chocolote12
A Penguin Flailing Against The Keyboard Of Life.
I don't know about you, but the replacement for the Paranoid trait being Suspicious is rather par for the course, isn't it?
Warhammer Fantasy: Divided Loyalties - an Advisor's Quest
- Thread starter Boney
- Start date
- Fantasy Users' Choice!
-
- Tags
- warhammer warhammer fantasy fantasy be gay do crimes (gay) female protagonist pansexual protagonist ck2 quest divided loyalties mountain vietnam ranald is real this is a dwarf quest (dwarfs) this is maybe an elf quest this is not a vampire quest this is not an empire quest try it and find out open voting
Voted best in category in the Users' Choice awards.
- Location
- Aotearoa
That's just your paranoia talking. Nothing suspicious here.
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- Location
- Norway
I recently re-read Ulthuan Quest, whose 100+ options there make this quest look refreshingly simple. It has inspired me to consider some long-term strategic planning.
1. Picking a side.
In the long term, whose powerbase will Mathilde reach out to when in trouble? Three major options occur to me: Herself, the Grey Order, the Elector Count.
-Siding with herself would mean Mathilde attempts to build a personal power base, taking advantage of her politically charged near-unfirability, working to appease the mysterious backer so she stays that way, accumulating money and contacts, and underlings that are perhaps more loyal to herself than to Stirland, or perhaps off the books entirely.
-Siding with the Grey Order would mean training magical power and skill, and demonstrating great value to the Grey Order, by studying not only spells but also magic items, enchantments, etc, writing and publishing treatises, possibly sending them some Qhaysh Juice and discreetly taking credit.
-Siding with the Elector Count would mean spending time working hard and ingratiating herself with both him and his friends, being an unquestionably loyal subordinate, occasionally putting Stirland's interests before her own, and doing more things like snitching on the embezzling previous Marshal.
These are not contradictory or mutually exclusive. We should totally do some of each. They are potential faraway goals, not turn-by-turn constraints. But when the biography of Dame Mathilde Weber is written some fifty years from now, what is the introduction going to focus on? Is it going to open with something more like 1) "One of the greatest Grey Wizards of her era, Mathilde served her journeying phase in the court of Stirland, where she acquired several artifacts and built magical prototypes..." or 2) "One of the most loyal and effective servants Stirland has ever had, Mathilde saw to the peace and prosperity of Western Stirland. This freed up Abelhelm to focus on Eastern Stirland, formerly Sylvania..."
So far it seems the thread has largely been siding with the Elector Count. (This is an observation, not a recommendation or approval.) Continuing down this route would probably be helped in the long term by raising Intrigue and figuring out how Mathilde got appointed Spymaster of Stirland, by whom, and then neutralizing any leverage they may have over us. An intermediate step towards that might be figuring out what Abelhelm van Hal was told when he showed up: was he presented with something more like a requirement to take on certain people from the start, or was it framed more a matter of them being in the posts already and van Hal merely having little opportunity to replace them?
2. The Best Subordinates.
There's a lot of work and cost in building up the networks we're building, mostly from scratch, but there's a silver lining. Mathilde has a significant advantage over Abelhelm in that he has to deal with longstanding institutions and planted advisors, while she can create and appoint a lot of her own as she pleases. This has immense value in terms of assuring loyalty and being able to hand off responsibility. We can get people we know are suited for the position, who are motivated to do it well, and who will have personal loyalty and gratitude. Let me bring up the recruitment text for Julia as an example:
Likewise with rewriting the Watch. I suggest parlaying this opportunity for all the advantage it's worth: find a good subordinate that has both the skills and the motivation to do well, double-check their history, and then say "You run this now".
3. Time is short.
In this quest it's formalized into an action economy, but the principle goes for everyone. There's only so much stuff one person can do. This adds to the importance of finding good people to delegate work to, see previous point.
But a lot of important things cannot be delegated. Mathilde can't get someone else to study spells for her, nor can anyone else train greatsword with Markus on her behalf and then just pass the muscles to Mathilde.
Thus, Mathilde's options should be carefully considered to pick out the actually important from the merely attractive. Some considerations are:
-Things we have obligations to do. For example: Carrying out the Count's orders. Two to four actions per turn were originally expected on this, and we've gotten away with a lot of two+luck. ( @BoneyM , want to comment on how our Organizational stuff counts here?)
--By contrast: Things that are optional, obviously. But this is more of a spectrum than a sharp divide.
--Taking the cash flow from Biderhof is entirely optional. Whereas, say, Undead Research is semi-optional in that there's reason and pressure to get around to it sooner rather than later, even if we can (and did) skip it on any particular turn for a while.
-Things that are time-sensitive. For example, snooping around in the Count's study while he's on the front and we're in Wurtbad, he'll probably want the key back later. Time-sensitive options are likely to disappear soon if not taken.
--By contrast: things that can be delayed. Digging out our Palace-Shrine, for instance, can be delayed indefinitely. Whereas inspecting the Barrow-Swords can be delayed for a few years.
--Urgency is not the same thing as priority. It's useful to be able to say "Let's pass up this option" and not go for something just because it's limited issue.
-Things that can be completed and achieved. For example: Training to Advanced/Mastery level of skills, or getting all Lesser magics. Once done, these usually add a lasting benefit and disappear from our options list.
--By contrast: Things like "Praise Ranald" and "Train Diplomacy" will probably sit around on the list forever even if we perform them repeatedly.
-Things that are time-consuming. This is the thorny category of stuff where it's easy to go "nah, not yet" as it'll take up several turns or actions for no immediate benefit, but then an emergency comes and it's all "I wish we'd started doing this three turns ago". Includes both those things that explicitly take multiple actions, and those where several single things are waiting in a queue of sorts. For an example of the latter, getting to know and/or making friends with all the other Councilors.
--Should be sorted by priority, but priority of long-term actions is often hard to determine.
--By contrast: Things that can be grabbed in the nick of time, and often will be put off until the nick of time for that reason.
1. Picking a side.
In the long term, whose powerbase will Mathilde reach out to when in trouble? Three major options occur to me: Herself, the Grey Order, the Elector Count.
-Siding with herself would mean Mathilde attempts to build a personal power base, taking advantage of her politically charged near-unfirability, working to appease the mysterious backer so she stays that way, accumulating money and contacts, and underlings that are perhaps more loyal to herself than to Stirland, or perhaps off the books entirely.
-Siding with the Grey Order would mean training magical power and skill, and demonstrating great value to the Grey Order, by studying not only spells but also magic items, enchantments, etc, writing and publishing treatises, possibly sending them some Qhaysh Juice and discreetly taking credit.
-Siding with the Elector Count would mean spending time working hard and ingratiating herself with both him and his friends, being an unquestionably loyal subordinate, occasionally putting Stirland's interests before her own, and doing more things like snitching on the embezzling previous Marshal.
These are not contradictory or mutually exclusive. We should totally do some of each. They are potential faraway goals, not turn-by-turn constraints. But when the biography of Dame Mathilde Weber is written some fifty years from now, what is the introduction going to focus on? Is it going to open with something more like 1) "One of the greatest Grey Wizards of her era, Mathilde served her journeying phase in the court of Stirland, where she acquired several artifacts and built magical prototypes..." or 2) "One of the most loyal and effective servants Stirland has ever had, Mathilde saw to the peace and prosperity of Western Stirland. This freed up Abelhelm to focus on Eastern Stirland, formerly Sylvania..."
So far it seems the thread has largely been siding with the Elector Count. (This is an observation, not a recommendation or approval.) Continuing down this route would probably be helped in the long term by raising Intrigue and figuring out how Mathilde got appointed Spymaster of Stirland, by whom, and then neutralizing any leverage they may have over us. An intermediate step towards that might be figuring out what Abelhelm van Hal was told when he showed up: was he presented with something more like a requirement to take on certain people from the start, or was it framed more a matter of them being in the posts already and van Hal merely having little opportunity to replace them?
2. The Best Subordinates.
There's a lot of work and cost in building up the networks we're building, mostly from scratch, but there's a silver lining. Mathilde has a significant advantage over Abelhelm in that he has to deal with longstanding institutions and planted advisors, while she can create and appoint a lot of her own as she pleases. This has immense value in terms of assuring loyalty and being able to hand off responsibility. We can get people we know are suited for the position, who are motivated to do it well, and who will have personal loyalty and gratitude. Let me bring up the recruitment text for Julia as an example:
We rolled a 92 to find a great candidate, and got someone whom we can expect to be both appropriately skilled and immensely loyal. We took her out of a family business she sucked at and gave her a post where she was much more competent, and still helped fulfill much of her previous ambition of seeing Stirland become a trade hub by shutting down the pile of graft called the Stirlandian League. Now, OOC I'm looking at the stats and the roll and the fact that we used Ranald's Blessing which is a little cheaty, and IC the proper thing to do seems to be spend an action investigating Julia first, but after that... Mathilde should be in a position to hand over a hell of a lot of work and responsibility to Julia.
Likewise with rewriting the Watch. I suggest parlaying this opportunity for all the advantage it's worth: find a good subordinate that has both the skills and the motivation to do well, double-check their history, and then say "You run this now".
3. Time is short.
In this quest it's formalized into an action economy, but the principle goes for everyone. There's only so much stuff one person can do. This adds to the importance of finding good people to delegate work to, see previous point.
But a lot of important things cannot be delegated. Mathilde can't get someone else to study spells for her, nor can anyone else train greatsword with Markus on her behalf and then just pass the muscles to Mathilde.
Thus, Mathilde's options should be carefully considered to pick out the actually important from the merely attractive. Some considerations are:
-Things we have obligations to do. For example: Carrying out the Count's orders. Two to four actions per turn were originally expected on this, and we've gotten away with a lot of two+luck. ( @BoneyM , want to comment on how our Organizational stuff counts here?)
--By contrast: Things that are optional, obviously. But this is more of a spectrum than a sharp divide.
--Taking the cash flow from Biderhof is entirely optional. Whereas, say, Undead Research is semi-optional in that there's reason and pressure to get around to it sooner rather than later, even if we can (and did) skip it on any particular turn for a while.
-Things that are time-sensitive. For example, snooping around in the Count's study while he's on the front and we're in Wurtbad, he'll probably want the key back later. Time-sensitive options are likely to disappear soon if not taken.
--By contrast: things that can be delayed. Digging out our Palace-Shrine, for instance, can be delayed indefinitely. Whereas inspecting the Barrow-Swords can be delayed for a few years.
--Urgency is not the same thing as priority. It's useful to be able to say "Let's pass up this option" and not go for something just because it's limited issue.
-Things that can be completed and achieved. For example: Training to Advanced/Mastery level of skills, or getting all Lesser magics. Once done, these usually add a lasting benefit and disappear from our options list.
--By contrast: Things like "Praise Ranald" and "Train Diplomacy" will probably sit around on the list forever even if we perform them repeatedly.
-Things that are time-consuming. This is the thorny category of stuff where it's easy to go "nah, not yet" as it'll take up several turns or actions for no immediate benefit, but then an emergency comes and it's all "I wish we'd started doing this three turns ago". Includes both those things that explicitly take multiple actions, and those where several single things are waiting in a queue of sorts. For an example of the latter, getting to know and/or making friends with all the other Councilors.
--Should be sorted by priority, but priority of long-term actions is often hard to determine.
--By contrast: Things that can be grabbed in the nick of time, and often will be put off until the nick of time for that reason.
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I'm still not 100% married to the mechanics yet, but the way I'm envisioning it so far is this: it costs one action to manage two organizations, to a maximum of six; the ultimate conclusion of this is having six subordinate branches of your demesne and three personal actions, or to put it another way, your default CK2 quest. So far I've been rounding in your favour, but I'm likely to change that if it looks like there's a deliberate attempt to maintain an odd number of organizations to game the system.
Despite only costing you half an action, organizational actions are just as effective as personal ones within their scope. If there's something that falls within the Watch's area of expertise you can definitely bring them in and have their contribution help meet your 'quota' of effort spent. But at the end of the day, if you'll excuse me borrowing a phrase from the other Warhammer: "Success requires no explanation, failure allows none". If you succeed, nobody will care if Mathilde sat around in her pyjamas for six months reading trashy novels while the Watch did all the work. If you fail... well, you've got fairly substantial wells of goodwill to draw from, but if you develop a habit of failing then eyes will be drawn to how you're spending your time, and in those times you'll definitely want to have a well-punched timecard.
So right now, focusing entirely on your relation with Van Hal, you can afford to spend only two actions a turn on your assignment because if something goes wrong you've got a good enough track record that he'll accept that sometimes things go wrong. But if things start going wrong regularly, you'll want to dedicate more time to your day job so you can at least say you've been putting in the hours.
Nix's Warden
Welcome to Hades
- Location
- United States
[X] Plan Constant Vigilance!
I just want to sword with our bro.
I just want to sword with our bro.
The other consideration is that, to a varying extent, the things you're doing are important to Stirland. It's an open question as to whether that means they're important to you.
TimEd
Meteor maker
Why not both? After the clean-up, can we wrangle the stat training to do triple duty? We could offer to help the others for stats/aid/general overview? Im sure some of our fellow leaders will be happy to have the aid of a grey wizard spymistress.
- Location
- Estonia
Doing enchantment to fund crazy plans seems like a good idea , especially if we can use the juice for higher grade of magic enchantment alteast. But it needs action investment guys to get it working.
and dont forget training people , we need to work towards magister. And getting better at fighting is a thing guys especially cause of the quest we chose.
Even doing the proposed shyish blades with the anchor thingie added but soak the blades in the juice to get that enchantment instead of doing ulgu blades?
we could try to sell juice eventually for money but we have to pretend we found it and only got a certain amount ? I imagine even elves would be interested to a certain extent ?
Thats the eight peaks reclaimnation ? Dwarf names arent a strenght of mine.
and dont forget training people , we need to work towards magister. And getting better at fighting is a thing guys especially cause of the quest we chose.
Even doing the proposed shyish blades with the anchor thingie added but soak the blades in the juice to get that enchantment instead of doing ulgu blades?
we could try to sell juice eventually for money but we have to pretend we found it and only got a certain amount ? I imagine even elves would be interested to a certain extent ?
Thats the eight peaks reclaimnation ? Dwarf names arent a strenght of mine.
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- Location
- Memphis, TN
[X] Plan Constant Vigilance!
- Location
- Brazil
Inserted tally
- Location
- Brazil
[X] Plan Constant Vigilance!
Night_stalker
Slava Ukraini!
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Let's figure out some mroe about it. I don't want to start selling something, only for it to turn out to basically dissolve once it's far enough away from the source.
Not at least without Mindholing them first.
- Location
- The Star Kingdom of Manticore
[X] Plan Constant Vigilance!
- Location
- Estonia
And i ment eventually it could be a semi dangerous piggy bank option i guess.
Doing like 2-3 teachers and getting that funded should be possible but idk how much beyond that ? Maybe if they could do some other things i guess it might be worth it i guess and importing the clerks seems to make sense for now.
Doing like 2-3 teachers and getting that funded should be possible but idk how much beyond that ? Maybe if they could do some other things i guess it might be worth it i guess and importing the clerks seems to make sense for now.
DarkLight140
Credit to Team
- Location
- Lost in my thoughts
So, to the swarm of people voting for Constant Vigilance:
How do you justify completely ignoring our puppetmaster job? Do you think we're going to be able to throw something together at the last minute next turn, so it's safe to neglect it for now? Do you want to half-ass the report we send in without actually taking any actions on it? What are you doing, here? Surely you have some kind of plan.
Further, how do you justify voting for an action set that doesn't have Ranald's Blessing in it? That's kind of important to put somewhere.
How do you justify completely ignoring our puppetmaster job? Do you think we're going to be able to throw something together at the last minute next turn, so it's safe to neglect it for now? Do you want to half-ass the report we send in without actually taking any actions on it? What are you doing, here? Surely you have some kind of plan.
Further, how do you justify voting for an action set that doesn't have Ranald's Blessing in it? That's kind of important to put somewhere.
- Location
- The Star Kingdom of Manticore
[X][Actions] Plan We're Never Going To Get To Do Magic
LoganBert34
Apprentice Clerk
- Location
- Australia
[X] Plan Constant Vigilance!
- Location
- Aotearoa
I have to say (again) that I hate the idea of routine overwork, @Night_stalker. In a crisis, then yes, sure, as necessary. But that's not now.
Overwork can lead to Crit-fails.
It can result in negative traits.
It can lead to a stress/overwork overriding trait.
It's not like the Constant Vigilance plan pulls together a grand triumph worth double overwork. It seems a bit scattered, and doesn't study undead, which could get us killed in Sylvania. It ignores our secret orders, which could get us killed in our sleep. And it's missing a schmooze action. And seems to be getting the early-leader votes.
I'd drop Purg and especially the River Wardens. There are Imperial river patrols anyway. Our own can come with time, and there is no way we can afford a fleet of river boats right now. I mean, Crit-glitch that and we've probably institutionalised a cultist-run smuggling ring within the Watch, or something. "Yeah, my... cousin has some boats..."
Of the two up, right now I have to vote for this one, despite the bad-idea snooping.
[X][Information Network] Consolidation: You currently have a patchwork of useful contacts.
[X][Stirland Watch] Hire administrators and clerks from Altdorf and Nuln.
[X][Actions] Plan We're Never Going To Get To Do Magic
Overwork can lead to Crit-fails.
It can result in negative traits.
It can lead to a stress/overwork overriding trait.
It's not like the Constant Vigilance plan pulls together a grand triumph worth double overwork. It seems a bit scattered, and doesn't study undead, which could get us killed in Sylvania. It ignores our secret orders, which could get us killed in our sleep. And it's missing a schmooze action. And seems to be getting the early-leader votes.
I'd drop Purg and especially the River Wardens. There are Imperial river patrols anyway. Our own can come with time, and there is no way we can afford a fleet of river boats right now. I mean, Crit-glitch that and we've probably institutionalised a cultist-run smuggling ring within the Watch, or something. "Yeah, my... cousin has some boats..."
Of the two up, right now I have to vote for this one, despite the bad-idea snooping.
[X][Information Network] Consolidation: You currently have a patchwork of useful contacts.
[X][Stirland Watch] Hire administrators and clerks from Altdorf and Nuln.
[X][Actions] Plan We're Never Going To Get To Do Magic
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- Location
- California, USA
[X] Plan Constant Vigilance!
Looks alright. I especially like the Greatsword action. Though I wish we try to get to know Anton. That kid is just so endearing.
Looks alright. I especially like the Greatsword action. Though I wish we try to get to know Anton. That kid is just so endearing.
fallintolife
the worst vegan
- Location
- Los Angeles
- Pronouns
- They/Them
did I miss something, or does Constant Vigilance! miss out on assigning our blessing?
- Location
- Aotearoa
Yep. It's not a well thought out plan. Also missing our free lunching action. Perhaps it was rushed to be first plan posted, and suffers accordingly.