Remove ads

It Belongs to a Museum

Voting is open
Reader mode
If we're going to be sending the Tide off on multi turn expeditions, picking up a second acquisitionist to alternate with isn't a terrible idea. Gives us some more variety, too. Though getting pirate relics from Luthor isn't a bad option either.
 
While i am rather eager to further develop our relationship with Aelsabrim, it might be more useful to get more staff.
Or a new acquisitionist.
Maybe study the plants?

edit-
Boney said:
As prominent a part of your own personal history as the infamous figures that pushed the boundaries of Arabyan dark magic have been, you have had many students who were neither blights upon the living nor scapegoats dispatched to an early grave by the ignorant and unforgiving. Some of your more disappointing wards have merely been decent students that advanced their fields a moderate amount by sane means. And though the influence they have had upon the world has undeniably fallen short of the potential they once showed, the influence they have had upon Arabyan academia has been considerable. Among that is a widespread understanding that there exists a living relic from ancient Nehekhara wandering the world, a perhaps eccentric but unquestionably knowledgeable font of ancient insight and forgotten lore. You've never spent that long leaning on the hospitality of academia in a single stretch, finding the limitations of acceptability and their hesitance towards the more interesting subjects grating over the long term, but even a few months here and a couple of years there adds up to quite a legacy in the long run.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Perfection.
 
Last edited:
Dragonofelder said:
Maybe if he wants to retire
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
He needs treatment first. Too mad as a blood dragon and Harkon is already mad.

On the other hand another possible museum staff to recruit once he gets head hunted and restrained for treatment and negotiations.

You play someone very familiar with vampires and death so concocting some treatment to make the red duke more sane is possible. Those plants might help.

Which reminds me:
Boney said:
Abhorash, as you know and so many of his so-called disciples don't, was a sensitive soul. Head of Lahmia's Palace Guard and obviously and desperately devoted to the Queen he had practically raised, he made a big display of his angst over her willing transformation into a Vampire and, later, his own reluctant acceptance of the same condition. But what was always clear to you was that he was much more bothered by Neferata's bond with Vashanesh, though you were never entirely sure whether it was the jealousy of a man for a woman who cares more for another, or the dissatisfaction of a father who sees his child entangled with one they see as unworthy. In any case, after the fall of Lahmia and the diaspora of the Vampires, Abhorash struck out on his own path, reappearing in the historical record only sporadically and briefly, and never with clear motives. This makes it easy to ascribe all sorts of martial philosophies to him, easy to project one's on beliefs onto. That's what makes the Blood Dragons so convinced they're the inheritors of Abhorash's legacy.

But since the time of living Nehekhara, Abhorash has granted the Blood Kiss to at least one other that you know of: the so-called Red Duke of Bretonnia. The Cataphract Kingdom of the Bretonni is a land where the horse nomads rule over the settlers from their stone redoubts, where a mysterious and immortal woman distributes empowering elixirs to the mightiest in exchange for oaths of eternal service. You'd spent a number of years in Antoch, Bretonnia's colony on the Gulf of Medes, trying to figure out if the land was one of Neferata's gambits. You never did managed to completely rule it out, but one thing you discovered is the dark myths of one of Antoch's founders, the man whose birth name has been erased but who was known in Araby as El Syf ash-Shml, the Sword of the North. El Syf was part of the northerner reprisal to Sultan Jaffar that joined the rebellion against him, and earned himself considerable glory with his skills with a sword and the wisdom with which he chose when to wield it, enough so that when he was struck down by the treachery of his own kin and lay dying in the sand, he was granted the Blood Kiss by Abhorash himself.

Since then he has engaged in multiple conflicts for rulerships over his native land, and as is the nature of such things, in failure he has been recorded as a unique and terrible horror. Most recently he was resurrected in Mousillon by Chaos cultists as part of some sort of conflict to suborn the faith of the land - apparently it included a pretender goddess distributing corrupted elixirs that enthralled the drinker, and your questioning gaze is once more turning in Neferata's direction. After they were defeated, he has lingered after that as the de facto Duke of that land in the absence of any more legitimate inheritor - the Red Duke of Mousillon.

To commemorate the unique circumstances of the Red Duke, and the ambiguity he sheds on the legitimacy of the Blood Dragons as the inheritors of Abhorash, you have dispatched the Tide of Skjold to the coast of Bretonnia to seek artefacts of undeath from that land. The distance in question means it will take longer to see results than their recent voyage to the Amaxon, but in the meantime you can turn your full attention to other matters.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Abhorash despite being a sensitive soul in the beginning and after his undeath acts like an irresponsible father when his attempt to help someone dying only lead to more death from someone who came back to life with no direction.
 
Last edited:
Dark as Silver said:
Do you think we could requisition some skeletons for them eat? Upgrade those drawings into a reenactment?
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

Not sure that would work, the plants aren't stupid, being that they are for the most part Lizardman security measures and not just random mutations. They'd figure out that the Skeletons aren't doing anything for them and might actually harm them is they have too much Shysh and Dhar inside.
 
rx915 said:
Which reminds me:

Abhorash despite being a sensitive soul in the beginning and after his undeath acts like an irresponsible father when his attempt to help someone dying only lead to more death from someone who came back to life with no direction.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

So he is "undeadbeat father". (Pun intended)
 
This quest has an entirely different vibe compared to Divided Loyalties and I'm all for it.
We're not the drivers of tomorrow, but more just a witness of the past.
And I guess Boney gets to have fun with some cool world building! I'm guessing a lot of this is filling in details on some vague barely mentioned things in the WHF cannon?
 
Last edited:
Thank you for the update, Boney! Wonderful and colourful writing, as ever. In particular:

Boney said:
The Cataphract Kingdom of the Bretonni is a land where the horse nomads rule over the settlers from their stone redoubts
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
"Um, ackchually, Pahtsekhen, proper cataphracts use mounted archery as the foundation of their tactical system, which Bretonnia's heavily armoured horsemen have long since forgotten due to lapsed contact with the steppe!"

(It is very funny to see this particular lens on the knights. Goes to show why sources with military experience are more reliable about military matters than those without!)

Interesting about the plants, too - even if the numerical boon isn't there yet, that's useful systemic knowledge to have... Would we increase the collection's level by seeking out other plants from Lustria, then? Carnivorous plants from elsewhere? That kind of thing?
 
Last edited:
You know it occurs to me that with vampires, elves and Arabyans all mixing together as well as more audiences to come there is a bit of a side job we could get into that would require almost no effort, guaranteeing a safe, magically warded and discreet place to talk to people one would rather not be seen with talking about things of a delicate nature. It's good cover for the magically inclined or even just those seemingly starved for novelty, like wide swaths of the nobility would be. It's also the kind of subtle influence upon which this quest runs not simple money.
 
Nimbus said:
Interesting about the plants, too - even if the numerical boon isn't there yet, that's useful systemic knowledge to have... Would we increase the collection's level by seeking out other plants from Lustria, then? Carnivorous plants from elsewhere? That kind of thing?
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

It's not going after a single specimen, but trying to have a complete cross-section of a particular area, so it'd be the work of experts rather than something you can throw skeletons at. If some part of Lustria becomes more available to Telsomar or if there's a major expedition to an unexplored area that the Citadel is involved in in some way, that's likely to increase it.
 
Definitely on board with our next goodwill purchase being more acquisitionists. I think we should focus on them and staff rather than new audiences for a bit until we have exhibits to satisfy the audiences we have.
 
This Goodwill should be spent on getting a Contact at the White Tower. Unlocking that was the main selling point of our Patron specialization and Contacts aren't any worse than Acquisitionist at filling out our exhibitions. I am also looking forward to seeing what kind of White Tower person would want to sell/gift stuff to our quirky little museum.
 
I am torn on what to spend Goodwill on. On the one hand, getting a new contact with the White Tower might be handy. On the other, getting a new Contact from Paht's past could be handy. On the skeletal servant's hand, Bahr the Betrayer beckons to me.

At least I am certain I want to go poke New Huatl this turn.
 
I've got to say Boney, I'll never stop being impressed at how you can take a vote I didn't agree with and write it in such a way that it makes me wish that I had actually voted for it.
 
Okay - so. So. Framing the situation in terms of the proposed Turn 12 vampirism/necromancy necroturgy exhibit.

As it turns out, a few of the sums in my previous post were off the mark, namely because I wasn't taking into account the final number in the Interest equation for each exhibit: the total of the remaining themes divided by three. This means that if we were to, say, get part of our audience interested in Lustria, the increase would be two-thirds of the value of the tag rounded up - so, in the Lustria tag's case, 17, not the full 25. (I am sure that this has been explained before by someone with a better head for these things than I - apologies for missing it!)

That means that going for Cultivate Audience (Awakening, Lustria) isn't really viable yet - it gets us further away from the next Goodwill point, not closer to it, and even were we to add the botanical collection to the Dangers of Lustria exhibit right now as well, we wouldn't break even (because the addition of a 4-Interest Lustria tag brings the sum of the remaining themes to 48, which is a multiple of three, meaning that you'd only get 2 more out of fully bringing the tag online).

As such, I think that the best path is to go for New Contact (Pahtsekhen) now to begin our work and assessment of acquiring Lahmian artefacts and try to make up the ground for our necroturge as we go. This means that the ideal case is that we have the Goodwill for them in Year 10 and only have Year 11 with their skills for pursuing leads and the like and 12 purely for researching. Not brilliant but it is what it is.

As for how to make up that ground... Magical Relics is a no-brainer, I think - hits our new 5x Magic/Lustrian Magic tag synergy and can easily be shuffled into Dangers of Lustria. We only need three tags' worth of that to make the next Goodwill, even if we ignore their Lustria tags. (Again, mea culpa for not recognising all of this on the previous turn!)

If that isn't enough, and the plants on their own can't make up the deficit... There is a backup, and I don't like it at all: temporarily putting the Runestone into either of the two exhibits, using the same Adjust Exhibits action we'd be using on the Magical Relics and Plants. This would be a thematic stretch - you could justify either, using the Runestone as an epilogue of sorts to Harkon's Norscan journeys by demonstrating his continued affinity for that land and its people or using it to make more explicit the undertones of the menace that the Vampire Coast now pose in Lustria, but neither is brilliant. Hopefully it isn't necessary.

As a final action, I'm going to propose what I proposed in that previous post: investigating Harkon the Sorcerer. Showcasing his own magical talents will be crucial for anchoring the thematic point of the exhibit: that the Vampire Coast is the modern-day leader of the global vampiric and necromantic necroturgic tradition. The clue's rather in the name, in that regard!

[ ] Plan: Year 12 V/N Exhibit - Magical Foundations
- [ ] Spend Goodwill
-- [ ] New Contact (Pahtsekhen)
- [ ] Develop Museum
-- [ ] Investigate (Harkon the Sorcerer)
- [ ] Acquire Relics - via Princess Aelsabrim Fallenstar
-- [ ] Magical Relics

(I'd suggest that for people also hoping to create a vampiric/necroturgic exhibit in Year 12, to mark the tenth anniversary of the museum's opening by fulfilling our primary Patron's aims and educating visitors about the wonderful world of dark magics in the process, including 'Year 12 V/N Exhibit' in a plan name will help to show the proposed direction of travel!)
 
Last edited:
The best part is that we're making our exhibit of dark magic after the Arabyans had sent their investigators, found nothing wrong with our museum, and started sending more impressionable academics. Paht's pulling a sneaky on them.
 
In terms of awful pun names, the historic predecessor to the museum was the cabinet of curiosities (wunderkammer), so why not Luther Harkon's Cabinet of Atrocities or Lutr the Sorcerer's Cabinet of Monstrosities?
 
Last edited:
Reader mode
You must login or register to reply here.
Voting is open
Remove ads
Back
Top