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Warhammer Fantasy: Divided Loyalties - an Advisor's Quest

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Glau said:
Oh, yeah, there's that too:

Assumption 3: the shadowknife/matrix combo won't leave him alive but wounded.

Given the wounds that people take and recover from while in combat in this world, it seems like a poor random angle might exit the chest without actually hitting anything vital.

A shadowdagger can be reliably targeted.
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We can watch what the shadow dagger does and make certain. But it's going to either pierce a lung or heart. That, plus mockery of death stopping him from getting help, is fatal.
 
Somic said:
It's a shadowknife. Y'know, the thing that ignores clothes, which is the entirety of the evidence of "this is magic" behind the style vote. If it doesn't fly out of the body, then it's a sudden death that's not very hard to discover as weird (blood in mouth might be a clue). If it does, it looks pretty much exactly like a shadowknife going in because it failed to bleed off enough momentum to stop it from leaving so there's only so much damage it could've done.
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The thing about a knife that ignores clothing is that it's a lot more plausible that someone tried to make it look mundane, and forgot one tiny detail, than a death that could not be mundane.

Mopman43 said:
If we're aiming at his heart, zero.
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But we don't get to aim with the matrix. It's a random direction, starting from behind the sternum.

So it would need to go in a direction other than up to hit anything vital.
 
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Candesce said:
Y'know, on the off chance someone does interrupt when we're busy in the room, it seems like aborting the Matrix, killing the Tzar, and leaving immediately (possibly by using an Illusion of turning into a bat and flying out the window to teleport) would actually do a decent job of achieving our mission?
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Getting interrupted in the middle of a Nerfarious Lahmian Ritual and "settling" for the Tzar's death is such a persuasive story that I almost want it to be plan A. We could probably even succeed! Too bad the consequences of failure would be so catastrophic that I can't be satisfied with the level of "probably" I'm imagining.

But I'm glad Heart Attack is rallying, it's both a more plausible mistake for a Lahmian assassin to make and more obvious upon investigation. "This arrogant vampire didn't think we'd know to check," is the vibe I'm hoping for.

[X] Plan: Nighttime Heart Attack
 
Glau said:
Tsar gets hit with a single shadowknife. Critical hit. What are the chances of him surviving, if this were a combat?
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Depends on the location of the hit, and again the availability of magical healing, and the Tzar dislikes magic so he has none. I dont even know if Kislev has any magical healing, maybe the hag witches could do something, but not the ice witches.
 
Glau said:
The thing about a knife that ignores clothing is that it's a lot more plausible that someone tried to make it look mundane, and forgot one tiny detail, than a death that could not be mundane.
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Reminder what Boris asked of us
He takes a moment to gather himself. "I would have liked him to have a proper end against foes of Kislev, but there is a better way now. Do it as quietly as possible, leaving no evidence. If the way you do it could only have been done with magic, that is good."
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A death that could not be mundane is what we want. Also the method we are going for looks like a vampire using a magical method to make it look like a natural death rather than an assassiantion.
 
Ankermand said:
Depends on the location of the hit, and again the availability of magical healing, and the Tzar dislikes magic so he has none. I dont even know if Kislev has any magical healing, maybe the hag witches could do something, but not the ice witches.
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Hag Witches cure wounds by feeding you raw fish guts.

Kislev also has Priestesses of Salyak.
 
Y'all seem solidly convinced that taking longer to do a more elaborate plan with a greater chance of failure is the smart move with no actual risks.

Cool cool.

*Sigh*

Gonna step away.
 
Ankermand said:
Unless you got a jade wizard on standby, you aren't surviving that.
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Important people in the warhammer world seem to be sturdier than people in our world - presumably a side effect of the magic level - and even in our world, a stab wound in the chest that doesn't hit any vital organs was survivable occasionally even in roman times. There are even cases of people losing the functionality of one lung to a stab wound and surviving.

So no, it's not guaranteed to be fatal.
 
Now that I think about it, if I ever investigated a murder where the victim had a knife wound in the stomach but no holes in their shirt my first thought wouldn't be "magic knife that goes through clothing", it would be "they were stabbed without the shirt and dressed after the fact". 'Nighttime Visit With Style' already has 'no signs of struggle' as one of its intended clues, so if you already deduced the killer somehow incapacitated the Tzar you can also deduce that the killer was able to undress the Tzar without resistance.

Maybe the killer wanted a good look at the Tzar's chest so they could line up their perfect stab or something? That's definitely still weird, but not necessarily magical. I think 'Nighttime Visit With Style' is still good, and it can still definitely lead someone to suspect magic (especially when Boris is there to interpret the results of the investigation), but I do think that the matrix method is more obviously magical.
 
Parabola said:
Past Revealed
Casting Number: 20
Casting Time: 3 full actions
Duration: Special
Range: You
Ingredient: An item directly applicable to the question asked (+2)
Description: Your eyes turn red as you enter a trance and see the past through a crimson haze. Whilst in the trance, you are helpless. To receive a vision, you must first ask a question of the spirits (e.g. What happened here three years ago? or How did this man die?). However, as the vision comes from the point of view of local spirits (which may include the dead, nature spirits, malignant spites, or similar), the results are often confusing and unsure. The exact details of the vision are left in the hands of the GM, who is encouraged to be inventive with his descriptions of the trance vision (which lasts as long as the GM determines necessary or until you end the spell). If you have Fortune Told cast when you use this spell, one eye will be red and the other blue.
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(Fortune Told is their relevant spell to try to divine the future.)
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My main concern right now is that spell—it seems to be one of the better investigation methods that Kislev has readily available, so we should reasonably be able to assume that Boris would be expected to employ it—or at least use it to strengthen his case when he blames the Lahmians and Kalashniviks. How does our chosen assassination method look when viewed through the lens of that spell? Ideally, the results should also point towards Lahmians.
 
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