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That would only happen if the entire mountain was nothing but Warpstone, and the explosion would have then taken a chunk of the continent with it.
It did though. There's a 2.5km mountain in the middle that you can't see from outside the crater despite said crater being a gentle descent. So we are talking a massive massive crater here with weird spatial distortions on the way to the middle.
 
Almost down to 30 pages behind now.

Remember that Borek was 100% A-OK with dealing with the Chaos Dwarves commercially. That seems significantly worse, dwarf cultural shame wise, than using an illusion (that also kills people?). There had to be something significantly worse than that.
"100% A-OK" is a bit of an exaggeration. He considered it a lesser evil, but it was still an evil.

No, it's more like a triceratops.
I googled for images of Morghur. That thing doesn't look like a crest, it looks like a combined mask/headdress made of something else's hide stretched over a support structure of wood and/or bone, resting on top of a massive mane of hair:
 
They're not lost. The dawi of Karag Dum live, and the waystone survives. If there are no innocents-- if they are truly and inevitably damned-- if there is no way at all to save them-- then some day, they will either be wiped out or they will fall to corruption, and Chaos will be free to take the waystone. How soon until that happens? Centuries? Several decades? Much, much less?

Karag Dum did its duty and continues to do its duty, for the sake of the Karaz Ankor and the world, even when it was isolated, outmatched, without hope. It took far too long for their fellows to seek Dum out; to immediately condemn the dawi holding the line there for doing their best, especially when there's evidence they're still on the same side-- that's a tragedy born of haste.

Is Karag Dum to be abandoned without a word? Alone then and alone now, they should just die, and die well?

I understand why the characters and questers would choose that option, but their situation is just-- too cruel for me to leave it at that.

The dawi are quick to judgements and stubborn in holding to them, and we know their judgements can be terribly skewed. I doubt another expedition will be sent to Dum in Mathilde's lifetime, so this is likely the only chance we have. I want Mathilde to at least try to find out what's going on-- spending even one day is better than leaving right now-- before giving up on the people of Karag Dum as a lost cause. Because they did good, for years and years on end. I want to do right by them.


[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] THEORY: Omegahugger
[X] THEORY: Karag Dum has somehow tricked or compelled Morghur to fight the Kurgan tribes.
[X] THEORY: Karag Dum is using a fake Morghur to make the real beastmen fight for them.
[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] ACTION: Gain more information.
[X] ACTION: Investigate further.
[X] ACTION: I'm going to have to check this out.
[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: Attempt closer examination of Morghur, the beastmen, and the forest.
[X] ACTION: Attempt to contact the nearby Kurgan tribes for information.
[X] ACTION: Infiltrate Karag Dum to gather information.
[X] ACTION: Expedition: Digs in; Mathilde: Investigates
[X] [Action] wait nearby and observe. It shouldn't be nearly as dangerous as it seems, and that allows us to gather additional clues.
 
So, y'know what's weird?

What is Morghur ever reborn from? We have one example of Morghur being born to humans 300 years ago, but he tends to be reborn (or as sometimes they call it, 'emerging' or 'arising') in the depths of the darkest, most twisted woods around.

Why would there be pregnant women or human babies deep in the Drakwald, or the Forest of Shadows, or the Forest of Arden's rotting heart?
Afaik Beastmen have women thay can give birth to children. So maybe being born from a Human is relatively rare and being born from a Dwarf is super rare.
 
More on Borek words.

Asking for the Ancestors forgiveness means at some level he hopes that they might forgive him.

His ancestors would never forgive falling to chaos.

If this is a precaution the hold was talking about using before he left, he has to have had a justification for it that wasn't fall to chaos. Even if he thinks it might be unforgiveable.

This has been the roll chart I had guessed in my head when I saw it. Written out.
Vertical - Number of Dwarven survivors
Horizontal - Dwarven corruption
The last survivors fall to Khorne. All the vaults are unsealed and the runic weapons within are given over to the Chaos Gods for the next everchosen. Grimnirs axe is tainted and handed over to a Bloodthirster.Gotrek Novels - The dwarves are wiped out, the few survivors weaken the runes so they can hide in the vaults to preserve a few lives, but in exchange they let chaos in, and the waystone is broken.Dwarves are entirely wiped out, but they sealed the vaults in such a way they last for a thousand years. Sacrificing their lives to protect the waystone with their honour intact.
Alone, abandoned and trapped inside their own hold the dwarves crumble slowly. But do not fear, Papa Nurgle loves you regardless.The survivors retreat into the hold, broken again and again. No help is coming, and all they have are their own tools. Desperate, they turn to the greatest weapon they have, the waystone itself. Bending its purpose, limitless power is thrown out to defend the survivors within the hold.
But it is power stolen from the Rune of Azamar. For every second they need it to burn, they betray their oath and the Karaz Ankor slips closer to annihilation.
Perhaps after all this time, they deserve it. Two hundred years is a long time to wait for aid.
Karag Vlag in stereo. They have been beaten back into the hold, taken massive casualties. But at the core they still hold, the demons die, the waystone is secure.
They kept their oaths, they just need to hold on until help comes.
It is coming.
Isn't it?
The enemy is here, and if they stick to their old ways they would fall. But there is another power source, and even greater one. Take the waystone, bind demons, there . They have hope, torn from the mouths of demons. And Tzeentch smiles as ever so slowly they change.Current situation. They have survived, the waystone is preserved. But their morals, their honour perhaps it has shattered for good. They may not have been corrupted, but they have touched powers no good dwarf should have touched, made deals no dwarf should have made.
Perhaps dying would have been easier.
The warp opens, unreality spills out and time itself seems to break. An endless unrelenting horde of nightmares descend on Karag Dum.
It is the last place he was seen, the first he returns.
Grimnir meets the tide.
And the demons die in their millions.
 
I googled for images of Morghur. That thing doesn't look like a crest, it looks like a combined mask/headdress made of something else's hide stretched over a support structure of wood and/or bone, resting on top of a massive mane of hair:
This image shows the frill/crest/headdress at a much more vertical angle closer to a triceratops crest and is probably what Boney is going off of.
Plus Total War Warhammer is not necessarily canon to this quest.
 
Boney quote here.
I'm not picklepikkl, i swear :)
Purple over here is sus, acting like an imposter.

Where did the mountains go? They weren't destroyed, an explosion would still leave rubble.
Any Explosion big enough to leave a big-ass crater significantly larger than the base of a mountain/mountain range would have strewn any rubble over dozens or hundreds of miles (most of which would not be inside of the crater), and given the relative mutability of the Wastes it'd be awfully hard to tell if a seemingly empty place had remained consistently empty for several centuries prior.

It's also quite plausible that the Expedition did come across rubble and just didn't recognize it such as BoneyM's example of a scouting Knight coming across his childhood home and nearly being bitten by it - who's to say that that wasn't actually a house-sized boulder remnant of Dum's neighbouring mountain range flung a few dozen miles and then warped by the Chaos Wastes over a century or so?
 
Afaik Beastmen have women thay can give birth to children. So maybe being born from a Human is relatively rare and being born from a Dwarf is super rare.
Makes as much sense as anything.

I feel like Boney gave some kind of Quest Word of God on Beastman women at some point. Does that sounds familiar to anyone else? Pickle?
 
Makes as much sense as anything.

I feel like Boney gave some kind of Quest Word of God on Beastman women at some point. Does that sounds familiar to anyone else? Pickle?
I remember Boney specifically not wanting to go into Beastmen population dynamics because the explanations canon gives very quickly lead to a very dark place.
 
Revoting and adding two things to my votes.


[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] THEORY: "Morghur" is a class of entity, not an individual. Specifically, a (Ghur and/or Gyran?) Incarnate Elemental. When the Beastmen summon him, they corrupt him with Dhar. When not summoned that way... who knows. Or if captured and the Dhar burned off of him/it, who knows what it might do.

[X] THEORY: Maybe this is some kind of ancient joint project between Dwarfs and Elves, activated by Karag Dum in its time of desperation. Like Bok the Earth Elemental in Karak Eight Peaks.

I've used my own wording for these two (though I based the elemental wording on Redshirt Army's wording a bit, as it seemed neat).

I just wanted to make sure that "Incarnate Elemental" made it on to the Vote Tally. So that, hey, at least Elemental was on there somewhere. Even if only the top votes get in, at least it means somebody will have officially put Elemental on the list.

Also I threw in the Dwarf-Elf cooperation thing, because I was reminded of Bok. The Elemental with 5 Runes where his 'soul' should be.
 
Makes as much sense as anything.

I feel like Boney gave some kind of Quest Word of God on Beastman women at some point. Does that sounds familiar to anyone else? Pickle?

Here you go:

GW did the standard genre fiction 'skeezy stuff just under the surface' part when creating the lore, and some of it is appropriately 'just one layer of horror amongst the others in a crapsack world' and some of it is 'oh god I think someone was beating off to this', but they backpedalled further and further from all of that as they noticed they got the most money and least complaints out of tweens-to-young-teens spending their parents' money. The ultimate manifestation of this is Slaanesh getting mugged by Elves during the transition to Age of Sigmar to neatly remove the titty-demon faction. While this means the gross stuff never resurfaced since the old days, it also means that the gross stuff never got readdressed, and it's the only canon there is for some parts of Warhammer lore.

By the canon that exists and was never explicitly retconned or overwritten, Beastmen numbers only partially come from human children being born mutant, and grown humans suddenly transforming into Beastmen as adults. Some portion comes from usually non-consensual reproduction with human women, and some comes from reproduction with Beastwomen called 'does', who are said to be timid and gentle in nature just so that even this more 'natural' reproduction is still deeply messed up.

So, yeah. Don't expect the 'where do Beastmen come from' question to ever get addressed in the Quest.
 
Voting closed, I'll post a proper tally after I finish sorting it out. Please nobody try to do their own tally because it'll overwrite me trying to make the official one.

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?

'Human, humanish, and horse' was the answer I gave, IIRC.

@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?

Mathilde has no idea.

Could they be arranged in such a fashion that they might be marking how far in each force made it? Or are they just sort of scattered about in a way that might indicate they're a warning left by the Beastmen and/or Dwarfs?

No, they look more like either 'we were here' markers or 'these guys were here, and now they're not' warnings.

Now granted there is some legal wiggle room there, @BoneyM made it clear that if a Skaven could exist somehow outside the Underempire and the influence of the Horned Rat they would not automatically be grudged... but that does not make them dwarf friends, that does not make them worthy of sacred gifts.

If they could prove such a thing they'd be outside the collective Grudges levelled against the Skaven, but they'd still be enormously distrusted.

We definitely gotta do that if we decide to go in for more info.
@BoneyM Does Mathilde carry anything like a banner or a different item with her heraldry on it? I know she has one at her Towers, but not if she carries one around like almost every knight (which is something that she is) would.

She'd have one tucked away somewhere in case it was needed for flag signalling and also because having a personal banner is awesome.

It'd be a theory presented alongside several other theories. My concern is that it won't be mentioned at all.

@BoneyM am I right that if they wanted to use their Rune of Valaya to burn off Dhar - and cause an explosion like the one we think created the crater and desert - they'd have to turn it into the Rune of Valaya's Vengeance, first?

Mathilde has no idea about the inner mechanics of Runesmithing.

It's right in the update.

My apologies, I wrote a lot before I had a mental image of a bunch of cows being immersed in a gentle rain of Dhar for a week at a time, and must have missed that part on the rewrite.

Vlag wasn't blocking the chain from Dum, if that's what you mean. They were receiving power from it, but Dum sends its power down many routes because Dwarves believe in redundancy.

In fact, OOC, it's entirely possible that Dum saved the Karaz Ankor by refusing to allow their waystone to fall, no matter the cost.

That's true for the Karaz Ankor in general, but not for Dum specifically because of how far it is from the Karaz Ankor. Dum's energy travels to Vlag.

I'll vote for any plan that produces the largest block of text. It's high time we made the voting software have a heart attack.

Please don't. This thread has done that before, and recently. It renders the tally unusable until an forum operator goes in and kills it manually.

@BoneyM I'm kind of curious. We took two possible opportunities to interact with Borek out of a total, what, six or so action votes? Was the quality of explanation we got from him before he flipped his cape over his head and disappeared into the forest commensurate with the number of times we tried to get to know him? If we had mashed that like and subscribe button at every Borek-tunity, do you think he would have explained himself better? On the other side, did interacting with him twice get us a better explanation than once would have?

He cared enough about Mathilde's opinion of him to give a few sentences before he bounced. If he cared more, he might have given more.

The transformation of the surrounding area happened all at once: The Kurgan say that Dum is as it has always been, and 300 years is basically the blink of an eye as far as oral traditions are concerned. If the terrain had been changing over time there'd have been some mention of it having progressed or continued, not stayed static. And we're speaking Khazalid, which I think - @BoneyM, confirm? - would have used completely different words for "completely static" and "progressing at the same rate as always".

Mathilde's impression is that while she was asking about Karag Dum, the answer she received was of Cor-Dum. That's why the Shaman gave her a weird look at the question.

Almost down to 30 pages behind now.


"100% A-OK" is a bit of an exaggeration. He considered it a lesser evil, but it was still an evil.


I googled for images of Morghur. That thing doesn't look like a crest, it looks like a combined mask/headdress made of something else's hide stretched over a support structure of wood and/or bone, resting on top of a massive mane of hair:

Other pictures make it look like it's completely separate to the hood, and it looks to me like the same material as the bone spikes sticking out of his shoulders.
 
Voting closed, I'll post a proper tally after I finish sorting it out. Please nobody try to do their own tally because it'll overwrite me trying to make the official one.
O_O

Made it in by two minutes, aha.

Eh, I just wanted "Elemental" be on the technical tally somewhere, even if it'll probably come up as an idea in the discussion anyway.
 
BTW @BoneyM if it makes you feel better, I personally find that this format is quite reasonable for what it does, which, I assume, is to discuss the ideas with the NPCs here and see what they think. I understand it's a hassle, but I would be in favor of this happening again in the future should you deem it desirable. Just... not very often.
 
so, I've mostly read through most of the theories.

I'm discarding the 'its elves' and 'Goatdaddy is/was born a dwarf!' as that's way to much of a leap of logic.

I'm cycling on. (in no order)

1: the dwarfs of Dum turned themselves into beastmen to survive.
2: They Tricked/ traped bound Goatdaddy.
3: Its an illusion
4: they made a deal with goatdaddy.

of those 4: we know Bork was unhappy, but not shave his head shamed by it so I'm pulling 3 (not shameful) and 4 (very sameful)

1: the dwarfs of Dum turned themselves into beastmen to survive.
2: They Tricked/ traped bound Goatdaddy.

out of those, demon binding is something dwarfs (chaos dwarfs) can do.

2: They Tricked/ traped/ bound Goatdaddy.


so Jyn's H1:

[X] Theory: The dwarfs of Dum have not joined chaos, as the waystone network is still clean. but they have resorted to Demon/soul binding.... and well, that's not good.

edit:shit
 
so, I've mostly read through most of the theories.

I'm discarding the 'its elves' and 'Goatdaddy is/was born a dwarf!' as that's way to much of a leap of logic.

I'm cycling on. (in no order)

1: the dwarfs of Dum turned themselves into beastmen to survive.
2: They Tricked/ traped bound Goatdaddy.
3: Its an illusion
4: they made a deal with goatdaddy.

of those 4: we know Bork was unhappy, but not shave his head shamed by it so I'm pulling 3 (not shameful) and 4 (very sameful)

1: the dwarfs of Dum turned themselves into beastmen to survive.
2: They Tricked/ traped bound Goatdaddy.

out of those, demon binding is something dwarfs (chaos dwarfs) can do.

2: They Tricked/ traped/ bound Goatdaddy.


so Jyn's H1:

[X] Theory: The dwarfs of Dum have not joined chaos, as the waystone network is still clean. but they have resorted to Demon/soul binding.... and well, that's not good.

edit:shit
The vote just closed unfortunately.
 
I Hold The Line
I keep a close watch on this hold of mine
I keep my eyes wide open all the time
I keep the ends out for the rune that binds
To buy some time, I hold the line

I find it very, very easy to be true
I find myself alone when Chaos passes through
Yes, I'll admit that I'm a fool for you
To buy some time, I hold the line

As sure as night is dark and day is light
I keep you on my mind both day and night
And not turning to stone proves that it's right
To buy some time, I hold the line

You've no reason to believe I'm on your side
I give you cause for Grudges I won't hide
For you I know I'd even try to turn the tide
To buy some time, I hold the line

I keep a close watch on this hold of mine
I keep my eyes wide open all the time
I keep the ends out for rune that binds
To buy some time, I hold the line
 
My apologies, I wrote a lot before I had a mental image of a bunch of cows being immersed in a gentle rain of Dhar for a week at a time, and must have missed that part on the rewrite.
Aha, so my worries about that were correct. I'd wondered whether we'd put up tarps over them or something, to protect them from the Green Moon, or wondered whether they'd be put under the roofs of whatever temporary camps we set up (though we probably didn't break out the tents and stuff for when making temporary camps; people probably, I guess, just slept in the steam-wagons. They just temporarily parked the steam-wagons for a bit).

So, we basically still have 2 weeks of food stored in the steam-wagons, as we ate the cows first. So when we make our way back, we can buy more cows.
 
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