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Warhammer Fantasy: Divided Loyalties - an Advisor's Quest

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[X] Nighttime Visit With Style
-[X] Use Mockery of Death so there is no sign of struggle, then stab him in the heart with a Shadow Knife. Leave the room by Substance of Shadows or Smoke and Mirrors, leaving behind an unnaturally quiet death.

I like this one because it is fast, relativly low risk, and leaves behind obvious evidence that would be easy for the killer to overlook. Namely that he clearly has a stab wound in his chest, but his shirt - or blankets - has no stab would despite clearly being so covered in blood it must have been worn at the time of death. Just enough evidence to suggest magic, without being enough to actually point anywhere the new Tzar doesn't want it to.
 
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Here's a new idea, but I don't have time right now to review old research chapters and determine if it is viable:

We fake a perfect mundane assassination or a natural death, but toss some Warpstone dust onto a small puddle of AV on the scene of the crime to generate Dhar in the room.

Zero mundane evidence, but a halfway competent mage who examines the scene of the crime would immediately be able to tell that there was Dark Magic in the area.
 
[X] Nighttime Visit
[X] Plan: Nighttime Heart Attack
[X] Conspicuous Exfiltration: After securing a kill during a nighttime visit, leave a trail of sightings and evidence that points to a Lahmian trying, and failing, to move subtly and cover her tracks.
 
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Evilness42 said:
Here's a new idea, but I don't have time right now to review old research chapters and determine if it is viable:

We fake a perfect mundane assassination or a natural death, but toss some Warpstone dust onto a small puddle of AV on the scene of the crime to generate Dhar in the room.

Zero mundane evidence, but a halfway competent mage who examines the scene of the crime would immediately be able to tell that there was Dark Magic in the area.
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Intentionally creating dhar is very against the articles in an entirely unambiguous way

Which might seem like an odd line to draw when assassinating a head of state and asking neither forgiveness nor permission, but its a line Mathilde has yet to cross and one I'd prefer she never does.
 
Mopman43 said:
"Theft and Death", the sidebar on top of page 42 of Realm of the Ice Queen covers how the closest thing to Morr worship in most of Kislev is an Oblast folk figure called 'Misery'.

The portion about Kislev City does state that, contrary to the rest of the country, Morr is actually well-regarded in the city, so fair enough there.

I expect they probably have more limited political power than in the Empire though. Especially given that most Kislevite practices with the deceased are very far from Morrite standard (for example, warriors are generally treated by sending them off into the Oblast riding their horse).
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Even if they have more limited power, this feels like the kind of place that they would exercise it the most. Plus, I doubt the non-Morrite traditions are to cut the body open upon death, and autopsies don't seem to be a particularly standard procedure.

Redshirt Army said:
If your bar for "hard to assassinate" is "any old Grey Lord Magister with the Unseen trait can get in", then you may be setting the bar too high.

There's single digit numbers of people who can do what Mathilde does in the entire Old World.
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There are probably a hundred or so people who could kill the Tzar, maybe as many as twenty with access to Ulgu, just none with any real reason to actually kill the guy.
 
One reason I don't like spontaneous heart attack is the below

Boney said:
Do it as quietly as possible
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Waiting for him to be in public seems like it would be the opposite of as quietly as possibble. It is deliberately going out of our way to make it public. Recommend changing it to either be set off immediately - with the main benefit being the internal injuries - or to have it go off when he is not in public. Perhaps shortly after he wakes up, or when he uses the bathroom, or something.
 
Also, it risks the AV, something distinctly ours, sticking around, or the warpstone, which can't be consistent everywhere, getting traced.
For the spontaneous heart attack, anyone who knows magic will have to ask why the assassination was carried out the way it was, and the answer will be 'in order to make it obvious this was magic', which raises far, far, too many questions.

The blame on the lahmians is a frankly unimportant second to the Tsarevich not being suspected-which he will be, if the reasons the Lahmians use the means they do is called into question obviously. The answer being 'in order to keep him from struggling' answers it well enough for the stylish nighttime visit. The answer why someone who successfully killed the Tsar by earlier attack with knives kept him alive for the day, and waited until he died in public?
[X] Nighttime Visit With Style and coverup
-[X] Use Mockery of Death so there is no sign of struggle, then stab him in the heart with a Shadow Knife. Leave the room by Substance of Shadows or Smoke and Mirrors, leaving behind an unnaturally quiet death.
-[X] Slash to 'cover up' the unripped gown, cutting a bit more of the gown then the knife would on the way in, particularly above where a stab would have hit.

Shadow knives are fiendishly complex, and any fiend who knew them would expect clothing to stop them- but might easily accidentally cut too far or start too soon, and 'mend garment' isn't a spell. Every question even a suspicious investigator could ask would have a clear enough answer, and tracing that as a frameup of a vampire would be nearly impossible.
(this does hinge, though, on shadow knives being easier to throw from a distance then a regular knife would be, but I think that assumption is likely).
 
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A funny scenario:
A team of guards find Mathilde as she's sneaking away.

Guards: Halt! Who are you? Why are you in the palace?!

Mathilde: Quickly! I was hired by the prince to protect the Tsar from a vampire assassin, but I lost track of them! I fear they may have already infiltrated the palace.

They find the Tsar already dead.

Mathilde: Oh no! Well anyway, you win some you lose some.
 
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[X] Nighttime Visit With Style
-[X] Use Mockery of Death so there is no sign of struggle, then stab him in the heart with a Shadow Knife. Leave the room by Substance of Shadows or Smoke and Mirrors, leaving behind an unnaturally quiet death.
 
[X] Nighttime Visit
[X] Nighttime Visit With Style

I remain unconvinced by the more showy plans. This is an assassination; it doesn't need to be a Plotter-worthy plan, it needs to leave a corpse. Nighttime Visit With Style is a reasonable way to pull this off while still leaving some vague mystery to point at, but Mathilde's own reasoning would probably also work fine.
 
so just a hypothetical what if Mathilde gets to the room and finds a assassin there already about to kill the Tzar. Like what if a skaven is there throwing the plans to frame Boris's political rivals.
 
[X] Nighttime Visit With Style
-[X] Use Mockery of Death so there is no sign of struggle, then stab him in the heart with a Shadow Knife. Leave the room by Substance of Shadows or Smoke and Mirrors, leaving behind an unnaturally quiet death.

I think a too-perfect assassination is the way forward.
 
[x] The Locked Room Murder: Too perfect version
[X] Nighttime Visit

I guess my problem with Nighttime with style... is if a Lahmian has taken all that effort to make it look mundane, why would they suddenly use the blatantly spooky shadow dagger that ignores clothes? Unnaturally clean death? That's right on the border of magical/mundane uncertainty and is ideal, but the killer stripping him, stabbing him, and putting his gown back on is blatantly either magic or performative. Blatancy or performative murder are the two things we're trying to avoid here. Its still trying to be too clever and sabotaging itself as a result.
 
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Nurgle said:
so just a hypothetical what if Mathilde gets to the room and finds a assassin there already about to kill the Tzar. Like what if a skaven is there throwing the plans to frame Boris's political rivals.
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If two assassins meet on their way to kill the same target, that's called a Meet-Cute.
 
Karugus said:
[x] The Locked Room Murder: Too perfect version
[X] Nighttime Visit

I guess my problem with Nighttime with style... is if a Lahmian has taken all that effort to make it look mundane, why would they suddenly use the blatantly spooky shadow dagger that ignores clothes? Unnaturally clean death? That's right on the border of magical/mundane uncertainty and is ideal, but the killer stripping him, stabbing him, and putting his gown back on is blatantly either magic or performative. Blatancy or performative murder are the two things we're trying to avoid here. Its still trying to be too clever and sabotaging itself as a result.
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Since it came from an edit, reposting

[X] Nighttime Visit With Style and coverup
-[X] Use Mockery of Death so there is no sign of struggle, then stab him in the heart with a Shadow Knife. Leave the room by Substance of Shadows or Smoke and Mirrors, leaving behind an unnaturally quiet death.
-[X] Slash to 'cover up' the unripped gown, cutting a bit more of the gown then the knife would on the way in, particularly above where a stab would have hit.

Shadow knives are fiendishly complex, and any fiend who knew them would expect clothing to obviously not get hit by them- but might easily accidentally cut too far or start too soon, and 'mend garment' isn't a spell. Every question even a suspicious investigator could ask would have a clear enough answer, and tracing that as a frameup of a vampire would be nearly impossible.
Basically, the scenario here is that the vampire killed him with a more easily thrown and more instant shadow knife, then conceals the means-at first- with a cut to the clothes which doesn't quite perfectly line up.
[x] The Locked Room Murder: Too perfect version
[X] Nighttime Visit
 
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[x] Nighttime Visit

[x] Nighttime Visit With Style
-[x] Use Mockery of Death so there is no sign of struggle, then stab him in the heart with a Shadow Knife. Leave the room by Substance of Shadows or Smoke and Mirrors, leaving behind an unnaturally quiet death.
 
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[x] The Locked Room Murder: Too perfect version
[x] Nighttime Visit With Style
[x] The Locked Room Murder


The blood soaking through the clothing would initially conceal the lack of damage. It's honestly pretty subtle, as far as clues go.

Like, it's not like his clothes are going to be clean. It's going to be super messy. Mockery of Death is going to be generating the stranger clues, frankly. Him being dead before being stabbed is a conclusion they might draw before they notice the clothing thing.

But we do need to leave an actual supernatural tell if we want to give Boris the excuse for the political purges he wants. We have to leave the whole clue just sitting there in the light where they really will catch it, because them catching it is the point.

We can't fall into the author's certainty of thinking that all the facts will be found in evidence -- the guards aren't starting from the thinking perspective of a magical expert who knows there's been an assassination and wants to pin it on the Lahmians, they're starting from the perspective of 'Is... he dead? Was he stabbed to death?'.

They're not going to start at Lahmians and then brainstorm about their methodology until they get to thinking that the Lahmians made a mistake and then finding the mistake suspicious; they're going to start nowhere and get to Lahmians with Boris feeding them their lines like third graders in a school play, and then take a break because they're tired. If we don't leave behind something clearly supernatural, it might not ever cross their minds that the assassin wasn't mundane.
 
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