Upon This Sword of Fire (CKII Quest)
- Thread starter Crilltic
- Start date
- Original Fantasy
- Location
- Vicksburg, MS
My kneejerk reaction for dealing with powerful nobles in a realm where our sister has been having a lot of troubles with their like is to treat them with some degree of respect. We could very well blatantly troll them by saying that Asya was practicing rolling through windows to snuff out flaming dresses as a drill in the event of a tragic candle accident at the wedding, and our realm wouldn't really suffer. I don't know if it's best to demean their nobles like that and insult their pride, though; they have long memories for such slights, and it's marginally adding on to the woes of our sister for little to no return.
We will be leaving this realm shortly, and like it or not her husband needs to be a pillar of support for her. That's the entire point of this marriage, to shore her up with the nobility and protect her from the schemes tey'd otherwise play at. If you think there are sneaks in his service, now is the time to ferret them out while Elita has absurdly skilled/lucky allies over and the plot is criticallu weakened from Asya's badassery.
We will be leaving this realm shortly, and like it or not her husband needs to be a pillar of support for her. That's the entire point of this marriage, to shore her up with the nobility and protect her from the schemes tey'd otherwise play at. If you think there are sneaks in his service, now is the time to ferret them out while Elita has absurdly skilled/lucky allies over and the plot is criticallu weakened from Asya's badassery.
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- Location
- Germany
I find it sad that she doesn´t do it like vana. Burn the nobles that try something. Also i find it more likely that he will betray her for power than help, but that is my opinion.
- Location
- Vicksburg, MS
Burning the nobility that she is using to administer here that constitutes the bulk of the converted may very well have adverse effects beyond simply inspiring rebellion.
Any betrayal of his looks to be a while down the road so long as the present circumstances continue. He's not the husband yet, they have no heir, if she dies right now all it does is bring on angry retribution from all the sister queendoms and there's no legitimacy with which to make a claim on the throne. I'm not saying to blindly trust him, but lying to his face just makes it clear that none of us trust him even a bit. And of course, a total lack of trust is a solid foundation for a marriage to last through the ages.
- Location
- Germany
Well, there may be a time where we want Brice to trust Illona. Lying to him now would make that a lot harder.
Telling Brice everything risks revealing too much, though. For example, maybe he doesn't know that Elita is a mage, and that is not ours to tell.
- Location
- his hidden lair
[X] Tell them it was an assassin, but nothing besides that.
-[X]Inform Elita fully in private.
Again, there are other bodies unless they've been removed, and there are certainly other sites where a struggle will have occurred. We can't hide the attempt, it's just nigh on impossible. But we can deny context as much as possible.
As is, there's no way Brice wouldn't know about the attempt even if we said nothing because unless they're imbeciles they'll have established regular status reports. The cat is out of the damn bag, only thing we can do is try and tell them what kind of cat it is.
-[X]Inform Elita fully in private.
Again, there are other bodies unless they've been removed, and there are certainly other sites where a struggle will have occurred. We can't hide the attempt, it's just nigh on impossible. But we can deny context as much as possible.
As is, there's no way Brice wouldn't know about the attempt even if we said nothing because unless they're imbeciles they'll have established regular status reports. The cat is out of the damn bag, only thing we can do is try and tell them what kind of cat it is.
- Location
- Massholistan
Voting will close at 8pm EST.
Current Tally:
[X] Tell them it was an assassin, but nothing besides that. -> 19
[X] Make something up on the spot. -> 16
[X] Have Asya tell everything -> 3
[X] Stall. Stall like your life depends on it. -> 1
Current Tally:
[X] Tell them it was an assassin, but nothing besides that. -> 19
[X] Make something up on the spot. -> 16
[X] Have Asya tell everything -> 3
[X] Stall. Stall like your life depends on it. -> 1
- Location
- Massholistan
Community.
They're worried the person Ilona's sister is going to marry is connected to the assassin. So they think they should hide what happened from him.
- Location
- Australia
This is a worst of all worlds option.
It leaves Brice (and Elita) in the dark if he's clean, whereas if he's not clean he'll almost certainly immediately guess everything we didn't want to tell him (i.e., the trap was sprung too early, we're still here, his assassins presumably aren't, time to put contingencies into place immediately).
- Location
- United States
No, I understood that but they also seem to believe that the assassin escaped. Which would mean the fiancé, if involved, would find out soon. In fact we would be giving him more information as lying would imply we suspect his involvement. That's the part I don't get. Their plan seems to achieve the opposite of what they want.
- Location
- Southern Virginia
Elita was right there when Masked Assassin was ranting about how Asya had killed all his men and when he displayed his anti-magic power and basically proclaimed his mission was to kill mages. There's not actually a whole lot more she needs to know short of debriefing Asya.
Brice on the other hand can or cannot be trusted to know the sisters are mages, but Elita can make that call later. There's zero point to lying because seriously, what the fuck could Illona say that would make any sense? If he is part of the conspiracy he'll put things together very shortly anyway when his assassins don't check in, and if he isn't then we are telling him everything relevant to what he needs to know.
Unless you think an hour or two is really meaningful on these "contingencies" or that he's going to attack right away?
I cannot help you there.
- Location
- Australia
We actually are vulnerable here; neither us nor Elita is armed or armoured, the sword is stuck in the assassin's chest, Asya is on her last legs. As this is a zealous order of mage-hunters, then if the jig is clearly up, we very much are at risk of a kamikaze-style attack from Brice. So long as he is resolved to die he stands a very good chance of catching the guards flat-footed.
An hour or two delay can make the difference, particularly if "contingencies" involves things like secondary forces, bombs, insurgencies, etc.
- Location
- Southern Virginia
If Brice attacks and doesn't have the anti-magic, he dies. If he attacks with the anti-magic, then the guards will almost certainly stop him as long as Asya or Illona can defend themselves. If he attacks and kills Elita or Illona or both, he dies. And then Valda inherits and will kill his entire family and burn Ahervare to the ground in vengeance.
- Location
- his hidden lair
There were several assassins. We cannot hide the fact there was an attempt on our lives. Claiming anything otherwise is pretty damn stupid.
There's absolutely no way we can hide this attack of the conspirators have people inside of the palace.
- Location
- Australia
I think that assuming Brice doesn't have the anti-magic is on a par with assuming a gun isn't loaded; until verified otherwise, assume it is.
The problem with, "If he attacks and kills Elita or Illona or both, he dies[,]" is that the retribution is all well and good, but this would be, how to put this, a tremendously unfortunate outcome for us. Because we would be dead, and not being zealous anti-anti-mages, that's not an exchange I think we should be interested in accepted. The order of assassins clearly believe that magic is inherently corrupting. Would they trade their family to snuff not one but two Reginas who are magic users?
Well, if he is a member of these assassins, then the answer is quite possibly every day and twice on sundays.
See, the thing is, telling Brice that it was an assassin but not going into details provides us no benefit. If he's dirty, he attacks, if he's clean, he can't help us because he has no information to work off. That's why I call it the worst of all worlds. We don't gain the benefit of his insight, and we don't gain the measure of safety that keeping him totally in the dark provides. It is most vulnerable to the very thing it is intended to control: the chance that he might be dirty.
The assassins aren't in sight.
Asya fell out the window.
We are helping clean-up after Asya fell out the window.
In the interim, we are now inside the assassin's OODA loop instead of them being inside ours.
- Location
- Canada
The reason we don't want to tell Brice everything is we don't know him and how he would react, we don't know how much about magic and assassins he knows about, we don't know what Asaya knows after hunting down these bastards for two days, and considering her lack of knowledge of Strayador culture and language she doesn't know what she knows. We don't want him flying off the handle or using something revealed here for his own political gain.
And if he is in on the plot, keep in mind that the masked assassin ended up in this hallway because he was chasing Asya. He was unlikely to keep his superiors updated with his location in the middle of a hot pursuit, so there's no way that Brice could take "an assassination attempt" to mean that his super mage hunter assassins got themselves killed. There is more than one party that has been plotting against Elita after all.
If Brice was willing to die to kill Elita, he had a thousand chances to have done it by now. The man is her fiancé. He probably even had chances when he could have planned things out ahead of time and not deal with two unknown individuals. Unless you think this man has three members of Elita's guard totally loyal to him with him at all times just in case he might stumble upon a chance to kill her.
- Location
- Australia
Being willing to die to kill someone doesn't mean you actually do it when you have a perfectly feasible plan involving lots of assassins and a public event you can escape conviction for. When you no longer have a feasible plan and a decent chance that all these freshly chopped loose-ends will lead back to you, then you are going to reevaluate the scenario.
And I'm going to point out again, magic apparently runs in the family. What event is very likely to bring far-flung families together? A wedding. So if you want to bring together a series of mages for the one hit, how do you set it up...?
The other bit you posted about guards and loyalty was never even suggested and wouldn't be necessary.
Edit: Again, this is really straight-forward. If we think he's clean and doesn't have anything to hide, full-disclosure. If we think he's a potential risk, don't divulge anything.
- Location
- Canada
I agree with you. The thing is, assassination attempts on Elita are apparently common enough that "There was an assassination attempt. It failed, I'm fine, goodnight Brice" is a more believable and effective cover story that making up some random nonsense that doesn't fit the facts of the scene. Brice still has no way of evaluating on the spot if his assassins are still intact, or if some other noble house with normal political reasons to not want the legacy of the Ash Maiden to continue made an attempt.