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Warhammer Fantasy: Divided Loyalties - an Advisor's Quest

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Nerdasaurus Rex said:
Except if that happens she'll have to restart the Matrix from scratch, prolonging the amount of time she spends in the Tzar's room and increasing the odds of getting caught.
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Those odds are damn well near zero with both her skill at stealth and the spells she has.

Nerdasaurus Rex said:
And the Tzar would be under the effect of Mockery as well, so if someone looks over at him and see's he's not breathing, they are going to raise an alarm.
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Someone already pointed out that Mockery doesn't stop breathing, but let's not also forget that it is needed for the murder itself, mot the entire duration of casting the Matrix. Mathilde is quiet enough to not wake up the Tzar on her own, and would easily notice if he woke up for any other reason.
 
spiritualatheist said:
Which is why we're using a spell that specifically leaves the clothe untouched, yes.
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That's rather transparently going out of your way to leave magical traces, though. Why would a hypothetically competent Lahmian assassin do that? It's not like regular knives (or, for that matter, vampire claws) won't stab someone just as dead, and the shirt not being damaged isn't going to make anyone think it wasn't a murder when he's lying in a pool of blood from the stab wound in his heart. The point is to look like a Lahmian who was trying not to get IDed as having committed an assassination but failed, not like a Lahmian who was actually trying to get busted as magically murdering the Tzar.
 
Fayhem said:
That's rather transparently going out of your way to leave magical traces, though. Why would a hypothetically competent Lahmian assassin do that? It's not like regular knives (or, for that matter, vampire claws) won't stab someone just as dead, and the shirt not being damaged isn't going to make anyone think it wasn't a murder when he's lying in a pool of blood from the stab wound in his heart. The point is to look like a Lahmian who was trying not to get IDed as having committed an assassination but failed, not like a Lahmian who was actually trying to get busted as magically murdering the Tzar.
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Maybe the Lahmian is not particularly competent. There is no reason someone with magic (as the wound shows) has to be competent at infiltration to take out a target with no magical protections. I do prefer the heart attack method, but I think the argument above falls into the pitfall of an paranoid assassination expert assuming that everyone is as paranoid as they are.
 
spiritualatheist said:
Which is why we're using a spell that specifically leaves the clothes untouched, yes.
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Does leaving the clothes undamaged really count as a magical smoking gun though? Why would a magical assassin leave the clothes intact while leaving behind an obvious knife wound. The logic does not add up if they wanted to conceal their methods. Whereas an immaculate corpse has the obvious motivation of hiding it behind a natural death.

I don't see why we couldn't try the Matrix and if there's any complications, simply default to the shadow knife stabbing. It's not like Mathilde won't adapt to the situation.
 
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DragonParadox said:
Maybe the Lahmian is not particularly competent. There is no reason someone with magic (as the wound shows) has to be competent at infiltration to take out a target with no magical protections. I do prefer the heart attack method, but I think the argument above falls into the pitfall of an paranoid assassination expect assuming that everyone is as paranoid as they are.
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Yeah, what if the Lahmians grew desperate from being discovered, or so close to discovery? Maybe they thought that a dead Tzar will distract everyone from them as Boris goes around Borising and the Boyars try to adjust to that? Not an impossible conclusion, I think.
 
DragonParadox said:
Maybe the Lahmian is not particularly competent. There is no reason someone with magic (as the wound shows) has to be competent at infiltration to take out a target with no magical protections. I do prefer the heart attack method, but I think the argument above falls into the pitfall of an paranoid assassination expect assuming that everyone is as paranoid as they are.
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Assassinations have a way of bringing out the paranoia in people who may not have been particularly paranoid before, though. That said no, the hypothetical Lahmian using an unnecessarily obviously magical method to effect an obviously unnatural death probably wouldn't inherently ruin things because as you've demonstrated you can come up with rationalizations for it, but I certainly don't think it'd help our cause compared to an approach that holds up more solidly under logical examination.
 
After some consideration, I've decided to switch my vote solely to Nighttime Heart Attack. I won't mind if Nighttime Visit with Style wins (leaving a body that didn't struggle at all after being stabbed in the heart is suspicious on its own despite leaving no evidence per se), but the idea of leaving an internal stab wound seems appealing.

[X] Plan: Nighttime Heart Attack
 
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Fayhem said:
In this era autopsies are far from standard, so a hypothetical Lahmian would have good reason to believe this murder would go undetected.
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I should note that I don't think autopsies are that uncommon in current era warhammer. At least in the Empire the Empress was examined extremely thoroughly by a great many physicians to make sure her death was natural. I still think it's both the type of thing a Lahmian might do and the type of thing a layman would think a Lahmian might do, but it's not exactly the perfect (framed) crime.
 
AsuraAtlas said:
I should note that I don't think autopsies are that uncommon in current era warhammer. At least in the Empire the Empress was examined extremely thoroughly by a great many physicians to make sure her death was natural. I still think it's both the type of thing a Lahmian might do and the type of thing a layman would think a Lahmian might do, but it's not exactly the perfect (framed) crime.
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That's fair, but it's also notable that Kislev is well behind the Empire in quite a number of ways, and I would be very surprised if medical science wasn't one of them just as "commitment to palace security" evidently is. The fact that his father hasn't cared to put out any real effort to change that is one of the reasons Boris is feeling the need to take over.
 
Plus autopsies are typically done when you think something is wrong, which for the hypothetical Lahmian vampire they have no reason to suspect the humans would see this as anything but a natural death.
 
AsuraAtlas said:
I should note that I don't think autopsies are that uncommon in current era warhammer. At least in the Empire the Empress was examined extremely thoroughly by a great many physicians to make sure her death was natural. I still think it's both the type of thing a Lahmian might do and the type of thing a layman would think a Lahmian might do, but it's not exactly the perfect (framed) crime.
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Note that the 'physicians' in question may well have not conducted an autopsy (which involves cutting the body open) and also are not noted for beign particularly brilliant paragons of medical science, as we're still in the era of "a surgeon is a barber who sews things as well".

Also, they were wrong in their conclusions, because we know for a fact that the Empress was murdered.
 
Adhoc vote count started by BurnNote on Sep 26, 2023 at 4:28 AM, finished with 602 posts and 162 votes.
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Nighttime visit with Style still has a decent lead, but the killing him right there with MMM has caught up a lot. It's definitely a contender now. If you're approval voting both, then you should consider if you have a preference for one or the other.
 
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