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Warhammer Fantasy: Divided Loyalties - an Advisor's Quest

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The Phoenixian said:
Okay, I'm just going to be matter-of-fact and say I'm getting frustrated here and try again at greater length. I said what I did because it was in response to an argument to Chocolate who was voting and arguing for [] Belegar - Nothing.

You are arguing with me by telling me, literally what I told you, in more words, and in doing so eliding the point we actually have differences on.

It is somewhat infuriating.
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Apologies, I clearly mis interpeted which bit of the thread you were engaging with.

But not telling Belegar anything now doesn't mean we can't mention it to him when we've done more research on how to protect liminal realms so we can give him a more reassuring massage. Without the daemon's appearance we may well not have mentioned it to him before we'd done more research.
 
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Murazor said:
Revealing the matter was a diplo roll that went pretty poorly. Belegar's reaction was shaped by a couple of relatively average rolls, while Kragg had a relatively hostile reaction based on a bad one. The situation was neatly salvaged by the natural 100 involving Gunnars.

Five rolls in total.

I imagine that there also be rolls here. Sufficiently good ones will probably result in relatively minor consequences, sufficiently bad ones will totally result in reputational hits, although I am not quite sure how bad we are talking here. Mathilde has better modifiers now than she did in the early quest, which may help a bit.
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But at that point, we also hadn't known Belegar or Kragg for more than maybe three months. It's been over 10 years since that point. We helped retake all Eight Peaks, helped coordinate a divine superweapon, risked our life for the sake of over 300 dwarves in the sunken monitor, helped rescue Vlag from the Aethyr, and then brought back most of the KD expedition safely.

He might be disappointed or frustrated but if he fucked up but went to us out of duty to say it anyway, we wouldn't blame him for it, would we?

Nerdasaurus Rex said:
I meant more in the sense of "why is she still choosing to work with us, there's nothing stopping her from leaving". I know she can still be useful for a lot of things, but I just don't see how we're useful to her.
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Oh, yeah, thats a better question. Well, I could joke and say she's also interested in the land of beautiful men, but I think she's mostly interested in the general idea of stirring things up a bit, and maybe embarrassing the elves and Zlata.
 
[X] [BELEGAR] Daemon and weakening


I was thinking about potential options for Eike's lesson next turn, and thought of this: Have Anton tutor her in some diplomacy. From what we know of her his style could work well for her, and even if it doesn't her getting to know a big EIC shareholder and major figure of Stirland would be good.
 
Mathilde was experimenting with a known substance, one already proven to be of great use to the Karaz Ankor thanks to her work, in a room custom built to handle the fact that magic is inherently volatile. If said room (and as such any incident happening in it) being within K8P is a cause for concern, then Mathilde should have been asked to put it somewhere else.

Similarly, Algard already told Mathilde it was only a matter of time until Tzeentch started eyeing her and still made her a Lady Magister when she decided to go poke said eye by taking a trip to the chaos wastes. If a LoC taking such an opportunity to taunt her was enough for the GC to freeze her out, then I don't think they would have made her a LM BEFORE the trip. On return once they had asked her what happened, maybe. But not before.

[x] [BELEGAR] Daemon and weakening
[x] [COLLEGE] Everchosen and Greater Daemon
 
chocolote12 said:
We have a poker face worthy of a hero character, miscasts do stuff like that all the time, and nobody has ever seen us cast in the presence of Chaos Sorcery (and if they did, nobody is going to consider for a second that maybe it's the Magical Daemon God rooting for us that gave us the final push to kill whoever they saw casting Chaos Sorcery near us).

Like, all of that is non-existent. It is nothing. It's not even something.

I'll take a tone break here; I disagree with you, but do not feel anyone is a bad person for being on the other side of the argument, and I apologize if I'm coming off that way.
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I have no frustration with you, Chocolate. In the conversation between you and me I simply disagree with your position and would ideally wish to convince you of my own: That the Smug Bird is attempting to switch genres and turn this into a spy games flick, with all the plots, maneuvering, and conceits thereof.
Still, I acknowledge you're coming at this from a very different space I am and regardless of whether or not I succeed in connecting past that divide, you aren't frustrating to talk to.

No harm, no foul. (Or would it be "No harm, no fowl?")

EDIT: To be even clearer, I spoke as I did with Alratan because I felt that simply outright and calmly stating my feelings would get them across with a minimum of breakdown in conversation.
 
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Jeopardizer said:
Mathilde was experimenting with a known substance, one already proven to be of great use to the Karaz Ankor thanks to her work, in a room custom built to handle the fact that magic is inherently volatile. If said room (and as such any incident happening in it) being within K8P is a cause for concern, then Mathilde should have been asked to put it somewhere else.

Similarly, Algard already told Mathilde it was only a matter of time until Tzeentch started eyeing her and still made her a Lady Magister when she decided to go poke said eye by taking a trip to the chaos wastes. If a LoC taking such an opportunity to taunt her was enough for the GC to freeze her out, then I don't think they would have made her a LM BEFORE the trip. On return once they had asked her what happened, maybe. But not before.
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Mathilde seems to think that the reasonably foreseeable consequences of disclosure could be significantly bad to end the Waystone Project. She considers it as something that may happen. Not a certainty, but not something so unlikely that she didn't need to worry about it.

That's pretty serious. She may not be completely frozen out, but there's at least a chance it could be very damaging to her reputation and so to her ability to act and influence.
 
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The3rdCorinthian said:
Nah, mathilde just immediately has a perfect poker face and says it lied, and because it's a daemon everyone immediately agrees because All daemons lie.

I think this is starting to really get personal, since I used to be a compulsive liar to the point where my parents began to be unable to completely trust me even when I was telling the truth, because they just couldn't be sure, and that was about hiding way smaller stuff than a daemon indicating I've got Tzeentch's attention. I'm going to ignore or otherwise stop posting until the votes over.
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*brofist*

Had my own repeated flirtations in that theme. It definitely informs my attitudes here, because it always always always fell apart when people actually talked to each other. And then I paid for it for a good long while.


To the best of my knowledge I didn't even have a malignant entity actively striving to reveal my misdeeds.
 
[X] [BELEGAR] Daemon and weakening
[X] [COLLEGE] Everchosen, Daemon, and Mathilde's candidacy

Catching up… to be clear, reality is not permanently weakened right? It's cleared up now? That's what it read like to me.

Belegar should know either way though.
 
consequences said:
*brofist*

Had my own repeated flirtations in that theme. It definitely informs my attitudes here, because it always always always fell apart when people actually talked to each other. And then I paid for it for a good long while.


To the best of my knowledge I didn't even have a malignant entity actively striving to reveal my misdeeds.
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Who can talk to each other here though? The only person who knows about the daemon getting in contact is Mathilde and the daemon. Even someone directly observing events wouldn't have perceived the communication. There's no one to contradict what she doesn't choose to say, because the daemon has no one to talk to that it can provide any form of proof to. There's no contradiction that she can be caught in, there are no two different versions of events she's telling to people that can be compared.

And note that Mathilde is not lying or making up a story. She's deciding that she doesn't need to escalate matters to higher authorities. She has no obligation to do so, indeed, she has an obligation not to when there is no need to, as that's the basic principle of effective information security which she has a duty to follow.

This wouldn't be Mathilde deceiving anyone. It isn't a misdeed of any kind. This would be Mathilde exercising her professional judgement as one of the Empire's best experts that the best way to neutralise the daemon's agenda is not to play its game. That's her right and her duty as a Lady Magister of the Grey College.

Subsequently people may disagree with that choice if they magically find out about it. But when dealing with a precognitive enemy that could be spreading disinformation, it's a perfectly defensible choice to make that her peers would understand and probably support. They'd probably choose to do the same in the right circumstances.

We've been told that there's deliberately no standard operating procedure and it's left to the discretion of the person on the ground exactly to avoid the rules being exploited against Grey Magisters to make them vulnerable to such plots or blackmail.
 
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StormySky said:
It's Order Gods, differentiated from Chaos by the fact that the Chaos Gods were referred to as such earlier in that same sentence.
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Yes....
If Tzeench can fool the worshipers of the Empires Pantheon and other Chaos opposed gods that it can deliver messages from those opposing gods then Tzeench wins.
That's what I was I was saying, that of the different bits of evidence if that one specifically was Tzeenchian Trickery then all religion and religious people become possible pawns of chaos and everything is fucked.

Although on a tangent the Gods of Order are/were a specific pantheon that was just as bad as chaos but in the opposite direction, so I wouldn't describe Sigmar or other gods as Order Gods as its potentially confusing.
 
Well, I suppose this will all be a good lesson in why we don't trust everyone with the other secrets we have, at least.
 
Glau said:
Well, I suppose this will all be a good lesson in why we don't trust everyone with the other secrets we have, at least.
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Because those are instant-burnings.

Frankly, even the worst case scenario's for telling the colleges are bad (Waystone project shutdown, everyone hates us, ect.), but they're not "We need you on fire now because the outcry from trying to prevent you from being killed will be so bad the colleges probably wouldn't survive and we'd be back in the bad old days".
 
The3rdCorinthian said:
Because those are instant-burnings.

Frankly, even the worst case scenario's for telling the colleges are bad (Waystone project shutdown, everyone hates us, ect.), but they're not "We need you on fire now because the outcry from trying to prevent you from being killed will be so bad the colleges probably wouldn't survive and we'd be back in the bad old days".
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Mork possession probably isn't an instant burning, neither is embezzling from Stirland, just another example of things that would make them trust us less and so make out life harder for no real benefit.
 
Alratan said:
Mork possession probably isn't an instant burning, neither is embezzling from Stirland, just another example of things that would make them trust us less and so make out life harder for no real benefit.
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Honestly, revealing this actively helps us keep our actual secrets. It puts in people's minds that we're the sort to punctiliously report even things that look bad, which makes them more likely to ignore or disbelieve anything less than extremely compelling evidence of our various actual secrets.

A reputation for honesty makes lying a lot easier when you actually engage in it.
 
I am genuinely baffled people are choosing to reveal Weber's candidacy.

[X] [BELEGAR] Nothing
[X] [COLLEGE] Nothing
[X] [BELEGAR] Daemon and weakening
[X] [COLLEGE] Incoming Everchosen
 
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So right now I'm on the side of not telling the College, as I feel we have very little to gain from going to the College, and we do have some to lose. That said, there's been a lot of catastrophizing regarding the potential fallout of going the Grey College, and I feel that leads to people who disagree with those takes overcorrecting and saying that surely the Grey College wouldn't do a thing because they don't want to alienate Mathilde and it's only a miscast etc. I don't entirely disagree, and I think the results won't be catastrophic, but I do think they could be kind of bad. So here are some responses which are bad but not catastrophic, and that I think are plausible.
  • Mathilde's future publications are required to go through the Grey Order's editors, who give them extra scrutiny for potential signs of daemonic influence.
    • Mathilde's stuff still gets published, assuming no signs of corruption are found. To do otherwise is to deny the Colleges the very valuable fruits of Mathilde's labour, and that might have been the Plotter's plan all along. However...
    • Mathilde is 'fined' some CF to pay for the Grey Order's editors working overtime. This isn't a punishment, it's just that CF represents how much benefit Mathilde provided the Colleges, and now those benefits are somewhat lesser.
    • Specific research topics, like stuff we found in the Chaos Wastes, get even more scrutiny, making publishing results on them harder and even less beneficial.
    • We have to clear the Morbs with the Grey College before dropping it on the Colleges, lowering the number of giga-headpats Mathilde gets by ~12.5%.
  • Mathilde has an uncomfortable conversation with Starke.
    • Mathilde already got anti-Chaos training, and she already faced demons on the Dum expedition, so Starke isn't freaking out. However...
    • Starke straight up asks Mathilde if she's worshipping Ranald, no lying this time. To be clear, he wants the answer to be yes - Starke believes that faith is important, and while Sigmar is his preference, anyone that isn't proscribed works.
    • If Starke needs to run another check on Mathilde - like he did when he asked about the Stirland Watch business - he'll look a little harder. He probably won't find anything too bad, but insofar as the Grey Order finding out about Mathilde's more questionable business has been a risk before, it will now be more of a risk.
    • Mandatory prayer time or something idk
  • Starke starts looking into people around Mathilde. Even if the Grey College trusts Mathilde, now that we know the Plotter has her in His sights we need to consider that he might try to subvert her allies to get to her.
    • This is all very annoying to Mathilde's closest allies, but it's probably uncomfortable rather than unbearable. Unless some of them have their own dirty secrets to hide, or they have things that look like dirty secrets, in which case things could go badly.
    • That Max guy is agnostic, you say? He was in a battle with the forces of the Tempter during the Karag Dum expedition, and asked for time alone after the fight? To recover from a headace after crossing spells with a Greater Demon? Hmm.
    • Egrimm is checked for Chaos tattoos. There are probably none.
  • The Porters of the other Colleges are told to watch out for Chaos stuff around Mathilde.
    • The Grey College probably wouldn't add "because she talked to a daemon", they don't want to ruin the reputation of a LM in the eyes of the other Colleges. Everyone would assume that this is because Chaos wants to fuck up the Waystone project, or get revenge for Vlag, or whatever. There's no shortage of reasons for Chaos to have it out for Mathilde.
    • This probably won't have disasterous ramifications for the Waystone project - again, stopping the Waystone project because a demon looked at Mathilde funny is very obviously playing into the hands of Chaos. But it could have annoying ramifications, as future requests to the College take just a little longer to be cleared.
    • Elrisse might tell Egrimm to keep an eye on Mathilde. If Egrimm actually is a Chaos cultist, this could give him rope to hang us with. He probably isn't.
So yeah, even if things don't get quest-endingly bad (and I think they won't) they could get annoyingly bad. I honestly think we're better off keeping the Everchosen thing to ourselves, but even if you disagree you need to consider if adding a single datapoint to the Grey College's collection is worth the potential drawbacks. Obviously this needs to be considered along with the possible drawbacks of not telling the Colleges, but I'll leave that for someone who's pro telling them.
 
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Alratan said:
Mork possession probably isn't an instant burning, neither is embezzling from Stirland, just another example of things that would make them trust us less and so make out life harder for no real benefit.
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Mork possession almost certainly isn't, particularly not considering that Belegar, Kragg and Gunnars can cover for Mathilde.

Boney said:
"Magister Patriarch, I fear that one of our own has fallen under the sway of dark powers."

"Oh dear. Tzeentch?"

"No, it's-"

"Slaanesh?"

"None of those-"

"Oh, Vampires?"

"No, Mork!"

"..."

"..."

"Get out of my office."
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I'd honestly be more worried about the embezzlement. We... repurposed, Stirland's gong farmers and a niter factory.
 
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