" there. I am especially uncomfortable because it throws out beastmen interaction into the mix, which is something we have never studied. Beastmen are a big window in our knowledge.
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Lower ambient dhar levels than the rest of the chaos wastes, BoneyM saying "The mountain is absorbing dhar" and the heat, which the theorist linked to the fire from the anti-dhar rune on our belt

BoneyM said:
The mountain is absorbing the Winds. Dhar levels here are actually less than elsewhere in the Wastes
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DocMatoi said:
Lower ambient dhar levels than the rest of the chaos wastes, BoneyM saying "The mountain is absorbing dhar" and the heat, which the theorist linked to the fire from the anti-dhar rune on our belt
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Mind the mountain absorbing Dhar might just be because it's a Karak Waystone. That is kind of the point of such places. We could simply have failed to notice lower levels of ambient Dhar around say K8P, because there isn't enough ambient Dhar to make a difference.
 
pucflek said:
How did we come to the hypothesis that the dwarfs burned out the dharr?
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We know you can burn Dharr. We know there's a reduced level of ambient Dharr.
We know the ambient temperature is much higher than it should be.
We know the Dwarfs already have the infrastructure to gather large amounts of ambient magic in place.
We know something very fucky wucky is going on with the Beastmen.
Many of us suspect that they've been harnessed, controlled, bound, or socialized in some combination or manner.
The lack of ambient Dharr or a corrupted forest is strongly indicative that they are in some way modified to not behave like regular Beastmen. We know that whatever Cor-Dum is, he's not behaving like Cor-Dum, or Beastmen in general, have ever been noted to behave.
We know that the timelines of his disappearance do match up fairly closely with his arrival here slightly predating Botrek's departure South.
There is the possibility that it's an illusion, but to the best of my knowledge, no one has yet proposed a rational reason for the illusion to exist, as it would provide little to no benefit.
Therefore, we're operating under the assumption that they're genuinely Dum friendly Beastmen, which would solve a great many of the problems Dum, and holds in general, typically face.
It matches very well with Borek's caginess and reaction upon arrival.
It explains the shame.
It explains the insistence that the expedition not be an evacuation mission.

So far, it just seems the most coherent explanation. The devil is in the details though, and those are still up in the air.
 
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One thing I will say I'm surprised by the fact that ambient dhar isn't poluting and converting the other winds of magic to dhar but I suppose it can't chain cascade to easily or you'd never have normal winds of magic appearing to come from the north at all and it'd just be dhar all the way unless the waystones can purify dhar naturally as part of their process of moving the winds of magic around.
 
I picked those tbat made some sense

[x] THEORY: That's not Morghur. Morghur constantly changes his surroundings, Morghur does not make reality more stable near himself, Morghur does not display affection, Morghur does not not attack people, Morghur would never stay here unless he was bound, and if he was bound he'd be struggling constantly to get out. The shuddering of reality can be faked by Runesmiths if they wanted.
[x] THEORY: The Dwarves of Karag Dum did something to burn away the taint of Chaos, much as your Belt of the Unshackled Mountain does, but on a far grander scale. Perhaps it had an effect on the Beastmen here, Cor-Dum included.
[x] ACTION: We need to verify if the situation here is stable, or if it's something that will come back to haunt the Karaz Ankor and Empire if left ignored.
[x] -[X] [Action] Expedition: Digs in; Mathilde: Investigates
[x] THEORY: Morghur has been bound to Karak Dum's waystone, which is acting as a psudo-herdstone. Morghur now sees dwarfs of Karak Dum as allies. This waystone manipulation may also be the cause of the weird geography. Based on Boreks last words, this was a longstanding contingency plan held by the dwarfs of Karak Dum. He is ashamed because it's a desecration of one of the greatest works of the Ancestor Gods.
[x] THEORY: This could be a Rune-based Illusion with "Morghur" being a Runemaster. The Dawi of Karag Dum let the forces of Chaos assume that Dum has fallen and is surrounded by Beastmen forces so they don't all unite to attack the Hold together and instead only come in smaller groups to "test" themselves against another chaotic force.
[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: Omegahugger
[x] [Action] Scout the other fronts, ask other expedition members for what they might have happened, check with the other wizards what their expertise tell them about the magical and natural environments.
[x] ACTION: Attempt closer examination of Morghur, the beastmen, and the forest.
[x] ACTION: Investigate further.
[x] THEORY: Magical signs and, less reliably, intuition about Borek, point to there being something uncorrupted in that mountain in the middle.
[x] THEORY: Morghur was originally a secret shame of Karag Dum, his first incarnation was a dwarf that went into the chaos wastes and was changed into what he is now. Possibly someone who followed Grimnir, then had the shame of coming back alive/having his soul corrupted by chaos down to the core so as to cause disaster when reborn, possibly someone else important to Karag Dum's history, important enough to remember rather than burying or forgetting to dull the shame.
[x] ACTION: Dig up some of those bones to confirm how they died.
[x] THEORY: Karag Dum is using a fake Morghur to make the real beastmen fight for them.
 
Question, but... do beastmen usually clean up their corpses after battles? Because it occurs to me that all the bones around her are human, not beastmen. That might be important.
 
HungryHamadryad said:
Do we actually know that? I was under the impression we couldn't tell that from this far away, unless I missed something?
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I think I remember it being mentioned somewhere when somebody asked what kind of bones were all around for some reason.
@BoneyM am I remembering correctly?
The Lone badger said:
Not as a 'cleaning up' fashion, they just tend to eat things made of meat.
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Wouldn't that still leave the bones though? And they would probably eat their enemies just as much, but those bones are still around...
 
The Lone badger said:
Not as a 'cleaning up' fashion, they just tend to eat things made of meat.
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That said the eating is rarely clean, promoting filth and illness is part of the nature of the Cloven Ones, their renditions in army books and novels tend to linger on that part of them quite a lot. They are not natural beings, working within the frame work of the cycle of life so they promote disorder and madness in all its forms.
 
DragonParadox said:
Mind the mountain absorbing Dhar might just be because it's a Karak Waystone. That is kind of the point of such places. We could simply have failed to notice lower levels of ambient Dhar around say K8P, because there isn't enough ambient Dhar to make a difference.
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What this guy said. Karak Dum is the start of the waystone network for this area all that power its sending down stream has to go some were.

edit.
I just had a thought, we know that the mountain is not a heard stone because the magic being sent down stream to Vlag was not corrupted. But what if it could be in the future, with Vlag back and presumably connecting to Kadrin if that mountain goes heard stone all that nasty stuff is being sent straight to Karaz a Karak.
 
Dutchman said:
What this guy said. Karak Dum is the start of the waystone network for this area all that power its sending down stream has to go some were.

edit.
I just had a thought, we know that the mountain is not a heard stone because the magic being sent down stream to Vlag was not corrupted. But what if it could be in the future, with Vlag back and presumably connecting to Kadrin if that mountain goes heard stone all that nasty stuff is being sent straight to Karaz a Karak.
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We could cut the line at any mountain north of Vlag, assuming the Golden Age Dwarfs somehow were not aware of the posibility and built in more elegant solution.
 
[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: The dwarves of Karag Dum are alive and uncorrupted by Chaos, but have resorted to truly drastic measures to survive, probably undertaken by their controversial "Rune Masters", which involves having these beastmen or beastmen-appearing creatures defending the karak for the dwarves. We can assume that this is all in favour of the dwarves by Morghur's easy acceptance and non-destruction of Borek as well as Borek's mutual acceptance of the beastman. The idea of Rune Masters being critically involved is the certainty that some form of magic was used to create this whole situation, including the odd weather, and the Rune Masters' lack of corruption is supported by the lesser level of ambient dark magic in the area, even directly around Morghur himself.
[x] THEORY: That's not Morghur. Morghur constantly changes his surroundings, Morghur does not make reality more stable near himself, Morghur does not display affection, Morghur does not not attack people, Morghur would never stay here unless he was bound, and if he was bound he'd be struggling constantly to get out. The shuddering of reality can be faked by Runesmiths if they wanted.
[X] Base on Morghur not being his/herself and the forest, the dwarves may be allied with the elves specifically High elves and/or Wood elves, the elves have been hunting Morghur, and may be involve, plus the forest clearly isn't normal. Yet the forest and desert is present and Morghur is for a lack of better term not acting chaotic, not acting insane, not attacking us, and is either enslaved or allied with the dwarves of Karag Dum.
[X] THEORY: The Beastmen and Morghur are illusions and runic trickery, The only evidence is that Morghur is not acting like his/her normal self, for instance, he/she is nonhostile, did not radiate chaos and Dhar aura, Borek is not mutated despite, Morghur supposed possesses a chaotic aura that can easily mutate, people. Morghur did not act hostile and aggressive enouch, he/she looks sane, he/she did not attack Borek, did not mutate the ground with he/she area of effect aura.

[x] ACTION: I'm going to have to check this out.
[X] ACTION: Gain more information.
[x] ACTION: We need to verify if the situation here is stable, or if it's something that will come back to haunt the Karaz Ankor and Empire if left ignored.
[x] ACTION: Politely ask Morghur to be granted entrance into Karak Dum.
[x] ACTION: Investigate further.
[x] ACTION: Mathilde will infiltrate the hold and look for more answers. In the mean time the convoy should circle the Steam-Wagons and avoid provoking a fight they can't win. If she has not returned within 24 hours they should turn back and attempt to make their way back to civilisation to inform the Karaz Ankor, Empire and Kislev what they found.
 
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HungryHamadryad said:
We know you can burn Dharr. We know there's a reduced level of ambient Dharr.
We know the ambient temperature is much higher than it should be.
We know the Dwarfs already have the infrastructure to gather large amounts of ambient magic in place.
We know something very fucky wucky is going on with the Beastmen.
Many of us suspect that they've been harnessed, controlled, bound, or socialized in some combination or manner.
The lack of ambient Dharr or a corrupted forest is strongly indicative that they are in some way modified to not behave like regular Beastmen. We know that whatever Cor-Dum is, he's not behaving like Cor-Dum, or Beastmen in general, have ever been noted to behave.
We know that the timelines of his disappearance do match up fairly closely with his arrival here slightly predating Botrek's departure South.
There is the possibility that it's an illusion, but to the best of my knowledge, no one has yet proposed a rational reason for the illusion to exist, as it would provide little to no benefit.
Therefore, we're operating under the assumption that they're genuinely Dum friendly Beastmen, which would solve a great many of the problems Dum, and holds in general, typically face.
It matches very well with Botrek's caginess and reaction upon arrival.
It explains the shame.
It explains the insistence that the expedition not be an evacuation mission.

So far, it just seems the most coherent explanation. The devil is in the details though, and those are still up in the air.
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I can track the burning out Dharr from the air bit, its actually neat bit of guesswork. But the beastmen would literally explode. Mathilde could theoretically survive the ignition of Dharr in her own flesh, because she has a Belt that negates fire (and even that is contested issue because none of us want to try exploding our brainmeat). The Beastmen would rip apart at their seams. I find this much less likely than the simple "They bound Cor-Dum".

It just seems to go too far on the theorymaking bit, building theory on top of theory.
 
Sovereign Hunt said:
I too read all the posts, or at least now I do. Can't remember exactly when I started. Took me 2 hours to get through the 50 page explosions of last update that happened while I was asleep. Once you're fully caught up, it's pretty easy to just check in every few hours and read the half-dozen pages that sprouted up in the interim. I concur that insomnia + free time counts for a lot, though.
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To chime in: I've generally read all the posts that come after the update I'm voting on. I often skip all the posts that predate a new update though, as the most interesting things to me are often speculation on what comes next - and the update kind of trumps all of those :p.
 
@BoneyM Do normal Beastmen literally run on Dhar? Or could it theoretically be possible to have Beastmen that are purged of Dhar and instead run on "cleaner" Chaos God blessings and/or mere biology?
 
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