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Warhammer Fantasy: Divided Loyalties - an Advisor's Quest

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chocolote12 said:
We have a trait that specifically gives us bonuses in this situation, though. And we've worked with scouts and soldiers before, in the Invasion of Sylvania. And we've been sitting around Dwarven Scouts for at least weeks now, and happen to be standing right next to another Dwarf who's well-versed in both cultures and can help correct any misconceptions, should they crop up.
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Trait is nice, but it is not magical remedy that gives Mathilde supernatural skills in related tasks. As it is, she never worked with Ulthar. She never debriefed scouts/soldiers. She never tried to put together picture of what is happening in twisting multilevel undeground caves, as opposed on flat surface. There is racial disconnect. There are possible to overcome but still present issues with language.

Sure we have a trait. But all that trait does is give Mathilde a boost to such actions. It does not make all above issues go away.
 
I'm thinking of this as in large part a chance for us to learn on the job from observing an expert in asymmetric warfare.
We're also smart and can be insightful and might even be able to contribute, as a bonus.
 
DiceOfStupidity said:
[] Continue downwards to the Grand Avenue.

High-stakes option:
- Scouting far beyond battle lines, and ability to warm if enemy is incoming.
- Ability to run interference or sabotage things. (it proved to be Mathilde's strength)
- More action than other options.
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Also, a significant risk, perhaps even a likelihood that literally nothing happens, and Mathilde hangs around twiddling her thumbs watching the dwarves reconstruct fortifications.

With the Crooked Moon tribe disintegrating, we shouldn't expect significant resistance at the Highways for several hours, as the troops that should be there will have fragmented into a war of all against all for position.

I think this is the choice which has by far the highest chance of Mathilde contributing nothing IC, as she did in the update before last.

Now, admittedly, I think Mathilde could arguably do more good going directly after the spiders, but at least she's in position to intervene if she needs to, and she'll be adding value in the interim.
 
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Adhoc vote count started by Sinsystems on Sep 12, 2019 at 3:31 PM, finished with 254 posts and 133 votes.
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Kornet said:
Looks like we are in for some actual spymaster work for a change.
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Mathilde does seem to have found a niche in military intelligence/black ops.

That's not a problem, but I do think that at some point she should retire from being James Bond/the SAS, and start being M and Q. As she gets more experienced, there will come a point where it would make sense for her to retire from fieldwork most of the time and instead start running squads of special forces equipped with temporary enchanted items.

We shouldn't waste Mathilde's high martial, but instead leverage it. Military Intelligence is a good way of combining that with high learning and intrigue. Even with stewardship when it comes to the organisational side of it.
 
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Alratan said:
Mathilde does seem to have found a niche in military intelligence/black ops.

That's not a problem, but I do think that at some point she should retire from being James Bond/the SAS, and start being M and Q. As she gets more experienced, there will come a point where it would make sense for her to retire from fieldwork most of the time and instead start running squads of special forces equipped with temporary enchanted items.

We shouldn't waste Mathilde's high martial, but instead leverage it. Military Intelligence is a good way of combining that with high learning and intrigue. Even with stewardship when it comes to the organisational side of it.
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Well to be fair during diplomatic negotiations and interrogations having the other party being well aware that if you wanted to you could tear them to shreds is a pretty nice piece of leverage.
 
Alratan said:
I was looking in the Children of the Horned Rate Roleplay supplement, and it said that the City of Pillars has a population of 95,000 skaven. That's a lot, but it's probably not an unmanageable amount.
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That number seems rather small to me. I was honestly expecting a number above the million mark.
 
Sinsystems said:
Maybe it only counted the Clan Rats and not the Skaven Slaves that make up most of the population.
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Maybe! If you held it at around 10 or 11 Slaves per Clan Rat you'd get between 950,000 and a million, and most depictions of Skaven Slaves in the artwork have around that many per More Important Rat IIRC.
 
That number seems about correct for the amount of non-slave Skaven, considering they don't control the entire Karak. The thing with Skaven is their numbers almost always hover near the maximum capacity of their food supply. If you don't wipe them out all at once, they'll quickly bounce back to that ceiling. And applying attrition to them can even be counterproductive, because it means they spend less time on fighting amongst themselves because that external attrition is merely replacing their normal internal attrition, and now they've got more time and energy to spend on making your life hell. This is why the Conspiracy of Silence is a thing. And that they're culturally incapable of something similar is part of why more Dwarfholds have fallen to the Skaven than manling cities.
 
BungieONI said:
That number seems rather small to me. I was honestly expecting a number above the million mark.
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They still all need feeding somehow, and with the surface around Karak Eight Peaks under Greenskin control, there wasn't a local supply.

It's worth noting that a normal skaven Warren usually has up to ten thousand skaven, and a metropolis has from ten to fifty thousand. The City of Pillars is one of the largest skaven cities, at nearly double the usual size for one of their metropoli (which are their largest settlements). That's consistent in the various source materials.

Skavenblight is probably significantly bigger, but ~100k is a sensible size for the City of Pillars.

You simply couldn't feed a million skaven in the City of Pillars. Slave or non-slave it doesn't really matter.

Sinsystems said:
Maybe it only counted the Clan Rats and not the Skaven Slaves that make up most of the population.
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Somewhere like the City of Pillars probably goes more for goblin slaves than skaven ones, I'd imagine.
 
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BungieONI said:
I would expect there to be underground supplies as well, and those being the primary since Skaven are not exactly picky eaters.
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While Greenskins have their underground ecology, I don't think skaven have their own equivalent. The usual food source for skaven that is mentioned is either the black grain grown in the Blighted Marshes around Skavenblight or food produced by human slaves above ground.

Remember that skaven apparently have to eat more than humans because of their fast metabolism.
 
Alratan said:
While Greenskins have their underground ecology, I don't think skaven have their own equivalent. The usual food source for skaven that is mentioned is either the black grain on the Blighted Marshes or food produced by human slaves above ground.

Remember that skaven apparently have to eat more than humans because of their fast metabolism.
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I would bet that in K8P the main part of the Skaven diet is Goblin.
 
Sinsystems said:
I would bet that in K8P the main part of the Skaven diet is Goblin.
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I'd agree.

I've just checked, and the population numbers for skaven settlements given in Children of the Horned Rat include slaves - explicitly including human slaves in the case of Under-Altdorf.

Of course, BoneyM has full discretion to change that, but the numbers in that book are more sensible than millions. The logistics of feeding them would be even more nuts.
 
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Why are we a badass of shadows and greatswords?
If we are a knight, can we start a knight order of some kind if ours land is good enough?
These are my question atm
[X] Remain here and help Ulthar make sense of the reports flowing in.
 
Greenskins have several advantages with fungi that could mean they can get a lot out of it. The greenskin ecosystem creates Snotlings to tend to the mushrooms and Squigs to protect them, they instinctively act in ways that improve and protect these ecosystems, often without understanding why they're doing what they're doing, and they're part fungal themselves so it might be that they aren't even fully reliant on caloric intake like normal creatures. And you can always speculate that Waaagh! energy not only empowers them, it could also be outright fuelling them.

Skaven have none of those advantages, and if you're not cheating there's a hard limit of how much you can get out of agriculture without sunlight. The ones here will certainly have a lot of greenskin in their diet, and they probably import food from the vast fields of the Blighted Marshes surrounding Skavenblight - it seems plausible that vast fields of 'black corn' (pre-Columbian maize?) and 'moonseed' (rice?) could be supplementing the diets of Skaven throughout the Old World. But it seems to me that it would be almost certain that somewhere, ideally in a valley accessible only from underground, there'd be Skaven-controlled, slave-tended crops. And the terrain around Karak Eight Peaks would be full of places like that.

(also both greenskins and Skaven are willing and able to resort to cannibalism at the drop of a hat, which gives you a lot more wiggle room when it comes to caloric shortfalls)
 
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yeah, until refrigeration became a thing, transporting large quantities of food over vast distances was... difficult. I've seen no mention of refrigeration tech really anywhere in Warhammer fantasy, which tells me that all the food for a population needs to be either types of food which don't spoil easily, food that has been preserved, or food locally sourced.

Feeding large populations of skaven is going to be difficult at the best of time, even when they engage in infighting to keep their numbers down. And having greenskins covering large swaths of food-producing land is not the best of times.
 
Wardragon said:
Why are we a badass of shadows and greatswords?
If we are a knight, can we start a knight order of some kind if ours land is good enough?
These are my question atm
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You are! Mathilde got knighted back during her service to Stirland.

On the topic of Knightly Orders, you're not the first to ask:

On paper, most Knightly Orders are technically monasteries. If you had the backing of an approved religious institution and enough accumulated money or favours to make it happen, you could [found one].

Making a secular order in one go would require the approval of the current Emperor, or the approval of an Elector Count and not being actively opposed by the Emperor, and would be the subject of a lot of suspicion from the other Elector Counts as well as any future Emperors until they proved themselves. You could also do so gradually - start off with a sort of Riding Around On Horses Club for nobles, scale up, and eventually petition for official approval, like the Knights Encarmine. Or you could start off with happenstance, like the Knights of the Golden Lion or the Knights of the Broken Sword, wherein a group of unaffiliated armoured horsemen achieve some notable deed, and found the Knights on the spot based on it - though you'd still have to get the backing of an Elector Count or religious institution at some point.

It's worth noting here that Ranald is not officially recognized in such a way that would allow for a Knighty Order dedicated to him.
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I've added the above to the Collection of Important Information threadmark.
 
BoneyM said:
But it seems to me that it would be almost certain that somewhere, ideally in a valley accessible only from underground, there'd be Skaven-controlled, slave-tended crops. And the terrain around Karak Eight Peaks would be full of places like that.
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So, I guess this would be one of the highest things on the list that could be taken to cripple the Skaven presence in Eight Peaks?

Of course, we'd have to find it first, and then seize it, and the Skaven would definitely throw as much as they could at us to prevent its loss if we do find it, but if we could, it'd probably be one of the biggest blows that could be struck against the Skaven presence here.
 
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Chimeraguard said:
So, I guess this would be one of the highest things on the list that could be taken to cripple the Skaven presence in Eight Peaks?

Of course, we'd have to find it first, and then size it, which the Skaven would definitely throw as much as they could at us to prevent that, but if we could, it'd probably be a major boon to our efforts.
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Once the battles end, the war will have only begun, and those sort of medium- and long-term possibilities will start to come into play. Assuming Mathilde decides to stick around, of course.
 
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