I just really wish they were giving Kroak his own BR book. Instead, it sounds like he's going to be appearing in Kragnos, which probably means he'll do something cool but ultimately Kragnos will be successful at whatever he wants to accomplish while the Seraphon are either another side note or inadvertently end up helping the bad guys again...
not only inadvertently helping but also ultimately failing at our goal and making things much much worse then if we had done nothing.
Realistically speaking with what belakor had at his disposal he could of probably taken the tower without kroak. "Look at it as letting one problem take care of the other." Wilson Fisk/kingpin 2018
He did it to a second tower with a single Skaven assassin apparently. (Blowing up the magic 'generators' as it were)
I’m not sure what goal kroak is supposed to have failed at, the most dangerous gaunt summoner (the one who was helping with archaon’s Varanite to azyr plan, and who invented the warshrines that sucked up stormcast souls when in proximity) was killed and his entire silver tower were destroyed, the mysterious white dwarf was able to rally the duardin fleets as one for the greater good rather than direct profit, and ultimately Belakor was repelled and Vindicarum saved in a phyrric victory for its defenders. Belakor destroyed a bunch of specific realmgates around Chamon and spread his anti-reforging clouds with them, and destroyed a bunch of stormcast, I guess? That harms order in Chamon, but compared to Azyr being breached or chaos having production of soul-stealing shrines it feels like a necessary trade off
the goal as stated in the book was to kill eater of tomes due to his work in anti reforging tech and him threatening the gates. in doing so the seraphon create a realm wide anti reforgeing cloud that is spreading to the other realms and break a bunch of gates. on top of that they loose 2 major armies doing it, sink the thunder lizards into a perpetual fight with endless deamon hordes, open a warp storm that cut KO off from their supply of aether gold forcing them to work off of what they have with them until chamon is freed, and lets deamonds freely manifest who cause the deaths of every civilian in chamon that doesn't live in one of the big cities, and destroy the capital including a entire storm host and cripple two others and kill a major named SCE hero. oh and they lost a good chunck of the astromatrix in the proses what with it being tide to the gates all that due to the seraphons actions. i don't know about you but to me it looks like the seraphon caused the exact things they where trying to prevent and made every thing else much much worse while doing so.
You gotta think lf it like a game of cosmic chess. Everything lost doesn't really matter. The seraphon will come back over and over so they can fight and die repeatedly with no loss. The stormcast are expendable tools to the great plan. All the deaths in this book save the gaunt summoner were pawns and they dont matter in the great scheme of it all. The gaunt summoner though, he was like a bishop, and killing him will make future moves much easier.
so we are always doomed to pyrrhic victories? it really doesn't matter how badly we perform it's all good we can never fail? if it's always 4d chess does the story even matter? i don't except "i ment to loose horribly it was the plan the whole time" from tzeench i certainly don't except it from us. thats not even how the great plan works
yes. pretty much. until they change the way the great plan works in their lore, everything the lizardmen have done, are doing, and will do is the result of a great plan laid out millenia ago and nigh omnipotent demi-gods spend every moment of their waking existence scrying the future for things that will cause a deviation in that plan. They then seek out these deviations and correct them, regardless of loss. Nothing matters. Only the plan matters. If anything happens in the story, it will be in service of the plan. We can never lose and we can never win. We just continue to keep the plan in motion.
The way I look at it, for immortal beings with the ability to see and analyze things on the scale that the Slann do, individual events, even as big as the distruction of the silver tier and gaunt summoner, are serious in a bucket to the over arching goal of the great plan. Also it doesn't help that nobody can remember the plan, so it is not possible to ever point to any event and say how it why it plays into the plan, they just have to do their best to try and interpret what it is. Is it a bit of an annoying place to be, story wise, in the fluff, sure, but I think that is part of what adds to the otherness of the Seraphon.
I don't think the story's over yet. It's not so much 4d chess as it is just chess. Kroak just made a Queen sacrifice type of move. But he wouldn't have done that if it wasn't a path to checkmate. He saw what was going to happen in Vindicarum and Chamon and proceeded anyway. With certainty. And, of course, had he not acted, it seems Azyr may have fallen altogether.
I think it is important to remember that the Slann know they have a fighting chance against Chaos because the Chaos Gods are doomed to continually fight amongst themselves. Tzeentch and Archaon are undoubtedly furious right now and when they discover what Be'lakor has done they will try to bring him to heel, further dividing chaos.
That's great and all, but the writer still needs to explain to the reader why this particular action was a "sacrifice your queen to achieve checkmate"-move that was important to maintain the great plan. Yes the great plan is alien, and yes we will never really understand it. But we still need a better explenation than the writer just going "cuz I say so". Show us a hint of their future move. Show us a kink in the plans of be'lakor. Show us Tzeentch and Archaon getting ready to bring be'lakor down a peg or two. Show us why that 1 gaunt summoner is apparently worth an entire realm. Have a SCE remark something about how happy he is that at least that gaunt summoner is dead and they can just rebuild the realm with time. Just something that could possibily be interpreted as "positive" within the great plan.
what a great modeling opportunity to kit bash a chaos seraphon army.... a rogue host corrupted by chaos and stray from the plan... but also,
Warhammer always has been about phyrric victories. You cannot destroy entire army/certain characters, because people play them. The best way to show importance is bringing huge losses for both sides and maintaining stalemate. TBH, I prefere this over Kroak going and easilly killing of Belakor for good without any heavy casualties, like Teclis did to Nagsh.
On the subject of Kroak, since we're expecting a broken realms expansion on him, what should we expect/hope for with his installation? personally im hoping for mount traits, and of course kroaks' new warscroll
That information will come. Remember, these books are just chapters in a single story. And I daresay we can already infer that Chamon being heavily damaged is far preferable to Azyr falling.