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Warhammer Fantasy: Divided Loyalties - an Advisor's Quest

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King Arthur said:
Who here wants to hear something real dumb?

I thought this quest was on hiatus because I didn't realize Boney had changed avatars, and ... I honestly barely even read the titles of quests anymore, I mostly just look for familiar avatars.

I passed by this quest like 20 times while thinking "man, I miss Divided Loyalties."

Wow, good job me. Incredible.
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Well, at least now you have plenty of updates to read?
 
BurnNote said:
You use Ghur to transform into weird hairless monkies, though why would you ever want to?
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Those heirless monkeys are a mostly domesticated (self-domesticated?) species though, which is why I think Ghur doesn't quite fit. As for the why, a mix of infiltration needs and morbid curiosity I guess. Though since artifacts that transform non-magical people into Dragons are possible, I was actually thinking of an "offensive" version of the spell, where you transform your target into a Human, similar to how the Dreaded Thirteenth makes groups of people into Skaven.
 
noliar said:
The CEO of the company has a fiduciary duty to make all the shareholders richer. As a shareholder herself, that means she's actively working to make herself richer, not as a side effect of helping the Empire or building an information network but as a primary purpose - thus breaking the vow of poverty. Even beyond that fiduciary duty, trade is competitive - if the majority of corporate actions aren't taken to maintain or expand its wealth and power before some other motive it will quite quickly stop being an effective tool for furthering that other motive i.e. the good of the Empire.

So a separation between the person responsible for making it a successful business and the person who is only permitted to own a share because it lets them use it as a tool for the good of the Empire (and finds the investment income an inconvenience) makes sense. There is a necessary tension between the roles. Then there's oversight - a Grey wizard major shareholder with access to the books is excellent for keeping things on the straight and narrow but management are the people with the most means and motive to stray - combining them is a recipe for perverse incentives.
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The moment that 'fiduciary duty' is ever uttered by a character in this quest I will campaign incessantly for their immediate execution. That is one horror Mallus can do without.
 
BurnNote said:
You use Ghur to transform into weird hairless monkies, though why would you ever want to?
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I do actually think that the only reason there isn't a 'turn to elf, human, lizardmen, orc etc' spell in Ghur is that people and cultures have separated them in their minds from animals. not because its not possible.

there is a 'turn to dragon' spell because of speciesism.

you can only turn into a dragon if you are racist to dragons.

think about that.
 
noliar said:
The CEO of the company has a fiduciary duty to make all the shareholders richer. As a shareholder herself, that means she's actively working to make herself richer, not as a side effect of helping the Empire or building an information network but as a primary purpose - thus breaking the vow of poverty. Even beyond that fiduciary duty, trade is competitive - if the majority of corporate actions aren't taken to maintain or expand its wealth and power before some other motive it will quite quickly stop being an effective tool for furthering that other motive i.e. the good of the Empire.

So a separation between the person responsible for making it a successful business and the person who is only permitted to own a share because it lets them use it as a tool for the good of the Empire (and finds the investment income an inconvenience) makes sense. There is a necessary tension between the roles. Then there's oversight - a Grey wizard major shareholder with access to the books is excellent for keeping things on the straight and narrow but management are the people with the most means and motive to stray - combining them is a recipe for perverse incentives.
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And why should we care about fiduciary duty.

You're talking like it isn't borderline a state sponsored monopoly.
Companies in this era and modern corperations are fairly different things.

Mathilde as a character couldn't give two shits if the EIC makes its share holders richer.
 
Jyn Ryvia said:
One-shot LARP's are either great or crap.

no middle ground.
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I write and play a bunch of them, and I would dispute this -- I have played a lot of "eh" games. But yesterday's game was unusually bad -- negative two standard deviations levels of badness. And I can back that up because I keep notes on every game I've played (in what I'm sure is a total surprise to all of you), and that was my 121st game, and I assure you that it was less fun than 98% of the games on that list. Not the worst game I've ever played, but close.
primemountain said:
Another one: How will the ordinary people of Stirland react? And the Watch? We already know they don't much care for Wizards, and while Mat's reputation is helpful there, it likely will cause significant troubles for the EIC, not only with other merchants but with both employees and customers.

It's one thing to know that a Grey Wizard is a shareholder, quite another that another one runs the place!
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primemountain said:
The difference between the Director being a regular person/normal noble and a Grey Wizard matters. Mat gets away with what she does with the EIC because she's not the one running it. She's the one keeping it in check, while someone else runs it. The whole point of the EIC changes if a Grey Wizard is in charge of day to day operations.
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primemountain said:
It's only not causing trouble if what follows is a definitive change in how the EIC is run, and what it's goals are.

If mostly owned and run by Grey Wizards, they cannot, cannot, have the profit motive be their primary drive. Right now, with Wilhelmina in charge, it is. If profit is not the driving force of the organization anymore, then are they really primarily a merchant concern still, or is that a side business? It can be done, but if you want to do it without impacting the very trust that allows for it to happen, significant changes to the EIC have to be made. Changes which aren't going to be easy, or necessarily successful.
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I think these are valid concerns backed up by things Boney has said before, but ultimately I don't think it's that bad if the EIC is forced to transition from being a straightforward merchant consortium to something else. Here's what I said on the subject yesterday:
picklepikkl said:
BurnNote said:
*snip of a long post about a Grey Wizardly EIC*
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This is very clever and thought-out. That said, I remembered an old Boney post about a similar subject and dug it up:
BoneyM said:
'Information gets passed up the chain so that the EIC can better make business decisions for the profit of everyone involved' is fine with everyone and normal not just for the EIC but for most trading companies. Major Shareholder Dame Weber, hero of the Sieges of the Drakenhofs, can deepen that existing culture without anyone finding it at all unusual. She's an expert at gathering and profiting off information, and the EIC's profits are her profits. Other Grey Wizards won't have her reputation or the presumption of profit motives to protect them, and Grey Journeymen don't have enough experience to take it as given that they'd be able to operate quietly.

If other Grey Wizards are known to become involved, it will be assumed that it's because the EIC is becoming part of the Empire's information-gathering apparatus. And there's nobody in trade who's so without sin that they'd feel fully comfortable doing business with the EIC under those circumstances, even if those sins are entirely limited to being flexible with their tax-paying obligations. This is a time period where the back-and-forth of corporate taxation wasn't done with lobbyists and accountants, it was done by ensuring a safe distance between excisemen and taxable goods by a wide range of methods, some of which might, in a certain light, be considered 'bribery' or 'smuggling'.
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Now, the advantage of a known personal connection with Eike is that she can trade off of her connections with both Mathilde and Wilhelmina for plausible deniability, even if she is a known Grey Wizard. But we should expect that the more closely the EIC is obviously tied to Imperial governmental institutions, the more people will proceed under the assumption "this is an intel-gathering op" and be leery about doing business.

...that said, a world in which the EIC transitions from being a merchant cartel to being the Empire's UPS/FedEx isn't a bad one and is a totally reasonable way it could evolve in the future under hypothetical-Grey-Eike's majority shareholding. Merchants might not be comfortable doing business deals with a Grey Wizard's known business (Regimand might have a network of owned taverns, but he doesn't own them openly), but using a Grey Wizard's business strictly for handling overland and riverine shipping? That might get more traction, and it would still give plenty of opportunities to have eyes and ears everywhere.
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But it's a long time before we have to worry about any of that and it's not worth panicking about now.
 
DragonParadox said:
That is liable to get her killed before it gets her turned, she would be a lot harder to incapacitate for the Blood Kiss than she would be to kill.
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But you forget: Turning the super dangerous magister out to kill you into an even more dangerous vampire is the type of plan that only a supremely arrogant megalomaniac would try. Or in other words, a dhar user. Aka pretty much all vampires.
NavySeel said:
Mathilde as a character couldn't give two shits if the EIC makes its share holders richer.
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Mathilde is the biggest shareholder, so it's of some concern. If the EIC makes to much money, then she has to go through the effort of finding new ways to spend that money.
 
Jyn Ryvia said:
I do actually think that the only reason there isn't a 'turn to elf, human, lizardmen, orc etc' spell in Ghur is that people and cultures have separated them in their minds from animals. not because its not possible.

there is a 'turn to dragon' spell because of speciesism.

you can only turn into a dragon if you are racist to dragons.

think about that.
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Dragons are like predatory beings with no artificial civilization. They have culture, and a simple social structure, but it's not particularly advanced or sophisticated.
They do not rely on tools, only on their raw might and instincts.

You can't turn into an elf, human, or a lizardman with Ghur because they are dependent on their Civilization.

It's not culture or intelligence that's the dividing line, but civilization.
 
IronFist said:
They have culture, and a simple social structure, but it's not particularly advanced or sophisticated.
They do not rely on tools, only on their raw might and instincts
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I think it's more accurate to say they don't need those things. Doesn't really change the thrust of the argument, but I think it needs to be brought up because it makes it sound like they're not that intelligent otherwise.
 
It is probably a bit late, but I would like to point out that kids are not there to be 'cute' and that parents who make kids with this as only motivation are kind of...not that great at thinking like a parent, IMO.

Now, apprentice is not a child, but principle still applies: it is first and foremost a responsibility, not a cute pet to aww at when you want a pet and do shit all about when you have other things on your mind.

Now, Boney _did_ say that we should not think in terms of AP Hell when talking about an apprentice, but even on non mechanical level, the rationale of "apprentice is cute so I want one" is just...irresponsible. We decided that we do not want a...what was it, pegasus?...for example, because it would he gathering dust and a cool factor does not cut it. I do not think we should care less about wellbeing of a potential apprentice than about a glorified horse.


Mathilde is wearing 3 high level management hats; i do hope we will get the option to put down one of them _if_ it becomes a concern and _if_ Eike goes Grey and _if_ we take her as specifically Mathilde's apprentice. (Yes, that's a lot of conditionals, its intentional because odds are Eike won't even become eligible for Mathilde's apprenticeship or there may be no conflict between time commitments and Apprentice, in which case all is well). But, in spirit of being a petty bit- i mean, dying on a hill of being responsible for those we took in our care:

[X] Neutral
[X] Wizard
- [X] Let Eike decide
- [X] The Order of Light
- [X] The Golden Order
- [X] The Order of Life
 
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IronFist said:
Dragons are like predatory beings with no artificial civilization. They have culture, and a simple social structure, but it's not particularly advanced or sophisticated.
They do not rely on tools, only on their raw might and instincts.

You can't turn into an elf, human, or a lizardman with Ghur because they are dependent on their Civilization.

It's not culture or intelligence that's the dividing line, but civilization.
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This feels, off...
Not only is it kinda insulting towards any society not behaving like ours, but it also makes statements we have no means to actually verify.
Like, our main touchstones to dragon society is a crazy hermit that lives in the Karaks attic, and a guy who decided to take few centuries towander around with his pet monkey.
 
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BurnNote said:
Mathilde is the biggest shareholder, so it's of some concern. If the EIC makes to much money, then she has to go through the effort of finding new ways to spend that money.
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It's because of this I wish Mathilde was more interested in her home town. Not for 'reconciliation' or any such shit, just so she can ride through, sniff at whatever they've tried to do, throw money at them and tell them to 'fix it' with Grey Wizard Menace and ride off. Just get petty, petty revenge every week.
 
Maybe the difference in dragons is the lack of what most people would call civilization. They don't build roads and chop down forests, they change the landscape sure but thats through their natural abilities.

They don't make cities and nations.
 
Oh, and also, I am not sure that a head of trade company being a secret police spook will be wholly without issues. It _could_ be a smooth sailing, but it can easily not be. Golds running profitable businesses is normal and expected by both Golds and rest of the Empire, which, politically/diplomatically would make for a smoother sailing.

(Its not about nature of Grey wind or whatever, just politics of perception of Grey running a company by both other Greys and everyone else)
 
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