Warhammer Fantasy: Divided Loyalties - an Advisor's Quest
- Thread starter Boney
- Start date
- Fantasy Users' Choice!
Voted best in category in the Users' Choice awards.
- Location
- Singapore
The Bank Vaults in the Grand Urbaz that King Belegar made me realized something: when we were given permission to store our artefacts and money in the Royal Vault, we effectively became the first new Bank Customer the Karak Eight Peaks had seen ever since the fall of Strygos..... It wasn't a radical move when King Belegar allowed us to use the Royal Vault, from King Belegar's perspective, Mathilde was given the honor of being the first participant in the restoration of an old and ancient tradition. And this was what he was basically telling us, when we were walking down the Grand Urbaz - we mean this much to Belegar, to have been given that mind-boggling honor of being the first embers of a tradition relit.
New beginnings indeed. If the Bank of the Grand Urbaz is reborn and the Karak Eight Peaks once more acts as the vault and the financial center to both Karaz Ankor and the Realms of mankind, history might remember Dame Mathilde Weber in her financial identity as an EIC Founding Partner, one of the first human clients of the New Grand Urbaz. How ironic that a woman bound to a vow of poverty became the first client of the second refounding of one of the Great Financial Centers of Mallus. Oh Mathilde, you arch capitalist with a vow of poverty.
New beginnings indeed. If the Bank of the Grand Urbaz is reborn and the Karak Eight Peaks once more acts as the vault and the financial center to both Karaz Ankor and the Realms of mankind, history might remember Dame Mathilde Weber in her financial identity as an EIC Founding Partner, one of the first human clients of the New Grand Urbaz. How ironic that a woman bound to a vow of poverty became the first client of the second refounding of one of the Great Financial Centers of Mallus. Oh Mathilde, you arch capitalist with a vow of poverty.
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It is kind of hilarious that one of the first things we deposited in there was the Liber Mortis.
- Location
- Singapore
In before one of the looted vaults had one of the Books of Nagash as previously joked about.
Crap, the Under-Empire having one of the Books of Nagash in their possession sounds awful.
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[X] Plan Dictionaries now, powerstones for AV stuff and jazz
HanEmpire
Delicious
Knowing them they'll just immediately unleash a Zombie Apocalypse in the Under Empire and wipe themselves out.
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At this rate Mathilde will end up spending her twilight years setting up tons of charity programs, and transform the Empire into a welfare state by accident. Which I'm perfectly fine with tbh; the Empire could do with some progressive taxation.
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JaceAoT
The Architect
- Location
- The Netherlands
So, as a general question. How do people feel about our constantly increasing wealth?
More specifically, how do we feel about the Vow of Poverty we took?
Because I'm becoming more and more uncomfortable with how we are dealing with our vow and our relationship with wealth.
Vows are forever and they are made in both the spirit and the letter of said vows. This is generally how I consider them. If you are not willing to stick to it forever, don't make them. If you change your mind, take steps to disavow yourself.
But there must certainly be other opinions floating around. Considering the boat-plan. Or how some voters talk about wealth. Or how it is considered inevitable that we are called to the Bursar again. Is it not our goal to avoid being called to the Bursar?
In my mind, our intentions with the money don't really matter. Give it to someone who'll do the same with it that you trust. Or give it all the the College. There is very little reason in my mind why we should have money in the first place.
Thoughts?
More specifically, how do we feel about the Vow of Poverty we took?
Because I'm becoming more and more uncomfortable with how we are dealing with our vow and our relationship with wealth.
Vows are forever and they are made in both the spirit and the letter of said vows. This is generally how I consider them. If you are not willing to stick to it forever, don't make them. If you change your mind, take steps to disavow yourself.
But there must certainly be other opinions floating around. Considering the boat-plan. Or how some voters talk about wealth. Or how it is considered inevitable that we are called to the Bursar again. Is it not our goal to avoid being called to the Bursar?
In my mind, our intentions with the money don't really matter. Give it to someone who'll do the same with it that you trust. Or give it all the the College. There is very little reason in my mind why we should have money in the first place.
Thoughts?
- Location
- Singapore
There are books to build, new towers to buy, and new rooms to make.
For example, I still want the Training Room, the Explosive Room, and the Firing Range.
Plus, we may soon be in a position where actually hiring servants to help us deal with menial matters may be necessary to help with AP Hell, or at least to make us go through AP Hell without living in a pigsty. I can assure you, if there was an option to pay the dividends of the EIC income between, say a Charity, a building fund and the remainder to upkeep a staff just to help with AP Hell, I'm very certain people would vote to pay money to buy butlers or servants to help Mathilde with menial matters. Or we could use the money to build up College facilities for our Ducklings, which we haven't done yet beyond a basic lab. We could use the money to help subsidize an apprentice we take a shine too. We could use the money to buy Dragonstaff. To hire adventurers to collect research material. So on and so forth.
Or we could use the money to finance or start companies that would help the Empire. Imagine seeding a Gyrocopter airline to serve Imperial Airspace, using a combination of our gold favor and Dwarven Rep, half owned by the Royal Clan of the Eight peaks, and half owned by Mathilde and some EIC partners as a consortium, with the partners sworn to keep technical and proprietary secrets, secret. We can then simply adopt the same policy as Wilhemina does with the EIC, and automatically keep the money into the coffers of said companies rather than to our own. We can use the profits to invest in Gyrocopter factories, who in turn produce more Gyrocopters for commercial flights within the Empire, funded by demand for commercial flights, who in turn further profit the Karaz Ankor. It might not be a realistic example (though it's a theoretically possible Great Boon), but it does illustrate what can potentially be done with excess GC.
Don't worry. I trust BoneyM to come up with more things our money can be put to use.
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HanEmpire
Delicious
We could put our share of the EIC into an Honour-bound Board of Dwarf Trustees and have them operate banks in the Empire. Have the Dwarfs inherit Mathilde's shares of the biggest trading company in the Empire (which will presumably have expanded to all the provinces by the time Mathilde dies) and use it to create the Imperial Central Bank.
@BoneyM how crazy is this idea? Do we have enough Dwarf Favors to pay for such a thing?
- Location
- Singapore
It's an amazing idea and even theoretically workable in my opinion if we had the AP to spare and fifty years of personal involvement, and if we can avoid further entanglements with the Bursar, perhaps by committing profits to the trust fund run by Dwarves.
We don't. I'm sorry for being a killjoy, but we really only have so much time available to us.
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Omegahugger
Inattentive Idiot
Also a feminist revolution or two.
- Location
- Austria
Ah, good old "let's establish Land Value Tax and progressive taxation in stone age polity, what could go wrong?".
That was one fun vote.
More seriously, Empire is several centuries away from bureaucracy and government capable of that.
HanEmpire
Delicious
I was thinking more along the line of the Elizabethan Poor Law. Essentially fund the creation of parishes whose economic output all get assigned to poor relief, and have them all get regulated by an order of overseers.
The land can be extracted from the rich with bum credit, as collateral. If Dwarfs are doing the repossession work they can't really complain.
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- Pronouns
- She/Her
To be fair. The Empire and Kislev are tied for the most progressive places for women to live in the old world.
In both places women can serve in the military and even earn commands and rule in their own right. Compare that to Bretonian and Tilly.
Out of signal oIn both places women can serve in the military and even earn commands and rule in their own right. Compare that to Bretonian and Tilly.
the cults of Sigmar, taal, ursun and ulric do have problems with sexism but even in universe these are noted as outliers.
posted from my iPhone. Please forgive any spelling errors.
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- Location
- Europa, Jupiter Orbit
Remember that there is also an OOC thing standing in the way of more AP. Namely that no one is paying BoneyM for this, meaning that if he wants to keep content and text quality per action constant without either increasing time investment on his part or decreasing overall chapter frequency, then he can't give us more AP. Now none of this is set in stone of course. He could fiddle with any of those levers. He could even split up turns one additional time. But he ultimately has to judge not just wether we'd like it more, but wether he would too.
Now to romance. Personally I am not opposed to it at all. It's just that I am not interested in any of the current options. Like, not a single living named character comes to mind that I would specifically vote in favor of romancing. Sure, there are a few that may be worth a fling, but I'm not sure Mathilde is the kind of gall that wants a fling and I don't think that SV quests are good at handling finite flings anyway.
The last time I was interested was when we had the option of marrying Anton. That definitely had potential to become a relationship worth living for Mathilde reading for us. But that ship has completely sailed IMO.
To be honest, in my ideal mind I imagine Mathilde with child before her forties. Which means that she has had at least one romantic relationship with a human male until then. Yes I know that's not the only option, but it's my preferred one. It might also be why I don't much care for many of the current options. Like, I wouldn't say no to Panoramia, but I don't see the thread ever looking for someone else after her.
Hmm... Maybe the Jade College has additional solutions there though?
Now to romance. Personally I am not opposed to it at all. It's just that I am not interested in any of the current options. Like, not a single living named character comes to mind that I would specifically vote in favor of romancing. Sure, there are a few that may be worth a fling, but I'm not sure Mathilde is the kind of gall that wants a fling and I don't think that SV quests are good at handling finite flings anyway.
The last time I was interested was when we had the option of marrying Anton. That definitely had potential to become a relationship worth living for Mathilde reading for us. But that ship has completely sailed IMO.
To be honest, in my ideal mind I imagine Mathilde with child before her forties. Which means that she has had at least one romantic relationship with a human male until then. Yes I know that's not the only option, but it's my preferred one. It might also be why I don't much care for many of the current options. Like, I wouldn't say no to Panoramia, but I don't see the thread ever looking for someone else after her.
Hmm... Maybe the Jade College has additional solutions there though?
@ichypa You voted for the majority of Spoken Queekish plans, but for none of mine. May I ask why not? I am not asking you to vote for me (don't much expect to win this time around anyway and the winning vote is basically fine with me). I just want to know what I'm currently doing wrong in your opinion.
- Location
- Singapore
Remember, Panoramia's mother married a prepetual. If we can hire a Male Igor prepetual to help us out...
Look, romances are only possible if the character cast is expanded if none of the characters would do but that just means BoneyM needs to do more work. Personally, I think given what Johann and Mathilde has gone through, there is a theoretical Johann route out there, especially if he turns out to be Ranaldite like us. Literally, Johann had a first hand role to triggering one of the most significant publicly known acts Mathilde acomplished: reconquering half of the Eight Peaks in a day, that only both of them knows. There is no Prince Charming that is going to sweep Mathilde off her feet and indeed she ought to be suspicious of one. But Johann? He lives in the same world as Mathilde and he is increasingly a known quality - their lifestyles are compatible and they are social equals. And Mathilde cannot get more suspicious of Johann than she initially was. But he is divisive, way more than sweet Anton ever was.
We have precisely zero options from what I can see with the romance route right now, with social votes from what I see. If there was one , I woild definitely vote for it
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Highest authority in Bretonnia is always a woman, the Fey Enchantress.
Also, Damsels (again, only women) are arguably the most privileged class.
As for Tilea, I highly doubt that a country which worships Myrmidia and Verena as much as they do discriminates against women...
- Location
- Greece
First of all, we haven't actually violated that vow in spirit, and the college doesn't care about the letter. The vow is fundamendally about stopping people from just stealing or scamming people with their majicks, which we do not do, not about stopping them from having luxuries (at least in this quest. Some canon materials imply stuff are more unreasonable in canon).
Secondly, we do not know what the letter is, plus we probably haven't violated it in letter either (it cannot be to never have any money at hand, that is impossible to keep for anyone, its probably more about keeping the money/ spending them for our luxury rather than our job or the betterment of te empire, both of which we keep)
Now, once we do start gaining money, we'll indeed have to think where we must start funneling it to. But... there are way way too many worthy projects to funnel it to. Books can be written off as bussiness expenses that make us more efficient, our tower too actually, as can reinvestment to EIC or our fief. And if none of that can be done, well, we can always donate to the colleges or charity.
- Location
- Europa, Jupiter Orbit
My main issue with Johann is his gold body. Hard metal is simply uncomfortable to snuggle with.
And having female patron deities doesn't mean much for gender equality either. Just look at IRL ancient Athens.
Having a powerful female upper class doesn't guarantee that said empowerment in any way gets spread around. And other than that very specific order of people I'm pretty sure that every single other class in Bretonnia is doing poorly on the gender equality metric. Actually every class, because the Damsel class shits on magical me in turn.
And having female patron deities doesn't mean much for gender equality either. Just look at IRL ancient Athens.
- Location
- Singapore
Married to a Golden Man adds yet another layer of delicious irony to the theme Divided Loyalties. Just saying.
A woman with a vow of poverty married to a man made of literal gold. The hilarity of this image is self evident.
- Pronouns
- She/Her
This. The Empire has a poor track record of women at the pinnacle of power (empress/supreme matriarch) but at every level down from that they are at least, if not more, equal as a modern western democracy. So they still have a way to go to true equality. Kislev seems to be completely equal bordering on matriarchal.
Also, the bodies of gold magisters are noted to actually be as supple as normal flesh. Unless they have certain arcane marks but even then it only seems to affect how their skin feels to themselves not to other people. In the Gotrek and Felix novels we meet a gold wizard with multiple partners and never hear any complaints.
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I'm kinda hoping that 'history' remembers Mathilde as a going concern.
Legacy is for quitters.
Point 1: A vow taken on pain of death is no true vow. Mathilde did not choose her magic or her College. She did not choose to live a life of poverty, only to not be killed for circumstances beyond her control.
Point 2: The spirit of the vow is that she not seek personal wealth. Money used for the benefit of the Empire and its allies is no different from any other resource she wields.
As far as her mental and spiritual well-being are concerned her collection of romance novels are a greater problem than her bank account.
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- Location
- Singapore
Well, info hazards are rarer in fantasy than in 40k, which is a good thing. That being said, it won't surprise me if Mathilde has Slaneeshi propoganda in her collection without realizing it.