There's also the matter of the EIC. While it is certainly thriving under WIlhelmina's rule, it's worrying how much of Stirland's economy it has been allowed to control.
[ ] Take an active hand in the EIC
One action per turn will be spent keeping in touch with the EIC, allowing you to more directly control it and, if you wish, helping it branch out towards Karak Eight Peaks.
[ ] Leave the EIC alone
Wilhelmina's the least bad person to fill the power vacuum Roswita has left in Western Stirland.
[ ] Interfere with the EIC
As Wilhelmina herself pointed out, you own enough of it that you could easily dominate the EIC. Start bringing it down.
As BoneyM pointed out just before the update:
-Mathilde knows the people involved in running it.
-She has a significant share of it.
-She has destroyed an organization just like it as a Journeyman.
Its our problem to deal with. If it goes bad its our responsibility.
[ ] Take an active hand in the EIC
-Costs an action per turn
-College Favor gain for Economic Benefit to the Empire
-If used to spread agents, potential College Favor gain for actions taken and information gathered through it.
-Potential Dwarf Favor for accelerating the rebuilding of Eight Peaks, or Belegar personal approval if not.
[ ] Leave the EIC alone
-Costs nothing.
-If it goes bad then its on our ass.
-None of the gains though.
[ ] Interfere with the EIC
-Costs several actions
-Likely break the EIC up into smaller, less dangerous and less efficient organizations.
-Against the Grey Order's ideals in spirit. They don't smite the potential to cause harm. They aren't 40k Smite First Ask Questions For What inquisitors. Its currently a Benefit to the Empire.
And finally, the least troubling matter to consider: your Torc of Fire. A nice gift when you first received it, but ever since you learned a spell that outstrips it's ability to intimidate your enemies, it's seemed rather surplus to requirements.
[ ] Return it with your thanks to the Bright College. +2 College Favour.
College Favor is nice, but we're hardly short of it with the paper returns.
[ ] Try to sell it as you pass through Barak Varr. +??gc
...the heck would we want more gold for?
[ ] Donate it to whoever ends up leading the Undumgi.
They'd probably find it very useful if they're to replicate their feat. Adventurers probably don't tend to have a lot of leadership experience, so a little doping in their favor helps them last until they actually have experience leading.
[ ] Donate it to the Winter Wolves of Ulrikadrin.
They...worship a god of winter, distrust magical assistance, and are a high morale group of Knights. They don't need it.
[ ] Keep it around in case you ever want to study non-
Ulgu enchantments.
Well its probably worth another paper or two. God knows when we'd ever get around to it though.
[ ] Keep it anyway - you might need to encourage allies at some point.
This seems unlikely.
Mathilde has gained +1 Martial, +2 Intrigue, +3 Piety. You can also choose new traits or change existing ones. For Changed Traits, the stat bonus is on top of the existing bonus. The two with the most votes will win. You can have two new traits or two replaced traits or one of each.
Mathilde has been excellent priest material for a while now. Heh.
And now for the traits. Hoo boy, so many lovely traits.
To help organize it I'd sort by rarity, then utility.
New Trait:
[ ] Infiltrator:
Nobody seems to guard anything well enough to keep you out. +2 Intrigue, +10 bonus to infiltration.
-Rarity: Common. We're a Grey Wizard. Any major arc is likely to have a significant infiltration element.
-Utility: Modest. It lets us do a thing we're already good at doing, with spells supporting it.
Would take this as Head Ranger, not otherwise.
[ ] Scout:
Sometimes the best weapon is knowing where everything is. +2 Intrigue, +20 to infiltrating all but the highest-security areas.
-Rarity: Common. We're a Grey Wizard. Any major arc is likely to have a significant infiltration element.
-Utility: Modest. It lets us do a thing we're already good at doing, with spells supporting it. Its more powerful for getting a view of the area than Infiltrator, but less powerful for sabotage and assassinations. So better for Greenskins( who don't tend to HAVE high security zones) than Skaven.
Would take this as Head Ranger, not otherwise.
[ ] Assassin:
Combat is easiest when the other person doesn't realize they're in it. +2 Intrigue, +40 bonus against unaware targets.
-Rarity: Uncommon. We don't actually go out intending to assassinate. It just happens. We'd probably see it again, but not without either some luck or unusual risks.
-Utility: When we take a shot at a target of opportunity...they tend to die. +40 would put us into 60% crit chance, which would likely kill anyone not literally impossible to kill in one hit with our weapon.
Would take this as Head Ranger, not otherwise.
[ ] Avatar:
You're growing worryingly familiar with being used as a conduit by deities. ???
-Rarity: Functionally unique. We aren't going to be able to deliberately trigger gaining this. Speak now or forever hold your peace.
-Utility: BoneyM had explained the gist of the ???. Namely, Mathilde actually can try to do something rather than be a helpless sockpuppet when possessed by divine power. This can be helping the God along, deliberately using the right time and place to offer the God a connection, pushing them, or plugging the pipe they stuck in you to Ranald. Opens up the Theurgy path, a stronger divine connection means you could ask Ranald to help with experiments, and we established he's chill and likely to play along as long as we maintain the proper courtesies.
Take it! Take it!!
[ ] Polyglot:
Your time with the Dwarves has revealed that you have an ear for languages, and learn new languages much faster.
-Rarity: Rare(we got it by learning Khazalid through osmosis), but can be deliberately triggered by learning another language.
-Utility: I don't think theres that many languages that while we're in the Eight Peaks area, it'd prove useful.
If we were Head Ranger I might consider using Polyglot with Infiltrator to learn Skaven/Goblin languages if they had a distinct one to get intel.
If we were Steward I might consider using Polyglot down the road to engage in Ind diplomacy.
As it is, low priority.
[ ] Marksman:
Blackpowder is a wonderful thing. +2 Martial, +10 to attacks with blackpowder weapons.
-Rarity: Common. We use a gun as our main sidearm.
-Utility: Well, shooting better. Guns are neat, we're living with the premium manufacturers of OP guns, so that might be nice. Its not urgent or anything though.
Low priority. Distant maybe as Head Ranger but I reckon the dwarfs have lots of good gunners to learn from if we wanted that.
[ ] Collegiate:
They say managing Wizards is like herding cats. Herding cats isn't actually that difficult. Can manage three other wizards per action spent.
-Rarity: Rare(but Common for Court Wizard position). As long as we spend a lot of time wrangling wizards this will keep showing up.
-Utility: Very narrow utility for now, but if we wanted to attract more wizards to the Eight Peaks area we'd need this trait and its upgrade if we wanted to be able to do anything other than wrangle them.
[ ] Magical Duellist:
Anyone unwise enough to try to cast spells you don't want them to will quickly regret it. +2 Learning, +10 bonus to dispelling and inducing miscasts.
-Rarity: Rare->Uncommon. Hard to set it up on purpose...but on battlefields our main role is basically dispelling anyway, and we got a nice big bonus to dispelling greenskin magic so getting this to show up again won't be hard.
-Utility: Being able to sabotage enemy battle magic never hurts, but we don't actually get involved in THAT much magic duels.
Changed Traits:
[ ] Wolf Familiar > Winter Wolf Familiar:
Turns out Wolf is a late bloomer. Wolf will grow large enough to ride upon.
-Rarity: Uncommon. I THINK the trigger is just feeding Wolf lots.
-Utility: Given the horrible backlash of getting a familiar killed and Wolf simply not even a quarter as durable as we are with the Belt and Seed, AND Shadow Steed being a better mount in all circumstances...I'm not sure theres any beyond getting more of best pupper and Ulrican respect.
[ ] Brave > Daredevil:
Runic protection, magical protection, magical healing... why are people scared of combat again? +2 Martial, immune to fear/terror effects.
-Rarity: Uncommon. Think we need to face and beat terror effects or just demonstrate courage/risktaking to develop this.
-Utility: Never faced a significant terror effect to date. Don't think the local enemy types are big on it either.
[ ] Blooded > Campaigner:
You've seen more than your share of battles. +2 Martial, +10 bonus to fighting alongside others.
-Rarity: Uncommon. Could get it from more wars?
-Utility: Consistently useful, but it doesn't stand out a lot. The bonus is very easy to trigger any time we're not infiltrating though.
[ ] Bureaucrat + Practical > Warrior of Paperwork:
Scholarship is just a specific form of paperwork. You can live with it. Combines the two traits, +2 Learning, remove penalty to writing papers yourself.
-Rarity: Unless we stop writing papers, this will keep showing up.
-Utility: For now we have Maxmillian as Designated Writing Minion. For now its not useful.
[ ] Practical > Collaborator:
Though you still prefer fieldwork to paperwork, you've found that as long as someone else is doing the actual writing, you're capable of producing some amazing papers. +2 Learning, +20 bonus to dictating papers.
-Rarity: As long as we keep writing papers collaboratively we'd see this again.
-Utility: Assuming we retain a write minion we get REALLY good at consistently churning out good papers. Or we could spend some favor on artifacts to help write better.
[ ] Practical > Hands On:
Wait, you can just get other people to do the paperwork? Why didn't I think of this sooner? +1 Diplomacy, +1 Stewardship, +1 Martial, +1 Intrigue, -1 Learning, +10 bonus to insights developed 'in the field' (as opposed to careful laboratory study).
-Rarity: Rare. We'd need to get good paper material out in the field again, and its hard to get good observations while fighting for your life.
-Utility: It helps with getting it to happen consistently AND grants a crazy good broad stat bonus. Does merry hell on the proper scientific process though.
[ ] Windreader > Windsage:
Your magical senses see more than your normal ones. +2 Learning, even more able to see and understand emotion and magical effects in others.
-Rarity: Rare. We'd need to get some experience using our Windreader intensively, with other wizards to contrast how THEY see their winds, in a high energy environment.
-Utility: Windreader has consistently been very useful in fluff, despite limited mechanical benefits. Being able to see and understand emotions should also help Mathilde with diplomacy a bit, on top of getting better data off studying magic.
Normally it'd be pretty high up, but with us being Court Wizard? UP, almost all the way.
[ ] Disdain for Sigmar > Polytheist:
Your bitterness towards Sigmar has softened with time and distance. You're still not thrilled with him, but as long as his followers are coexisting with those of other Gods, you can deal with it. +1 Piety, removes anti-Sigmarite penalty except when dealing with Sigmarite supremacists and monotheists.
-Rarity: Uncommon. Its not like Sigmarites are raging assholes. Out on the frontier they're actually useful, and their hate directed at greenskins helps with a lot of woes. We'd see this again probably in a number of guises.
-Utility: We've barely ever encountered the drawback, since we're leading an organization of non-humans, and Wizards. Sigmar is not known to be significantly represented here, and the Wizards who DO follow him are usually of the Light College(which we have college rivalries on top).
Not really important at all.
So my vote:
[X] Take an active hand in the EIC
[X] Donate it to whoever ends up leading the Undumgi.
[X] Avatar:
You're growing worryingly familiar with being used as a conduit by deities. ???
[X] Windreader > Windsage:
Your magical senses see more than your normal ones. +2 Learning, even more able to see and understand emotion and magical effects in others.
[X] Plan recruit everyone!
[X] Plan One step after another
[X] Plan Golden Amber
So looking at the vote count...I think recruiting all of them is worth it. We lose 1 personal action over the Recruit 2 plans, and gain 6 actions out of minion actions.
Just think about how much more convenient it'd be to investigate magical curiosities if we have Esbern and Seija patrolling with 4 actions together to find problems.
With an actual wizard seeing the issue we'd have more useful feedback than the dwarf Rangers are likely to give, and the two of them took down a weakened Dragon Ogre, so they can be expected to survive discovering things. Ghur has flight at one of the lower difficulty levels we can expect to find as well, between Raven form and animal informants they can cover more territory than anyone but ourselves.
Then we decide if we or Johann needs to go fix it ourselves with the report. Or both if its big shit.
Esbern and Seija are a major underestimated recruitment option, because for 0.5 actions they come in a pair of double strength actions, almost as good as Johann, and certainly less likely to complain about being dragged away from his studies!
Yes, their spell selection is pretty small at present, but as a Magister employing them we're allowed to sign for them to learn spells as necessary. The action efficiency of managing them pays for itself.