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Warhammer Fantasy: Divided Loyalties - an Advisor's Quest

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ja.b.n. said:
yeah, but still. I think that the rest of the Grey College has enough faith in us, that being told "Magic Bird man told us they would really like to recruit us" would not really phase them, I guess? Like sure, Mathilde falling to the dark side would be bad, but any LM falling would be bad. And Chaos is always interested in recruiting people to Chaos's side. So, no real suprise?
And being told that keeping Mathilde succesfully doing stuff against Chaos keeps Chaos interested in recruiting her, and thus potentially delaying the next Everchoosen? Sure, that working is a long shot. But when you're up against an Everchoosen, something that might just get you a bit of extra time is at least worth the shot.
Way I see it, Grey College being told of the job offer would at most make them up their background checks on Mathilda, but they do those anyway, and try to steer Mathilda in projects that might keep Chaos interested in her as Everchoosen to buy some extra time. And I think that being less free in job choices in exchange for possibly delaying the next Everchoosen is a sacrifice Mathilda would take 10 times out of 10
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You cannot run a background check on someone like Mathilde is the problem, she has too much power and influence, as can be observed in the collection of books she would be burned at the stake for, if only there were any conceivable way for another Grey Wizard to get at them. Between our connections in the Karaz Ankor, our friendship with the Empress and now connections in Laurelorn it would be very hard and quite costly to do more than inconvenience us when it comes to investigations.

This is not a bug of the Grey College, it's a feature, being top heavy with a small number of independent-mined Lord Magisters who follow their interests and particular contacts for the good of the Empire. The problem arrives when you no longer trust one of them.
 
DragonParadox said:
-snip-
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Where exactly did I say they were going to 'drop everything and start poking cults'? The point is some back up is better than none, even if its just some support.

Alratan said:
By contrast, there's been no plausible suggestion of how the daemon profits if he talks to her and then she keeps her mouth shut. How is the daemon's plan advanced compared to before they spoke? Completely ignoring the daemon's communication and acting as if it never happened can't advance any plan it set in motion by speaking to her because it makes it as close as we can get to if it never spoke to her.
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There's plenty of points that have been made about how it could potentially profit if she stays quiet though? You even responded to some of them in attempts to debunk them.

Also how exactly is the EIC going to be getting information on Chaos and any potential Everchosens when it operates in areas that Chaos seemingly doesn't?
 
Jeopardizer said:
On a completly different note, I know there have been discussions about making a drycha staff and giving it to Eike, but has the possibility of teaching Eike enchanting and staff-turning been raised? There is a nice position to grab at the college for anybody willing to spend a lot of time turning wood/bone and could make for a nice / non-combat oriented career. Plus even if Eike actually hates making staves, she could use knowledge of what goes into it and enchanting in general to turn her share of the EIC in a supplier for that sort of things.
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I dont think its too likely that she'll want to get into a lot of staff turning(because it really is very boring), so I wouldn't want to dedicate too much effort to getting her to learn it unless we get evidence to the contrary.

I think it's pretty reasonable to have her sit in on us making the drycha staff for her once we get to it, though.
 
AzrielIlluminare said:
Where exactly did I say they were going to 'drop everything and start poking cults'? The point is some back up is better than none, even if its just some support.
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Yes and my point is 'the only backup meaingful is Lord Magisters and there are not enough of then, they are busy'. This had been the answer to every single attempt we made the get the Grey College to solve our problems since way back in Stirland when we wanted to use their contracts as a spy network. The only Grey College help we were able to get was either paid in CF (Eye of Gazul the Hochalander) or leaning on personal relationships (Regimand).

The Grey College as an institution does not help just because you ask them to... and an current rates assuming we dropped Morbs as a project we could afford to buy the aid one one LM for three turns if they were willing to be away from their projects for that long
 
mathymancer said:
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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Alright so bear with me here because it's like 10pm here and i'm tired, so don't expect a perfectly worded argument.

The Demons actions, in and of itself, are not the problem. The problem is the implication of Tzeentch actively paying attention to us, namely by giving us the trait that empowers us around Tzeentchian magics as well as a hidden effect that's likely a downside.

Now, many people have said that by saying nothing and not acknowledging the Daemon, this means that nothing will occur - it's words are all basically bluster and outside the new trait it didn't do all that much. Now, for the Daemons words themselves, this isn't all that bad an idea minus adding onto the store of information about the presence of an everchosen.

The problem starts with... well, again, Us having Tzeentch's attention.

Tzeentch WILL find ways to interfere, both subtle and overt. Again, him trying to say the meeting happened is a red herring, he's moreso going to direct cultists of his in our direction, possibly screw with our dreams, Potentially take advantage of any miscasts, ect. We can't predict exactly what he'll do because, ya know, Tzeentch, but assuming he'll be doing something isn't that hard a guess.

Now, confronted with Tzeentch repeatedly trying to fuck us over, eventually people are going to notice a pattern. This means questions will be raised, and we have a few options for this.

Option one is outright lie and say We have no idea what's going on. This gives us the advantage of deniability (if our poker face works - we'd be up against Grey's, they are also pretty good at intrigue), but the Colleges might take action anyways - After all, even if you don't know why, the Changer taking an interest and acting on it is concerning.

Option 2 is to tell a half truth, and to acknowledge that we suspect that Tzeentch has taken an interest. Why specifically? Well, we can point to Vlag as a major thing that might have annoyed him, or that our work with AV looked like a weak point, or maybe he just really likes our hat. This is probably the best option if we say nothing about it now, though if the Fated trait ends up having some level of overt effect, we are going to cover why it happens. It also means Tzeentch would probably get at least one free Scheme in, which whilst probably not the end of the quest, would also probably be annoying to deal with. Though that's true of all these really.

Option 3 is to admit that this happened a while ago, but that you initially didn't tell them. Why? You... didn't think a Tzeentchian demon monologuing at you was something they needed to know. From this point on, Apply all of the frustrations you brought up to this point, with the added factor of the Grey college being at least a little bit concerned that you didn't bring this up asap.


Trying to Hide Tzeentch's stalker tendencies wouldn't really be workable. It's presumably very easy for it to end up looking like standard reasons for hiding Teentch, which aren't really great, just ask canon Egri- wait, don't ask him. Even if it turns out that isn't the case, having to cover the attentions of a Chaos God would presumably need a lof of saves that might end up failing... and the consequences of failing those probably also wouldn't look good.


And this all means that the only way for us to not need to deal with this at some point if we say nothing, is to hope that Tzeentch is just outright incompetent. Even if we can say 'Daemons always lie' or 'Tzeentch makes magic weird, go figure', enough events happening over a period of time would lead to a pattern that would raise questions. If we choose to say nothing now, we do have ways out of those questions, but personally, getting this over with now cuts out the middle man, and makes us seem more honest by being open about when this kind of thing happens to us.


TLDR:

Mentioning the Demon is, in my mind, primarily mentioning it as a way to acknowledge Tzeentch has started trying to mess with us.

Getting the Actual benefits of saying nothing requires for our situation to not meaningfully change. Birb likes changing things a lot and will try to interfere, if only to show off his shiny new trait.

Once Birb starts interfering, the only way that we stop the colleges having an intervention is to either hope that Tzeentch or our allies are so incompetent that a pattern of interference can be handwaved as all one big coincidence, or to preempt that interference by saying that we think we got his attention.

or in other words, roughly the same consequences as disclosing this now with extra steps.
 
I wonder if Mathilda allready had the Fated trait, but didn't realize it untill this update where she had to use Tzeentch lore. Presumely Mathilda was allready in the running for the ever-chosen candidate, and one of the favored runners of Tzeentch. It's just that there had been nothing IC, that would reveal that Mathilda would have an easier time of using Lore of Tzeentch before now.

So it was a hidden trait, and if so. Do we have something similar for the other 3 Chaos God's. (Though i doubt it, since i don't think we've done as much to "endear" ourself to them at the moment.) Since it's a blessing from Tzeentch side making magic easier for Mathilda to use, there was absolutly nothing stopping him from doing this allready before this moment after all
 
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Ok. I want to point put one big issue if we come clean. *we have THE necromancy book* If we are poked at more aggressively by our peers they *likely could* find out about that. As well as those vamp notes..
 
The3rdCorinthian said:
Alright so bear with me here because it's like 10pm here and i'm tired, so don't expect a perfectly worded argument.

The Demons actions, in and of itself, are not the problem. The problem is the implication of Tzeentch actively paying attention to us, namely by giving us the trait that empowers us around Tzeentchian magics as well as a hidden effect that's likely a downside.

Now, many people have said that by saying nothing and not acknowledging the Daemon, this means that nothing will occur - it's words are all basically bluster and outside the new trait it didn't do all that much. Now, for the Daemons words themselves, this isn't all that bad an idea minus adding onto the store of information about the presence of an everchosen.

The problem starts with... well, again, Us having Tzeentch's attention.

Tzeentch WILL find ways to interfere, both subtle and overt. Again, him trying to say the meeting happened is a red herring, he's moreso going to direct cultists of his in our direction, possibly screw with our dreams, Potentially take advantage of any miscasts, ect. We can't predict exactly what he'll do because, ya know, Tzeentch, but assuming he'll be doing something isn't that hard a guess.

Now, confronted with Tzeentch repeatedly trying to fuck us over, eventually people are going to notice a pattern. This means questions will be raised, and we have a few options for this.

Option one is outright lie and say We have no idea what's going on. This gives us the advantage of deniability (if our poker face works - we'd be up against Grey's, they are also pretty good at intrigue), but the Colleges might take action anyways - After all, even if you don't know why, the Changer taking an interest and acting on it is concerning.

Option 2 is to tell a half truth, and to acknowledge that we suspect that Tzeentch has taken an interest. Why specifically? Well, we can point to Vlag as a major thing that might have annoyed him, or that our work with AV looked like a weak point, or maybe he just really likes our hat. This is probably the best option if we say nothing about it now, though if the Fated trait ends up having some level of overt effect, we are going to cover why it happens. It also means Tzeentch would probably get at least one free Scheme in, which whilst probably not the end of the quest, would also probably be annoying to deal with. Though that's true of all these really.

Option 3 is to admit that this happened a while ago, but that you initially didn't tell them. Why? You... didn't think a Tzeentchian demon monologuing at you was something they needed to know. From this point on, Apply all of the frustrations you brought up to this point, with the added factor of the Grey college being at least a little bit concerned that you didn't bring this up asap.


Trying to Hide Tzeentch's stalker tendencies wouldn't really be workable. It's presumably very easy for it to end up looking like standard reasons for hiding Teentch, which aren't really great, just ask canon Egri- wait, don't ask him. Even if it turns out that isn't the case, having to cover the attentions of a Chaos God would presumably need a lof of saves that might end up failing... and the consequences of failing those probably also wouldn't look good.


And this all means that the only way for us to not need to deal with this at some point if we say nothing, is to hope that Tzeentch is just outright incompetent. Even if we can say 'Daemons always lie' or 'Tzeentch makes magic weird, go figure', enough events happening over a period of time would lead to a pattern that would raise questions. If we choose to say nothing now, we do have ways out of those questions, but personally, getting this over with now cuts out the middle man, and makes us seem more honest by being open about when this kind of thing happens to us.


TLDR:

Mentioning the Demon is, in my mind, primarily mentioning it as a way to acknowledge Tzeentch has started trying to mess with us.

Getting the Actual benefits of saying nothing requires for our situation to not meaningfully change. Birb likes changing things a lot and will try to interfere, if only to show off his shiny new trait.

Once Birb starts interfering, the only way that we stop the colleges having an intervention is to either hope that Tzeentch or our allies are so incompetent that a pattern of interference can be handwaved as all one big coincidence, or to preempt that interference by saying that we think we got his attention.

or in other words, roughly the same consequences as disclosing this now with extra steps.
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To be fair, it's not like Mathilde spends much time around other Greys who would notice any pattern of Tzeentchite interference.

Sa'kage said:
I wonder if Mathilda allready had the Fated trait, but didn't realize it untill this update where she had to use Tzeentch lore. Presumely Mathilda was allready in the running for the ever-chosen candidate, and one of the favored runners of Tzeentch. It's just that there had been nothing IC, that would reveal that Mathilda would have an easier time of using Lore of Tzeentch before now.

So it was a hidden trait, and if so. Do we have something similar for the other 3 Chaos God's. (Though i doubt it, since i don't think we've done as much to "endear" ourself to them at the moment.) Since it's a blessing from Tzeentch side making magic easier for Mathilda to use, there was absolutly nothing stopping him from doing this allready before this moment after all
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You're both assuming that Everchosen candidates get boosts just for being candidates and that the Daemon wasn't lying about Mathilde being a candidate.
 
KRISF said:
Ok. I want to point put one big issue if we come clean. *we have THE necromancy book* If we are poked at more aggressively by our peers they *likely could* find out about that. As well as those vamp notes..
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I mean, I wanna burn at least LM.

Like, Ideally I'd return it to the Van Hals, but it's such a huge thing and I'm terrified the reaction would be rightly deserved fear.

Besides. Many would argue that burning the thing is the right course of action. We were just a tad delayed is all.
 
I know we're all calling Tzeentch a "bird", and that I am one of those people doing that, but I just want to take a brief break from the endless treadmill of paranoia for some mild pedantry: Tzeentch doesn't actually look like a Lord of Change, His most common form is much closer to that of a Horror.

Tzeentch is most commonly depicted as a huge, grossly formed humanoid with gangly limbs. Tzeentch lacks a head, and his face sits squarely in his chest. Two writhing, flexible "horns" ending in hideous faces adorn his shoulders. As Tzeentch speaks, these two faces whisper in both agreement and contradiction with his statements, making it confusing and maddening to hear.
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Of course, Tzeentch, being the God of Change, can take any form He desires, so there's nothing saying He can't look like a bird, but I just wanted to clarify that it's not something he's especially known for.

I now return you to your regularly scheduled existential terror.
 
Nerdasaurus Rex said:
I know we're all calling Tzeentch a "bird", and that I am one of those people doing that, but I just want to take a brief break from the endless treadmill of paranoia for some mild pedantry: Tzeentch doesn't actually look like a Lord of Change, His most common form is much closer to that of a Horror.



Of course, Tzeentch, being the God of Change, can take any form He desires, so there's nothing saying He can't look like a bird, but I just wanted to clarify that it's not something he's especially known for.

I now return you to your regularly scheduled existential terror.
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Yes, but I always Imagine Tzeentch as a Goose.

For obvious reasons.
 
I'm going to be travelling for most of today, so I won't be able to keep close tabs on events in the thread, so all I can do is ask that everyone play nice. Oh, and remind everyone that after eight hours on the road I'm probably not going to be in the mood for gentle admonitions if I find that some haven't been. I really don't like how many people have already been driven out of the conversation by how full-contact others are being in their debating.

Alratan said:
Those other things are useful data point that would make a case that the Everchosen is incoming.

However I'm not convinced that the word of a greater daemon of Tzeentch gives extra credibility to that. I see it like asking a magic eight ball whether it will rain tomorrow. Whatever the result, it shouldn't make me more or less likely to believe the weather forecast that it will be fine.

Now, you're the QM, so your word goes, but including biased or very unreliable information sources in an analysis because you think more data points are better tends to degrade a sample, not improve it.
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This theory could be extended quite easily to say that every action of Chaos is an action of Chaos and thus untrustworthy and probably part of a greater plot thus should be discarded and thus it's literally impossible to ever meaningfully prepare for anything Chaos does ever. And while there are those in the Empire that do expound this theory, usually those that argue for 100% military readiness at all times or to trust entirely in the Gods to save humanity, the Grey Order is not among them. It believes that if a Greater Daemon of Tzeentch says it, that's useless. If a Cult of Khorne is also saying it, and a Cult of Slaanesh is acting like it, and a Cult of Nurgle is really trying to burnish the reputation of their champion, then a greater trend starts to emerge, a signal derived from the noise.

One of the main things about Chaos is that it's not ever a unified bloc, and in that lies its downfall. You're right that the combined forces of Tzeentch acting for the greater good of Chaos would not give away that information. But the combined forces of Tzeentch do not exist, and none of the fragments particularly care about the greater good of Chaos compared to the good for them specifically. A single Greater Daemon could very easily let it slip if the potential reward of doing so is greater than the personal cost, like if it could give a preferred Everchosen candidate - like a sneaky Wizard with a tendency towards the unexpected - a nudge in the right direction. For all that the Everchosen is the Chosen of all four Chaos Gods, there's mutually exclusive traits and properties that each God would prefer to see in whoever ends up the least bad candidate once all the bodies have hit the floor.

DragonParadox said:
And even if one assumes that a thousand augurs looking in the guts of a thousand dead chickens can somehow add up to a meaningful answer Chaos can just change the answer if we seem too prepared. This is not predicting the weather, it's enemy action which means they can see us preparing for them.
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Dissuading Chaos from attacking the Old World is seen as a victory by most that live in the Old World. Cathay's defences are famously formidable, and there's not a lot of tears that will be shed if Naggaroth falls to a Chaos invasion. Also I think that you're using augury to mean 'a prediction that is unreliable to the point of uselessness' but that sort of linguistic gambit doesn't work so well in a setting where divination is provably real and has significant chunks of religions and wizard orders dedicated to it.

Alectai said:
Anyway.

I'm out, maybe just for a bit, maybe forever. This isn't a knock against Boney at all, I appreciate that he's sticking to his guns and making a bad roll suck, but once in-game entities start using Out of Character manipulation on the playerbase specifically to elicit reaction when they should be ignoring them, in a playerbase of this size, there's no longer any doubt as to where the plot will go. Which is to say "Exactly where that entity wanted it to". That's what happens when the Fourth Wall starts getting leaned on. I'm not upset given that it's not exactly being subtle about it, or pretending like it isn't happening, but that doesn't make things any less pre-ordained.

Hopefully I'm wrong and trusting other people isn't going to play into the Plan. But I don't think I am. "Mathilde Died in a magical accident when her precautions were overcome by an OCP, BAD END" is sad, but probably better than watching her get railroaded into either being executed or corrupted because a Daemon scared her with words that are meaningless in universe but trigger the playerbase hard and cause them to overcorrect.
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I do get where you're coming from, but even so, it kind of is a knock against Boney to say that he's going to wield retcons to railroad the playerbase into suckery just because a Greater Daemon appeared on the field. There are, as always, better choices and worse choices, and riskier choices and safer choices, and sometimes no good options and only less bad ones, but I'm not going to make whatever the thread chooses retroactively the 'haha suck shit you lose forever' option. If nothing else, trust that I wouldn't taint a story five years in the making by wrapping it up in such a profoundly shitty way.

The Thirteenth Everchosen is coming. That means they've gone all in twelve times and eaten shit every single time, and the Empire was built on the demonstrated truth that faith and steel can make it happen. The victory of Chaos is not inevitable, not ICly and definitely not OOCly.

Altom said:
Hmm...
@Boney can we postpone until after we at least tried to figure out full effects or our new perk.
Alternatively, could you please reiterate all the information on the "Fated" that we are supposed to have?
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The extent that Mathilde is aware of is that Tzeentchian magic is comfy and easy to use, and that there's probably more to it than that because of course there is. That's not something that can be explored all that easily without doing some super frowned upon shenanigans. If you want to be silent now and possibly start telling people things after enough information has come in (if it ever does) to recontextualize things, then vote to reveal nothing.

consequences said:
So the Pendulum is likely about the upper limit of what can be safely(ish) contained insofar as that ever applies to Battle Magic?
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The Pendulum either works in a way that lets the liminal border heal itself without trouble, or it includes some mechanism to repair the damage it does.

Dark as Silver said:
Well if this one is Tzeentch, then the sane are well and truly fucked.
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If I'm remembering correctly, the Chaos Gods monkeying with communication between the regular Gods and their faithful is the backstory of both Archaon and the Affair of the False Grail.

LadyLynn said:
Just to verify: the College option is only reporting to the Grey College, right?
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Yes.

Nerdasaurus Rex said:
Kislev owes a debt to Mathilde. but Niedzwenka is not only older than Kislev, but most Kislevians, including the Ice Court, are, from her perspective, conquerors and colonisers. She should have no obligation to fulfil Kislev's debts.

So either she really likes Boris, or Boris has some weird pull over her, or she has a motivation of her own to be involved in this, and all of that is making my spine tingle.
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Aside from the other motivations listed, it was Boris that pulled the strings to get her here. With the Ice Court sidelined and the Gospodars happily filling the power vacuum the current Tzar leaves, Boris has been aligning himself with the Ungols to build influence and power of his own, and may have already promised them the reforms that gave them a degree of self-governance in the canonical history of Kislev.
 
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