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Warhammer Fantasy: Divided Loyalties - an Advisor's Quest

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DragonParadox said:
Because magic is a resource too, it powers enchantments and it powers runes. He has seen the Eye of Gazul, he knows what AV is and what you can buy with
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And once he learns to actually make use of it, he can keep it. (EDIT: Hell, some of it is currently being used by Panaromia)

It remains analogous to sewage: If you have the processing to extract niter and dispose of the rest, it's valuable for you to do so. If you don't you're better off having someone else take it away than just leaving it sitting there, given as its presence is harmful to healthy life.

Burned_Cookie said:
But what is AV? Arcane Versimilitude?
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Aethyric Vitae, AKA Snake Juice, AKA Raw Aethyr Stuff drawn from a Wisdom's Asp that's superposed between life and death.
 
BoneyM said:
You're still doing it. Dwarves don't have a single universal mindset. There are Dwarves that are thieves and murderers and liars and cultists. What might cause overwhelming shame for one might be preferable to death for another. How do they not feel that way? By not holding beliefs that would lead them to feel that way.
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I must have been too influenced by the threat's general view of Karaz Ankor Dwarves. I know that there's Dwarves that are different, but I thought that they rarely manage to stay in good standing within their Clans, let alone able to rule and command over anything for long. Like, the King of Karak Hirn is being shuned for flip-floping on his third son's inheritance status after a truly dark crisis that may not even be his fault. A dwarf that polished shoes or served food at a Greenskin table seems like someone who'd have a hard tine commanding respect.

Also, I asked some time in the past about Dwarven criminality and you said something along the lines that typical underhanded criminality (theft and premeditated murder) is very rare in the Karaz Ankor.

So while I get that a random rich Dwarven family would quite possibly pay off all kinds of enemy races to free their kin that is accepting humiliation to survive, I thought that something like that happening to anyone prominent, like a King, major Thane, High Priest or Guildmaster would be a massive scandal with bigger negative consequences for the ransomed person than it would have among Humans or Elves.
kingreaper said:
Would you look down on human slaves who work for their captors under the "mere" threat of death?
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Of course not. But I was going off the idea that Dwarves have a fundamentally different psychology from Humans. They aren't just stocky, long lived Humans with with an extreme culture and unfortunate demographic decline. They are a different species.
But yeah. I might have to sit down and recalibrate my understanding. It isn't usually quite this off on this type of subject.
Prime 2.0 said:
Danger noodle purée. Dwarves love it!
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Best name for it yet. I wonder how fatty it is. Is ot literally snake oil?
 
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Rafin said:
I must have been too influenced by the threat's general view of Karaz Ankor Dwarves. I know that there's Dwarves that are different, but I thought that they rarely manage to stay in good standing within their Clans, let alone able to rule and command over anything for long. Like, the King of Karak Hirn is being shuned for flip-floping on his third son's inheritance status after a truly dark crisis that may not even be his fault. A dwarf that polished shoes or served food at a Greenskin table seems like someone who'd have a hard tine commanding respect.

Also, I asked some time in the past about Dwarven criminality and you said something along the lines that typical underhanded criminality (theft and premeditated murder) is very rare in the Karaz Ankor.

So while I get that a random rich Dwarven family would quite possibly pay off all kinds of enemy races to free their kin that is accepting humiliation to survive, I thought that something like that happening to anyone prominent, like a King, major Thane, High Priest or Guildmaster would be a massive scandal with bigger negative consequences for the ransomed person than it would have among Humans or Elves.
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Almost everyone will say the right things that agree with the cultural mores they were brought up in. They'll go along with them in the day-to-day, they'll talk shit about people that breach them, they'll tut at leaders that don't properly represent them. They'll even stand side-by-side with their kin in the shieldwall for them. But when it really comes down to it, not all of them would choose to die for them. Not if there's another option.

Dwarves aren't humans but they are people. And when it really comes down to it, a fair number of people would choose a massive scandal with bitter negative consequences over an agonizing death. The cultural mores of bravery and sacrifice and honour aren't inherent to the Dwarven race, they're taught and learned and need to be strived towards. If it was an automatic and universal reflex, Dwarven culture wouldn't need to celebrate them as virtues. The average Dwarf cleaves closer to Dwarven virtues than the average citizen of the Empire does to the Empire's virtues, but that's because the Karaz Ankor has immense and all-encompassing cultural institutions - the Clan, the Guild, and the Cult - that work together to encourage the right actions and discourage the wrong ones. It's not because Dwarves find virtue easy.
 
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Well, I just caught up with the quest. It's a shame I missed the big vote on the letters by a week or so.

Question - what is being "stolen"? Magical energy via waystone circuits? I thought that generally Dawi didnt touch the stuff, so where is the uproar from Belegar coming from? Is it simply the principle? Or is this network sapping power from Dawi souls or runes?
 
bms111 said:
Question - what is being "stolen"? Magical energy via waystone circuits? I thought that generally Dawi didnt touch the stuff, so where is the uproar from Belegar coming from? Is it simply the principle? Or is this network sapping power from Dawi souls or runes?
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The Dwarfs are syphoning energy from entire worlds edge mountains via Waystones they made with help of elves prior to War of Vengeance to fuel the miracles of golden age. Or they did until they lost half their holds and now only the Runes that protect them from chaos work. However everything i just said in this sentence is something only Thorgrim knows. So as far as Belegar is aware, Thorgrim is stealing Belegars shit for his own gain, instead to safeguard the dwarf race.
 
Also, Belegar and Thorgrim don't seem to get along very well (representing the new holds that rebuild and the old holds that are more focused on vengeance), so assuming best intentions is not the first thing on Belegars mind.
 
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BoneyM said:
The cultural mores of bravery and sacrifice and honour aren't inherent to the Dwarven race,
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I kinda knew that due to the existence of the Dawi-Zarr or, less extremely, Marienburg merchant houses. But I thought that things like feeling things like shame, anger, regret, hate and so on in a very amplified and very slowly receding way was a big part of what made them psychologically different from Humans on a bio-neurological level. So if one grew up in a culture that finds certain things (like surrendering and giving succor to the enemies of your people) shameful then that shame (and also all the PTSD related to losing a battle to reaving monsters who then use and abuse you) would be edged into a Dwarf's mind so deeply that lashing out suicidally might even become a rational choice, or at least a very understandable one and thus far far more frequent than if Humans find themselves in the same situation.

But yeah. I miscalibrated my nature vs nurture dichotomy on Dwarves and am still finding my footing.

I'd really like to meet some third (or more) generation Imperial Dwarves and/or get insight into the minds of various radicals the way we did into the minds of people like Belegar, Thorgrim or Borek. We saw a bit of Gotri and Gotrek, but we didn't get close enough for me to be able to do anything close to modeling their behavior in a crisis.
me.me.here said:
Based on my deep insight into the greenskin psyche (i.e. pattern matching based off of Birdmuncha), I'm gonna say that Ungrok Beardburner wanted to burn the stunty's beard - and maybe keep doing it every now and then for shits and giggles because the reaction he got was hilarious.
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Yeah. Orcs are aware of things like status and prestige, even if they find the how of it silly among the mortal races. Having a High King to routinely victimize would mean more to an important Orc than having just anyone with a "fun" strong reaction. See also, the canon fate of Kazador and his son.
 
Belegar is angry at Thorgrim, and wants to find fault with him.
So learning that the waystones are sending something, anything, to Karaz a Karak after he was feeling good about the concessions he got from Thorgrim when he did not send reinforcements (that probably would have been too late no matter what) made him extra angry and not really predisposed to really thinking things through.
Things like "these were made during the golden age, almost certainly with the knowledge and concent of my ancestors", "magic in general is deadly to dwarves", and "do other holds have something like this? maybe ask them".

Only people who really would have any reason to get upset would be the runesmith clans, who kida need ambient magic for their runes, because until Belegar decided to hire Mathilde "i'm a what now?" Weber, there was no use for that magic, and it was actively harmful if it stuck around.
 
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@BoneyM Does Clan Huzkul have any members that grew up outside of the Karaz Ankor entirely (as opposed to being exiles or children of exiles traveling between Holds or living around/in more tolerant Holds or living outside but having constant friendly contact with Hold-connected Rangers)?
 
Rafin said:
@BoneyM Does Clan Huzkul have any members that grew up outside of the Karaz Ankor entirely (as opposed to being exiles or children of exiles traveling between Holds or living around/in more tolerant Holds or living outside but having constant friendly contact with Hold-connected Rangers)?
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Some. There's always a few Imperial Dwarves in every generation that think the grass is greener in the mountains.
 
BoneyM said:
Some. There's always a few Imperial Dwarves in every generation that think the grass is greener in the mountains.
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I assume usually (when there isn't some great battle to participate in) they do the equivalent of trying to farm DF and proving themselves until someone thinks they are worth adopting. Or they end up as Rangers that are useful enough to move and do business relatively freely inside a Hold and can even get a permanent apartment somewhere.

Are there any Imperial Dwarf Clans that are still actively recognized as Clans in (relatively) good standing or is it more like "once you disavow the Karaz Ankor to live a life the Ancestor Gods disapprove of then any offspring you raise like that is always Clanless, no matter what they feel like hanging at the back of their given name"?
 
Rafin said:
Are there any Imperial Dwarf Clans that are still actively recognized as Clans in (relatively) good standing or is it more like "once you disavow the Karaz Ankor to live a life the Ancestor Gods disapprove of then any offspring you raise like that is always Clanless, no matter what they feel like hanging at the back of their given name"?
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I don't think that's how that works. You're only clanless if you get exiled or are the only survivor(s), but unless you get brought into another Clan, any children you have will also be clanless.
 
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