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Warhammer Fantasy: Divided Loyalties - an Advisor's Quest

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Because people are talking about any second trip requiring decades of preparation...

@BoneyM
How feasible would it be for Mathilde (on some future turn) to arrange for accompaniment from one of the steppe tribes up to Karag Dum? Since we know that Mathilde can make it to the steppe herself within an action, the primary limiting factor is getting a strong enough group to be able to survive the trip through the Chaos Wastes.
 
GrimTheMad said:
Yeah, its time to go while the going is good. We gathered enough information to know that whatever was done to Morghur its not something the Karaz Ankor is going to accept with open arms- he's still flinging Dhar and causing mutations, and those are definitely still Beastmen.

And we can also tell that something was, in fact, done to him- a combination of the binding on his mutagenic abilities and the fact that he hasn't been seen outside the wastes in 200 years says that the problem of Morghur is more or less dealt with, which is valuable information.

Meanwhile, we have received no indication whatsoever that the Dawi within Dum want or need help.

We've already saved an entire Karak, and we've gathered useful intel on another- at this point to only reasoning I'm hearing for sticking around is 'but we really want to know' which is... not a great reason to risk our everything.


And lets not forget that we still need to steal the unholy grail from probably the biggest Kurgan tribe in the area.
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There is a point to discover if they have 'fallen' or fallen with capital evil fallen.
 
GrimTheMad said:
Is that a bad thing?

Honestly you could see it as character development for Mathilde- as more and more people grow to depend on her, she's less and less willing to risk it all.

That's fine.
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Yes, because as the quest has gone on, her capabilities have expanded and her ability to dealer with proportionately larger threats has as well. Everyone screamed and cried doom the minute a named threat popped up, and did everything they could to avoid having to face it. When her position and growth over the quest make it a challenge to be overcome, they take it an existential threat.

It's a regression of capability, not growth.
 
Godwinson said:
@BoneyM
How feasible would it be for Mathilde (on some future turn) to arrange for accompaniment from one of the steppe tribes up to Karag Dum? Since we know that Mathilde can make it to the steppe herself within an action, the primary limiting factor is getting a strong enough group to be able to survive the trip through the Chaos Wastes.
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As Mathilde learned, being obviously magical gets you a foot in the door and money gets you the rest of the way. So if you want to take that route, it might be expensive but it definitely seems plausible.
 
[x] Last minute
[x] LAST: Attempt to infiltrate Karag Dum
[x] LAST: Attempt to scout the forest at the base of the Karak
[x] LAST: Attempt to approach Morghur to see if he can be communicated with
 
I'm rather put out that there was no proper "second round" - I was late to this party and didn't get to pitch my idea until stay and fortify was the best shot at just not leaving immediately. But, well, while maybe infiltration is more likely to succeed given a nerfed aura, the original issue I identified was never tackled.

They don't want us here, and we've got loooong odds on getting around them on that. And now we don't have any time to try the ranald coin gambit. The war party wasn't in direct contact at all, and preventing their retreat and letting Cor-Dum finish the job probably would have worked.

Oh well, coulda shoulda.

[x] Leave
 
BoneyM said:
Ah, that was in reference to putting down the THEORY: and PLAN: prompts and saying 'figure it out' to the thread and letting chaos reign. There's been mystery metaplots right from the start.
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Ah, sorry. I wouldn't have said anything otherwise.

Abhorsen said:
I don't think that the frustration means that the experiment was a failure though. It's a real feeling evoked by the work, one that mirrors Mathilde's the character's frustration. The way that the thread has been reflected in Mathilde's consciousness, and the way that Mathilde's failures and successes cause emotions in the thread mirror each other, and that's really good writing, and very interesting. Just because a piece of art makes you sad, or angry, or frustrated, doesn't make it a bad piece of art.
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I don't think Boney's capable of putting out bad work, I'm just not enjoying it right now - though I'd have kept that to myself if I'd realised this part wasn't an experiment.
 
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BoneyM has used mystery metaplots the whole time, and they clog our research bar with big question marks.

This one? This one will not be clogging our research bar.

this is the Blood Fountain. Claims that "we would have done this in our youth" are silly, because we made calculated risks back then too. The risk we took already was staying a day. And before that, we came on this trip in the first place. And went to chaos dwarf vegas or whatever.

No. Some mysteries need to be trebbuchet'd down and put out of mind. This is one of those.
 
BoneyM said:
As Mathilde learned, being obviously magical gets you a foot in the door and money gets you the rest of the way. So if you want to take that route, it might be expensive but it definitely seems plausible.
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Good to know!

(I figure Borek had a much harder time with his return trip, because not only is it harder for a dwarf to make the trip than a human wizard, but also because he was wanting to return with reinforcements for his home.)

Beyond that...
BoneyM said:
Morghur does not exist in a vacuum. Whatever is happening here runs off the same fundamental metaphysics as everything else. It's far from impossible that Mathilde will eventually understand enough about the way things work to reach a conclusion without ever setting food here again, and what she has learned here might contribute pieces to the puzzle that eventually leads her to that enlightenment.
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I think that part of the issue people are having with really believing this mystery is one that can be poked at elsewhere and later, is that every indication has been given that the only way to even possibly start to investigate it would result in Mathilde needing to delve into Dhar research (which wouldn't necessarily be true for Runemasters).

I know that for me, personally, it feels like a deliberately unsolvable mystery with the only avenues of research being ones that are either obvious suicide or ones that the playerbase would never go for. (Which is why the scenario felt like a "Fuck you".) Which is why I gave up on even attempting to solve it, and the only thing I care about doing further with Karag Dum is presenting one last possible connection to the forces of Order via Mathilde (and possibly the Grey College), so that they don't wind up feeling completely abandoned.
 
Borek: Weary resignation and some pitiable last words

Mathilde: o_O There's got to be an explanation for this, there's just got to!

The rest of the Expedition: F*ck this shit I'm out, hmm hmm, F*ck this shit I'm out, no thanks, don't mind me, Imma just grab my stuff and leave, 'scuse me please, F*ck this shit I'm out!

[x] Leave
 
I like the way this mystery was handled. I like the idea that we can have a choice to take a risk that would probably let us solve a genuinely interesting mystery, or to leave and probably never come back and that the gamble is risky enough and the readers invested enough in the rest of the quest that a significant number of people are voting to walk away.

This is the sort of thing that helps keep risks fun and mysteries interesting. Showing the ability to IC and OOC Walk away from a gamble makes other gambles richer, because its a genuine choice we have to make rather than a guaranted gamble at every opportunity. Knowing we can fail to solve a mystery, or that something can happen that might make us choose to walk away from the mystery, gives mysteries more power because there is no guarantee that we find the answer.
 
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I'm quite unsure what the goal of infiltrating a Karak already known for Maximum Security, Siege Mode and Radical Secrets would be?
Karag Dum is already slated for Grudging and practically nothing Mathilde finds can redeem them, just having their defender use Dhar is irredeemable to Dwarves.

At best we'd just find more damning evidence of the depths they've sunk to, which would simply bring more shame upon the Karaz Ankor. At worst, Mathilde dies pursuing her curiosity.

The Dwarves of Karag Dum has thousands of years experience with infiltration attempts by Chaos, remember how Borek's cousin was stuck waiting outside until his identity could be verified? I guarantee they can detect any Magical means of entering the mountain, traps of all kinds, alarms that'll have Morghur hunt us, etc.

It's really just not worth our time and effort, I'm not even talking about the risk of death, but the value of solving this mystery is of less priority than our existing Obligations. We still have things to do in the Chaos Wastes itself: stealing the Chaos Goblet from the Kurgans.

Frankly, it's high time we:

[x] Leave
 
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[x] Leave

Most of the time, I vote for the thing I want to read about happening, instead of what feel like the "right" choice. This time, I'm doing neither. I'd like to read about getting through to Dum, and saving them from being declared enemies on some technicality that stops them getting grudged. But, I'm not going to. I'm voting to leave here, because if we don't, this is the part where someone reading the quest a year from now gets thrown out of the story and goes "wait, what are they doing? why?".

I value the story produced by the quest, and would like to see things move on instead of bog down into espionage that's mostly to assuage the curiosity of the questers. And that's on the assumption that everything goes fine! I definitely can't accept deciding to risk our lives here when our in character duty is to bring the info we'e gathered back home, and keep our men alive. And also steal an evil cup.
 
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BoneyM said:
Soon only Morghur remains as he goes from body to body, the snarl of Dhar in him dimming as he does so, and by the time he returns to the forest he's no longer distinct against the background energies of this place.
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Oh how I wonder what dark and terrible knowledge they must have used to bind him.
Any time you see something like this its straight to the darkest of magics, I mean to even attempt such a thing.
An effect that seems to slowly purify Dhar it is exposed to? We need to destroy anything even remotely like this.

Like Waystones.

I mean how would you even go about working on this without the most terrifying and forbidden lore to exist.
Like reading their waystone notes. Including the Elven parts of it.

+1 for the runemasters naming themselves as a combination of Dwarven runelords and Elven Loremasters due to reading their notes.
Because while the Elves can't touch Runes, from our conversations with Gunnars the dwarves might well be able to work towards touching magic. And taking up the forbidden task of touching the winds of chaos would be terrible enough to be ashamed to call themselves Runelords.

But don't worry, the Ancestor Conclave just declared you can touch the winds and still be a dwarf.

Beastmen normally convert waystones to the Herdstones they revere.
I'm reading this and other sections as they've converted their Waystone so it turns Beastmen into something that would revere it.

Morghur only started corrupting anything after his blood was shed. Up until that moment there was no sign of his aura.
I feel safe to investigate more,
And confident enough that it would be worth it.

[x] Last minute
[x] LAST: Attempt to infiltrate Karag Dum
 
personally, I've always been a bit more interested in the background mystery with the elf religion stuff.

and there is not a small chance that this is connected.

[X] Leave


maybe come back when we have some new information to shed some light on 'what the fuck'
 
Prime 2.0 said:
I'm rather put out that there was no proper "second round" - I was late to this party and didn't get to pitch my idea until stay and fortify was the best shot at just not leaving immediately. But, well, while maybe infiltration is more likely to succeed given a nerfed aura, the original issue I identified was never tackled.
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that was intentional, after it was pointed out that talking to the Kellvige would give us more time to do other stuff and it was within a handful of votes, several people who voted for leave approval voted for sitting on our hands for a day to prevent us from solving this, hence why there was a 20 vote gap by the end

JowKeen said:
BoneyM has used mystery metaplots the whole time, and they clog our research bar with big question marks.

This one? This one will not be clogging our research bar.

this is the Blood Fountain. Claims that "we would have done this in our youth" are silly, because we made calculated risks back then too. The risk we took already was staying a day. And before that, we came on this trip in the first place. And went to chaos dwarf vegas or whatever.

No. Some mysteries need to be trebbuchet'd down and put out of mind. This is one of those.
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No it isn't, if we leave here, I for one will vote for funding our own expedition with blackjack and hookers. This is a reasonable risk, It is safer than trying to kill warbosses since we don't need to fight anyone, and we can turnh invisible and teleport and infiltration might not even require a roll.
 
Honestly? I'm not only fine with the mystery only getting solved later, I'd be content with the mystery never being solved "on-screen" at all.

How many times has Mathilde consulted someone else's documented research and only then pieced things together with some extra insight that the original author lacked? I'd be fine with simply contributing to the reverse side of that for a change - so fifty years down the line some other prodigal wizard sees something stick out from our notes and has their own eureka moment.
 
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