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Warhammer Fantasy: Divided Loyalties - an Advisor's Quest

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Sir_Travelsalot said:
The Empire and the Altdorf College of Engineers has all the knowhow to bring about an industrial age, with things like machine looms and factories. The reason they haven't is because there's a greater social impetus for focusing on making war machines and a greater fear of craftsmen rioting than there was IRL.

EDIT: That and because the Empire apparently doesn't have a system of legal patents for inventions, the engineers are too afraid of having their designs stolen to distribute them for mass production.
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I forget where this is noted, but there is also a thing of nobles not wanting peasants to have too much free time and thus are also acting to suppress things like seed drills because they're aware of the social change an agricultural revolution would cause. Which incidentally might be enough to convince the right Witch Hunter that they are acting against the interests of Sigmar's Empire, seeking to intentionally weaken it for their own greed. Probably wouldn't hold up to the greater Cult, but dogmatic Witch Hunters might bite that bait.
 
Fayhem said:
...How??? K8P has the opposite of a reputation of being an unwelcoming, unrewarding work environment for Collegiate mages. If you just mean "it's outside of the Empire, so that's not a great commute if you want to shop in Altdorf" that's not specific to it being a Boon research institute. We can't work with NIMUs period if it's within the Empire's borders.
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Imperial research institute and a K8P dwarven research institute are different things.
Not everyone loves dwarves as much aswe do, or is as comfortable with them as we are.
It's largely about buy in, imperial research institute has, atleast from the start, a more pull for imperial wizards because it will, presumably, by researching things empire, and the colleges, care about.
 
Ganurath said:
I just realized what bugs me about Waystones, and I hope that Mathilde finds an answer to the question in pursuit of this Project:

If getting the Winds to safely mix is beyond humans, then why can a bunch of inanimate objects consistently pull it off for thousands of years?
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Same reason other inanimate objects can carry out complex manipulations of magical energy on demand. Because whoever built them did the programming, and both elves and dwarves have shown themselves able to safely mix the Winds either by stripping them of individuality or creating Qaysh.

At least that's my guess. The Waystones do seem like they're just really big, really complicated enchantments, or part of one anyways.
 
Ganurath said:
I just realized what bugs me about Waystones, and I hope that Mathilde finds an answer to the question in pursuit of this Project:

If getting the Winds to safely mix is beyond humans, then why can a bunch of inanimate objects consistently pull it off for thousands of years?
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Mixing the Winds safely is beyond humans using the methods the elves developed and Teclis adapted for them. I'm pretty sure that the Old Ones taught humans how to wield High Magic on Albion when they were still around.
 
Shane_357 said:
I forget where this is noted, but there is also a thing of nobles not wanting peasants to have too much free time and thus are also acting to suppress things like seed drills because they're aware of the social change an agricultural revolution would cause.
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That is... wildly ahistorical. Nobles are all large landowners! They stand to gain more than the peasants do from increasing agricultural productivity! And historically peasants had loads of free time anyway!
 
One big chonker of a reason why industrialization isn't kicking off so easily is also how hard it can get to transport materials and goods reliably in a deathworld. As long as the supply of materials and demand for goods is uncertain, you aren't going to be seeing any kind of assemblyline making any sense when said line blazes through all available stock in a week and then idles for a month until the next shipment comes in.
 
veekie said:
One big chonker of a reason why industrialization isn't kicking off so easily is also how hard it can get to transport materials and goods reliably in a deathworld. As long as the supply of materials and demand for goods is uncertain, you aren't going to be seeing any kind of assemblyline making any sense when said line blazes through all available stock in a week and then idles for a month until the next shipment comes in.
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Honestly, making some giant crazy awesome crazy looking impractical armed to the teeth train sounds very Warhammer style, though.

Problem is, its hard to make a model out of it.
 
Does metal get affected by the light of Morrslieb? Because if so that's another strike against trains all over the place, since you'd either have to build coverings for the tracks to keep the Green Moon's light away, or put them underground, which is just not feasible. Trees aren't a great solution either, because Beastmen.
 
HeWhoAdds said:
That is... wildly ahistorical. Nobles are all large landowners! They stand to gain more than the peasants do from increasing agricultural productivity! And historically peasants had loads of free time anyway!
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It has nothing to do with history, that is the stated opinion of the nobles of the Empire. GW may be dumb, but that's what they wrote.
 
DragonParadox said:
The problem is not keeping the train safe, it's keeping the tracks safe, and you can't put cannons on those.
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storryeater said:
Then you aren't trying hard enough
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<Games Workshop> Okay maybe we can't fit cannon on every part of the track, but you know what? I was reading a book the other day and it mentioned 'railway spikes' used during construction. If real-life railways sometimes had spikes, then Warhammer railways can have lots more and bigger spikes, right? It'll be self-defending against monsters and bandits, but it'll also serve as a big obstacle to anyone wanting to cross the Spikeway, like super barbed wire, so we have another reason for internal conflict and technological stagnation as people object to the Spikeways.

<Several hundred people> THAT'S NOT WHAT A RAILWAY SPIKE IS!

<Games Workshop> Too late, we already filed for the trademark on "Imperial Spikeways".
 
We should probably try to get a border crown (place a bounty) . So we can officially say our research institute is not in the empire or in the dwars of in the elfs. And then we say, but we work together with all 3 for this, so we don't need to follow all the rules? IDK
 
Vebyast said:
Medium outsourceability: Lug it up to Cython's cave and I bet they'd be all over it. Might get different results from inspection via Mathilde's piety and Avatar trait, but would likely be results nonetheless.
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It's very much not a guarantee that Cython would be all over it. "The Kurgans have their own version of what Nekehara called Neru" could easily be seen as more of an anthropological curiosity, and the anthropological aspect seems to be just about the one part of the nature of the gods Cython cares about the least.
 
Exmorri said:
<Games Workshop> Okay maybe we can't fit cannon on every part of the track, but you know what? I was reading a book the other day and it mentioned 'railway spikes' used during construction. If real-life railways sometimes had spikes, then Warhammer railways can have lots more and bigger spikes, right? It'll be self-defending against monsters and bandits, but it'll also serve as a big obstacle to anyone wanting to cross the Spikeway, like super barbed wire, so we have another reason for internal conflict and technological stagnation as people object to the Spikeways.

<Several hundred people> THAT'S NOT WHAT A RAILWAY SPIKE IS!

<Games Workshop> Too late, we already filed for the trademark on "Imperial Spikeways".
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I'm sorry, but that's incredibly metal and I want some Imperial Spikeways.
 
Ganurath said:
I just realized what bugs me about Waystones, and I hope that Mathilde finds an answer to the question in pursuit of this Project:

If getting the Winds to safely mix is beyond humans, then why can a bunch of inanimate objects consistently pull it off for thousands of years?
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I assume that not all Qaysh-based magic items have to be manually recharged by an Archmage or Slaan after being used.
HeWhoAdds said:
That is... wildly ahistorical. Nobles are all large landowners! They stand to gain more than the peasants do from increasing agricultural productivity! And historically peasants had loads of free time anyway!
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I've often seen people think that medieval peasantry was essentially just chattel slavery. It was bad, but it wasn't usually quite as bad.
DragonParadox said:
The problem is not keeping the train safe, it's keeping the tracks safe, and you can't put cannons on those.
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I'm not an engineer, but how necessary are tracks in order to have a steam engine that's more efficient for transportation than a horse wagon? Would a simple steam wagon of any kind be not worth it?
Shane_357 said:
It has nothing to do with history, that is the stated opinion of the nobles of the Empire. GW may be dumb, but that's what they wrote.
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I think that falls under "stupid enough to better be ignored for the purpose of quest canon".
Superdion said:
We should probably try to get a border crown (place a bounty) . So we can officially say our research institute is not in the empire or in the dwars of in the elfs. And then we say, but we work together with all 3 for this, so we don't need to follow all the rules? IDK
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That's not how it works. We have sworn fealty and loyalty to the Empire. Arguments could be made that to whatever extent a polity is owned by us, to that extent it is also a subject of the Empire. So if we found an organization within the umbrella of a foreign title that we own then it still has to be conforming to the Articles of Magic.
I think that that's even technically true for our Loremaster title. If Belegar wants to hire someone or do something that's not conforming the Articles and put it in our remit then that's mostly okay as long as we only oversee and don't actively participate. And even if it sometimes isn't, the powers that be back home are willing to willfully ignore a lot. But we can't be seen personally proposing or founding sub-divisions of our Loremaster domain that would be in breach of the Articles.
 
Rafin said:
I'm not an engineer, but how necessary are tracks in order to have a steam engine that's more efficient for transportation than a horse wagon? Would a simple steam wagon of any kind be not worth it?
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FYI, its more efficient to have a horse drawn wagon train on train tracks than an early steam engine pulling wagons on open ground. Thats how big a difference the tracks make.

Steam engines are maintenance heavy, fuel hungry and can imbue an absolutely unsafe amount of velocity for anything but a stable, secure road.
 
And just imagine how good those master crafted dwarven tracks will be.
The entire quarter-mile stretch, rails milled to a perfect finish and aligned with hairs breadth precision over the course of a mere decade.
 
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There's a reason the first steam engines were used as water pumps for mines and trains came a good 30-40 years later.

Also dwarves make good steel, but they don't make cheap steel. And what we need is cheap steel for tracks not good steel
 
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veekie said:
FYI, its more efficient to have a horse drawn wagon train on train tracks than an early steam engine pulling wagons on open ground. Thats how big a difference the tracks make.

Steam engines are maintenance heavy, fuel hungry and can imbue an absolutely unsafe amount of velocity for anything but a stable, secure road.
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One really, really big help for any sort of industrialization would be a system of canals, because those are already really helpful for transport, and you're not just leaving metal lying around to be picked up by any passing ork. And you can put a steam engines on a boat, but that's not as important.

If only somebody was doing something to improve the canal network of the empire.
 
veekie said:
FYI, its more efficient to have a horse drawn wagon train on train tracks than an early steam engine pulling wagons on open ground. Thats how big a difference the tracks make.

Steam engines are maintenance heavy, fuel hungry and can imbue an absolutely unsafe amount of velocity for anything but a stable, secure road.
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How well do the rules of reality apply to Warhammer where steam engines are concerned given things such as steam tanks?
 
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