The 5th ed lizardmen book came 1997, so the skaven explanation is the oldest, unless it pops up in an even older source.Quote:
Originally Posted by CrystalSphere
But I kinda like Jack of Blades' thought that both were needed. :)
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The 5th ed lizardmen book came 1997, so the skaven explanation is the oldest, unless it pops up in an even older source.Quote:
Originally Posted by CrystalSphere
But I kinda like Jack of Blades' thought that both were needed. :)
I like to think about it as :
- Old Ones know (somehow) that to prevent a distaster, they must change the montains at that time.
- Slaans procrastinates, but do it at a later time
- Skaven has the time for the super-device
Then, one heck of a timing. A season before, the boom-device would have been eliminated without harm. A season after, continent goes bye-bye...
Since both Lizardmen and Skaven armybooks continue to claim ownership of the disaster, I like others favour the theory that both races are responsible.
The Lizardmen enacted the minor continental shift, which shouldn't have been nearly as disasterous as it was, except the Skaven happened to trigger their Great Machine at the exact same moment and the combination of the two magical powers at work proved far more disasterous than either race anticipated... and the Dwarfs bore the brunt of the consequences (well Skaven too, but they recovered while the Dwarfs didn't).
Personally, I suspect that since the Great Machine was designed to absorb and then magnify the raw magic of the Skaven spells, the "malfunction" was the Machine inadvertantly also absorbing and magnifying the power and effects of the Slanns magic.
Just a thought...
I also believe both races are to blame. Skaven magic is very deadly and just as unstable. Slaan magic is very powerful but stable and controlled. Skaven basically use magic in their machines (warpstones being concentrated, manifested magical energy, basically). Two vastly opposite types of magic meeting in a way that was never supposed to happen. I could see that taking down a big old hill or two.
It's also worth remembering that neither Skaven nor Slaan know what the other guys where up to and no one else knows anything about what happened so it's not like a comparative study have been done to work out why. The Skavens did something, the Slaans did something else, there were a lot of disruption in the Dwarf Empire and both assume they did it as they lacked any other explanation. It could easily be either, both or none of them that did it. The relative date of each book probably doesn't really matter as to the state of the current setting. It's certainly possibly (even likely) that one idea was thought of first but that doesn't mean that both can't be valid now.
Nukes are tested underground in the real world, and they've yet to cause any sort of continental devestation. The idea of conventional explosives being the cause of the Dwarven Empire's collapse seems pretty unbelievable and silly to me.
Magical frogs are a better explanation since, in a world in which magical frogs exist, they are actually a plausible cause.
The skaven device wasn't a conventional explosion.
It was a warpstone powered device intended to create tunnels in one go underneath the entire continent. It's a semi-magical shockwave that would make large cracks in the rock that the skaven could use as tunnels.
according to geophysics (correct term for geographical physics?) a shock wave can cause that kind of destruction. Think earthquake or volcano eruption. :)
It's entirely possible that both explanations are true. GW are fond of ambiguous background.
Could be a translation error. It has happened before.Quote:
Originally Posted by cornonthecob
That's because they are done at carefully selected locations, far away from any fault line.Quote:
Originally Posted by dinobot
Setting off a nuke on a fault line could cause a massive earthquake.
And people, it's spelled Slann (with double "n"), not slaan ;)
From the current skaven book timeline:
-1500 The great machine of the seer order explodes. The slann, ignorant of the newly emerged race, registered the energy and attributed it solely to thier own powerful spells. To this day they have failed to make the connection. The great migration out of skavenblight begins.
That sounds a lot like taking credit...Quote:
Originally Posted by Bueno
Since it was not the plan to wipe out the dwarfish empire, it's more like taking the blame if you ask me.
IIRC that is what it says in the Skaven Army BookQuote:
Originally Posted by RealMikeBob
But it would appear that the account in the Lizardmen army book is intended as a retcon. Has there been any other documentation relating the catastrophe to any other faction? Otherwise I would say that the most recently-printed documentation would be the correct one.
It wouldn't be the first time GW retconned their settings.
True, but not in this case.Quote:
Originally Posted by TwoBitWriter
Skaven were first to take credit in their 4th Edition Armybook. Then the Lizardmen were intorduced in 5th Edition, taking over the credit (for pretty much every major event in the Warhammer World at that:shifty:). If things had stayed this way, it could be seen as a potential retcon.
However, since then we've had two more armybooks for both Skaven and Lizardmen, and rather than straighten things out, both sides continue to claim credit. This seems to indicate that the official GW stance is that BOTH races share responsibility.
Personally, I suspect it was originally a big mistake on GW's part. When GW introduced the Lizardmen, they went overboard trying to make them sound like the most important race in the Warhammer World. In their attempts to shoe-horn the new Lizardmen into the already established background, they completely forgot about the Skavens part in the disasterous earthquakes. They probably would have retconned this properly later, except that the event was too important to Skaven history, so they got stuck with both explainations.
Just a thought...
Dargon, you sir, have pretty much convinced me.
I guess it's not too big a stretch to say that "They both did something, so they both take credit"
I actually think GW intentionally uses the 'unreliable narrator' for the army books for (i) make each army sound like its the best thing ever (except for the poor dwarves) and (ii) create a sense of mystery about the world.
That second one I might be a little optimistic on.
I think Dargon has it right. The Slann were doing their minor readjustments, using Light magic, and the Skaven just so happened to be firing up ther great machine, which happened to utilize the same magic, thus causing the Slann's spell to go haywire. As both races are still ignorant of the actions of the other, they both see it as a consequence of their own actions, and with the Slann's sense of infallibilty, abd the Skaven's utter lack of historical consiousness, neither side has conducted any further investigations, so there's really no in-universe discrepancies, it is only the omnipresent perspective of us, the gamers, that makes any inconsistency apparent.
Unless the Skaven device was even more potent that they had thought and this was the disaster the Old Ones had forseen - the Slann's adjustment of the world's edge mountains was required in order to correct fault lines and add in a 'safety release valve' that would stop the Skaven device from fracturing the continent and sinking the whole Old World into the magma below. It's just unfortunate for the dwarfs to have been living on top of it.