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Warhammer Fantasy: Divided Loyalties - an Advisor's Quest

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I was thinking again about how it was mentioned that space is at an extreme premium and we were handed a Great House to serve as the project seat. This definitely makes us rich in terms of the city- I wonder how best to leverage that?

Get a staff that we pay in room and board? Probably not too hard, and definitely a good move politically: the huge empty house should be filled up with elves and not just outsiders who waste the space...

Personally, I'd like to set up a bit of an outreach program, or an 'empire studies' set of courses. If there really is a sort of frustrated ambition seething in the lower classes of the city, teaching raikspeil and the current structure of the empire might be a good step in encouraging more elves to go out and interact. Traders, recruits to EIC, mercenaries, scholars- it would be leaving the city, so giving up city-born privleges, but knowing what to expect, speaking the language, and having options besides the forest will probably spark an outflow.

So setting up a wing with a few classrooms and lodging for students is on my mind. I think the other major houses would go for it too, if only because it lets them get their own people who can translate and gather information, instead of relying on the stuff that filters on from the pro-human factions.
 
Briefvoice said:
Last I recall he needed special metal-infused inks to do that, though it's possible he's gotten good enough to be able to trace letters written in more commonly used inks. A quick google suggests that iron gall ink, made with (as the name suggests) iron sulphate among other ingredients, was very common in the time period that WHF generally mimics.
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Boney said:
Most Old World inks are made with iron salts, so he can read most books without trouble.
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This makes me curious on what inks he can't read, if iron-based ones are the most common.
 
ReImagined said:
This makes me curious on what inks he can't read, if iron-based ones are the most common.
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Before Gall-inks there were Carbon inks, made from the black charring scraped off burning wood and the like (essentially small amounts of charcoal) mixed with a sticky gum.

So older books written with that ink would likely be a common enough problem.
 
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Glau said:
I was thinking again about how it was mentioned that space is at an extreme premium and we were handed a Great House to serve as the project seat. This definitely makes us rich in terms of the city- I wonder how best to leverage that?

Get a staff that we pay in room and board? Probably not too hard, and definitely a good move politically: the huge empty house should be filled up with elves and not just outsiders who waste the space...

Personally, I'd like to set up a bit of an outreach program, or an 'empire studies' set of courses. If there really is a sort of frustrated ambition seething in the lower classes of the city, teaching raikspeil and the current structure of the empire might be a good step in encouraging more elves to go out and interact. Traders, recruits to EIC, mercenaries, scholars- it would be leaving the city, so giving up city-born privleges, but knowing what to expect, speaking the language, and having options besides the forest will probably spark an outflow.

So setting up a wing with a few classrooms and lodging for students is on my mind. I think the other major houses would go for it too, if only because it lets them get their own people who can translate and gather information, instead of relying on the stuff that filters on from the pro-human factions.
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I think, that the first part is a good idea, large Roman homes often had street side stores.

the second is incredibly likely to piss the hosts off, if the goal is to get people to leave, or even leave and join the empire.

we would get kicked out right fast by all parties if we started that.
 
Codex said:
I didn't understand what "gamine" meant, but after looking it up, and seeing the use of they as their pronouns, I'm assuming this musician is nonbinary?

If so, I love it. Did we get their name?
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Weirdly, I assumed that "gamine" meant "a young and playful girl" or "a woman who is like a girl". Maybe that's just an accidental carry-over from French (where that's the meaning of the word). Does it mean something different in English?
 
So I have been thinking about the proposition that there are no Grey Lords or that there is no Library and I do not think there is much of a chance of either. Why? Because both were major selling points, which means that should they prove false we would have cause to just pull back, disband the project and walk way. Of course we the players would not do that for narrative reasons, it would be unsatisfying as hell, but the Eonir would have no reason to assume that Mathilde Weber thinks like that. If something was a selling point it exists in some form.
 
DragonParadox said:
So I have been thinking about the proposition that there are no Grey Lords or that there is no Library and I do not think there is much of a chance of either. Why? Because both were major selling points, which means that should they prove false we would have cause to just pull back, disband the project and walk way. Of course we the players would not do that for narrative reasons, it would be unsatisfying as hell, but the Eonir would have no reason to assume that Mathilde Weber thinks like that. If something was a selling point it exists in some form.
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This is probably correct but its not a funny meme.
 
Glau said:
Personally, I'd like to set up a bit of an outreach program, or an 'empire studies' set of courses. If there really is a sort of frustrated ambition seething in the lower classes of the city, teaching raikspeil and the current structure of the empire might be a good step in encouraging more elves to go out and interact. Traders, recruits to EIC, mercenaries, scholars- it would be leaving the city, so giving up city-born privleges, but knowing what to expect, speaking the language, and having options besides the forest will probably spark an outflow.
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This will almost certainly stir the shit. Many of the Great Houses are propping up the status quo - if we bust in on year one and immediately engage in this sort of meddling it will give ammunition to the isolationists.

BurnNote said:
This is a sign he needs to spend more time talking to our dog.
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We should bring our dog over here for a change of pace.
 
TalonofAnathrax said:
Weirdly, I assumed that "gamine" meant "a young and playful girl" or "a woman who is like a girl". Maybe that's just an accidental carry-over from French (where that's the meaning of the word). Does it mean something different in English?
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Gamine in English means "a woman who is attractively boyish". Androgynous appearance + youthful behaviour.
 
I agree the lack of any interested parties and those experts stepping forward from the Eonir is odd, but it's still early days and we don't know how they do things yet.

Re the conspicuously missing Grey Lords,
Boney said:
We'll also be a lot freer to contribute our expertise to a local project - we have mages that will travel to contribute, but the Grey Lords prefer not to leave their forests, as do some of the more esoteric beings that contribute to our society."
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My suspicion is this means the Grey Lords dwell in the forests of Laurelorn itself, not the city.
If these ancient saviours of the Eonir from the Throng do live in the forest, same as the Faniour, that's likely a sore point for the Toriour and could be seen as a rejection of their ways. It could even be an explicit rejection.
Further, and more speculatively, being pretty old even for elves and on the more extreme end of the uses of magic (being the banished researchers), is it possible they've undergone some transition that binds them to the Forest more directly in some manner, which would make it hard to leave?

There's another thing I noticed and wonder about.
Boney said:
They were some of the loudest voices against contact with outsiders, and had two votes on the High Council - one for Vicarius, one for being a Major House. For centuries the vote had been fifteen to ten against, or sixteen to nine when the Stormwitch was Triumvir.
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For centuries, the Stormwitch voted against contact (with anyone?), based on the margin against contact increasing when they were Triumvir.
Boney said:
The Ward of Storm: The lands of western Laurelorn, touching Middenland on one end and the ocean on the other. Until the extinction of House Elwyn, it was the only Ward ruled by Forestborn instead of a Major House. The current Warden is Kaia, known as the 'Stormwitch', who advocates peaceful relations with the Empire... and also with the Druchii and the Norscans. Huh.
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Yet they are presented here as being in favour of contact, (Edit: or at least peaceful relations, which might not be quite the same thing).
What changed? Also the Schadensumpf battle? Did they have a succession? Or something else?
Druchii and Norscans are an... interesting bunch to be grouped in with, for favouring peaceful (diplomatic?) relations. One can imagine unsavoury reasons for desiring such contacts.

(Have I got their confusing system right? Being Triumvir gives an extra vote?)
 
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Alliterate said:
I agree the lack of any interested parties and those experts stepping forward from the Eonir is odd, but it's still early days and we don't know how they do things yet.

Re the conspicuously missing Grey Lords,

My suspicion is this means the Grey Lords dwell in the forests of Laurelorn itself, not the city.
If these ancient saviours of the Eonir from the Throng do live in the forest, same as the Faniour, that's likely a sore point for the Toriour and could be seen as a rejection of their ways. It could even be an explicit rejection.
Further, and more speculatively, being pretty old even for elves and on the more extreme end of the uses of magic (being the banished researchers), is it possible they've undergone some transition that binds them to the Forest more directly in some manner, which would make it hard to leave?

There's another thing I noticed and wonder about.

For centuries, the Stormwitch voted against contact (with anyone?), based on the margin against contact increasing when they were Triumvir.

Yet they are presented here as being in favour of contact.
What changed? Also the Schadensumpf battle? Did they have a succession? Or something else?
Druchii and Norscans are an... interesting bunch to be grouped in with, for favouring diplomatic relations. One can imagine unsavoury reasons for desiring such contacts.
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The Stormwitch being Triumvir meant the other 3, non-contact-favoring Wardens were voting.

The Triumvirate doesn't vote in the High Council.
 
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So there were 22 houses (now 21) with a vote each, and then the 4 Wardens got 3 votes between them, with the non-voting warden being part of the Triumvirate having the tiebreaker vote, right? And the Triumvirate has the Queen (permanent seat), the Champion (changes every 4 years, given to the winner of the local Olympic games which is a reference I only just got) and the Warden rotates... every year? I think? So any champion will share the Triumvirate with each warden once per term.

I wonder what the pattern for the Warden rotation is? I doubt Cadaeth was the Triumvir back when we first met her in 2482, and it's the Warden of the Sun in 2487.



... Okay, I just did a quick search to find out when the business with with the Eonir actually started, and I found this comment from the haunted hills arc back in 2476:

Boney said:
Averland's occupied with the remnants of a Waagh that swept in from the mountains a couple of years back. Ostermark, as you know, is occupied with the forests around Mordheim. There's tensions between Middenland and Nordland over some stretch of unoccupied forest or another. Ostland is busy dealing with beastmen spilling over the border from Kislev. There's an Elector's Meet in 2477, some dwarves are trying to take back some hold in the middle of the Badlands and have asked the Empire for aid.

In other words, business as usual.
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"some stretch of unoccupied forest or another."

Boney you goddamn genius.

Also an early K8P mention, I bet those "Beastmen" are the Yhetees Asarnil fought, and Pan fought in the Mordheim campaign. The only one we've not heard anything about is the Averland greenskin troubles, and I bet our Waaagh lectures went a long way towards helping with that. Shame we don't have the time to poke our noses into that.
 
Alliterate said:
If these ancient saviours of the Eonir from the Throng do live in the forest, same as the Faniour, that's likely a sore point for the Toriour and could be seen as a rejection of their ways. It could even be an explicit rejection.
Further, and more speculatively, being pretty old even for elves and on the more extreme end of the uses of magic (being the banished researchers), is it possible they've undergone some transition that binds them to the Forest more directly in some manner, which would make it hard to leave?
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Nothing actually indicates that the Grey Lords are the exact same group of Elves as the ones who saved Tor Lithanel. I believe they're an organization, who succeeded said banished researchers.
 
How much are the forest spirits/dryads/unicorns/etc are part of Laurelorn and its politics I wonder? This isn't Athel Loren and Mathilde didn't see any of them in her immersion excursion, but if Cadaeth is an example they do have some representation.
 
SITB said:
How much are the forest spirits/dryads/unicorns/etc are part of Laurelorn and its politics I wonder? This isn't Athel Loren and Mathilde didn't see any of them in her immersion excursion, but if Cadaeth is an example they do have some representation.
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I'm not 100% convinced Cadaeth is a dryad/spirit.

it's the likely option, but she could also be the Laurelorn equivalent of a 'sister of the thorn' or a grey Lord that ascended/descended/side-cended.
 
Dark as Silver said:
I wasn also not expecting anyone to imagine that.
Where does Overlord fit into that?
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It doesn't? Just that "let the world almost end to teach a lesson of friendship" is basically Celestia's modus operandi. It's basically the first thing she does, and continues to do for six or so seasons.
BagFullOfLizards said:
Yes, but the friends the Old Ones made along the way were most of the sapient races. I don't think we're getting anywhere near that level.

(Though Plan Omegahugger would involve making a lot of friends…)
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Well the humans like us kinda by default, the dwarves absolutely love us, we've got a spider friend in the basement, a Skaven friend in the attic, a dragon as our next door neighbor and book club member, half our soul regularly plays games with halfling children, and now we're working on the elves. Even an orcish god didn't mind riding along with us for a bit... before we mugged him for all he was worth, but that's basically par for the course with Orcs.
 
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