[X] Having successfully escaped, you can now move on...
-[X] To the Temple of Grungni, to check if the holy place remains undesecrated.
Speaking of, we really need Mathilde to get a proper long-range rifle because we're setting her up to be a really good sniper.
So we can still loot them, excellent.
Jack of all trades, master of none.
Mathilda has no training with long-arms. She doesn't own a long-arm. The long-arm she doesn't currently have isn't enchanted. Meaning we would need to invest an absolute minimum of three actions to become a sniper. The skill and enchanting mechanics being what they are we would probably have to invest nearer to ten actions to become a good sniper.
I agree that we'd be stretched a number of ways, but I think a Grey Magister like Mathilde has more business with a sniper rifle than she does with a greatsword (though I do not regret the greatsword in the least). Even leaving aside that becoming proficient with new weapons is one way of raising our Martial (and thus indirectly helping us become more proficient with all weapons), having a long range rifle lets us threaten people at long range. Imagine taking on that dragon-ogre with a Hochland Long Rifle, but silenced and full of magic bullets. People would have been a bit more willing to kill the monster then, I imagine.
I put forth for the thread's consideration another weapon to gain some basic proficiency with; grenades. It's something of a specialty weapon these days, but I imagine Zhufbar has a few they'd be welling to sell to a dwarf-friend like Mathilde. I have three types in mind; incendiary grenades, for situations where either she really needs a fire and doesn't have time to bother with flint and steel (a weapon that ought have been useful most stages of this infiltration, from sabotaging the doom-divers to chucking in the pit full of hundreds of orcs), and between fire's tendencies to cast shadows and Mathilde's wonderful belt Kragg made for her ("It's not a friendship bracelet sized for an ogre, it's a rune-struck belt meant to keep you from blowing yourself up where we'll have to deal with it. Harumph.") which might let her be a bit more cavalier about splash damage. (I don't actually
know that the dawi have these grenades, but given the simplicity of Molotov cocktails and the existance of irondrakes I think it falls into a reasonable niche.
Secondly, smoke bombs. They're mentioned both in Vermintide 2 and Total War: Warhammer as being options for selected dwarfs (the ranger variant of Bardin and Grombrindal respectively, if you care) so there's canonical evidence supporting their existence if not their proliferation if you care about such things. This shouldn't be a hard sell; in addition to their utility in breaking contact with hostile pursuers (like we had recently), it fits thematically with the wind of
Ulgu, so there's a good chance Dame Weber could fight on like normal through the smoke while also encouraging the grey wind to flow a bit more strongly in the local area. With the possible exception of smoke inhalation, I don't see an immediate drawback to using these.
Lastly, a more nebulous 'mission-oriented' grenade type that I'm mentally pidgeonholing as some sort of anti-structure or war machine explosive. I doubt we'd get those without a good reason, but like with the sniper rifle a satchel charge shouldn't be too hard to explain for a saboteur wizard.
For a slight change in topic, I think we should loan out our torc to an allied human group. I'm personally thinking the Nordlander/Ulrican forces but I'm willing to be persuaded. As I see it, spreading more fear causing effects through the expedition means we're more likely to have it in place when and where we need it against greenskins and Skaven (both armies being susceptible to routes), but Mathilde causes Terror, not Fear (which is the superior form of morale damage here), and while an argument can be made that with her 10 diplomacy she'd need all the help she could get if she did need to rally troops, she doesn't really have troops she needs to rally while other human forces are expected to go into melee against monsters, and the combination of stiffening human spines while breaking greenskin morale ought to help win more fronts, leading to more winning overall. And if we explicitly make it a loan we can get it back afterwards, and I doubt anyone's particularly eager to disappoint the tiny, frightening murder machine.
Tangentially related, but what would the Colleges' reaction to Magister Weber making magic items and distributing them throughout the expedition be? "Dangerous proliferation of magic outside the Colleges' control", "so long as she picks them back up", "hey when you're done with that we'd give favors for using them elsewhere"...?
Also, does Mathilde have the ability to make magical banners right now? Something like "banner of blessed weapons; all hand weapons count as magical" seem like they'd be helpful for the Knights of Morr when they need to charge cairn wraiths again, and while I doubt we could pull off a Wailing Banner at the moment it does seem like something to strive for.
