Warhammer Fantasy: Divided Loyalties - an Advisor's Quest

[Ericwinter]

Hey look, it's someone from a country with famously terrible prisons being surprised that less terrible prisons could exist! What a surprise!

Giving prisoners an education is, uh, normal? Giving them access to distance courses is basic enough - several fairly prestigious universities in my area straight-up send tutors into prisons, actually.
Giving prisoners pets has been experimented with in my country, and AFAIK the only reason it wasn't made widespread was the cost of needed building changes. However Qrech's situation is unusual here because if we hadn't given him the pet we'd have been keeping him in constant solitary confinement, which is incredibly illegal (and isn't done in any prison I know of other than Guantanamo and/or hypothetical torture blacksites).

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…Ignoring for a moment that I actually based my judgements on what I know of prisons outside America—I hardly know enough about my own country to depend on that, and am far from ignorant on the foolishness of such besides—there's a reason I said exemplary education. Qrech is even allowed to—anonymously—act as a voice of authority and influence the Empire's education, and was taught enough to earn that. Most times I've heard of college courses in College it's only to keep them busy or to allow chances after release, which isn't a possibility for Qrech.

Granted, I don't know much about prison systems at all, no matter what country. I'll admit my opinion is worth very little on the matter.

 

[spiritualatheist]

Hey look, it's someone from a country with famously terrible prisons being surprised that less terrible prisons could exist! What a surprise!

Giving prisoners an education is, uh, normal? Giving them access to distance courses is basic enough - several fairly prestigious universities in my area straight-up send tutors into prisons, actually.
Giving prisoners pets has been experimented with in my country, and AFAIK the only reason it wasn't made widespread was the cost of needed building changes. However Qrech's situation is unusual here because if we hadn't given him the pet we'd have been keeping him in constant solitary confinement, which is incredibly illegal (and isn't done in any prison I know of other than Guantanamo and/or hypothetical torture blacksites).

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Nope, it's even worse than that; it's actually routine for regular US prisons to put people in solitary for months at a time, because the US is an authoritarian dystopia.

 

[Bucarcar]

I think you guys are forgetting that The Empire of Man is based on the 15.th century HRE. Being imprisoned for life and forced to do conscripted community labor is hardly the worst outcome when compared to being tortured for information, hanging, burning at the stake, being boiled alive, being walled off, being pulled apart by horses, being left in the sun to die of starvation, being placed on the ground and having a bucket full of hungry rats placed on top of your stomach after which the bucket would be heated as to make the rats try to escape through said stomach, being dragged across the bottom of the ship with a rope while it was moving, being placed as a galley slave, being used as live game, etc.

 

[Boney]

Let's not go off on an extended derail about contemporary IRL prison conditions.

I think you guys are forgetting that The Empire of Man is based on the 15.th century HRE. Being imprisoned for life and forced to do conscripted community labor is hardly the worst outcome when compared to being tortured for information, hanging, burning at the stake, being boiled alive, being walled off, being pulled apart by horses, being left in the sun to die of starvation, being placed on the ground and having a bucket full of hungry rats placed on top of your stomach after which the bucket would be heated as to make the rats try to escape through said stomach, being dragged across the bottom of the ship with a rope while it was moving, being placed as a galley slave, being used as live game, etc.

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Ironically, he'd actually be better off in the historical HRE. Doing nasty things to your own citizens was fairly normal back then, but doing nasty things to the captured enemy wasn't, because that means the enemy would do the same and one day it might be you that is captured. So treatment of the upper classes was very frequently civil. As an Officer it would be taken as a given that that Qrech is also a Gentleman and therefore his solemn oath would be all that was required to give him parole, and then he'd be free to live out his life in a carefully-chosen town in the Empire until the end of hostilities, a formal exchange of prisoners is performed, or a ransom is paid. He might even be released back to the Skaven Empire as long as he swore not to engage in hostilities against the Empire, basically acting as though he was a prisoner but free to return home until the sides meet in a truce and say "okay, this amount of released prisoners on both sides are now once more permitted to serve their country militarily", at which point both Qrech and an equivalent Empire soldier (who had sworn the same oath and had been released by the Skaven) would both return to military service.

For a whole bunch of reasons, that isn't how things work in the Warhammer world between Empire and Skaven, but it often would be in conflicts between the above-ground nations of the Old World.

 

[pucflek]

Modern perspectives can point to ways he could be better treated, but to an in-universe perspective Mathilde's treatment of Qrech has been incredibly generous, to the extent that if it were not for the intelligence she has been able to extract from him by doing so, some might start to question her loyalties.

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Could Mathilde write a paper on that? I mean, we know from Abelhelm the current state of prisoner interrogation techniques, who is to say our way is documented. Most of the things we did are replicable by anyone, sans the coin.

 

[DragonParadox]

Could Mathilde write a paper on that? I mean, we know from Abelhelm the current state of prisoner interrogation techniques, who is to say our way is documented. Most of the things we did are replicable by anyone, sans the coin.

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Flight school memes, the reason we were able to pull out as much information as we did out of him was literal divine intervention in the form of the coin.

 

[Boney]

Could Mathilde write a paper on that? I mean, we know from Abelhelm the current state of prisoner interrogation techniques, who is to say our way is documented. Most of the things we did are replicable by anyone, sans the coin.

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Depicting the realistic pushback this would get could too easily be seen as espousing a position the SV mods have made it quite clear that they will not tolerate.

 

[veekie]

Fundamentally, I'm pretty sure the operational theory of information extraction is something the Grey College has extensive information on as is, and Mathilde isn't really contributing anything they don't already know.

There is just plain no way to quickly extract reliable intelligence from a hostile and resisting party, and the issue for much of the Grey College is that there is never enough time. Given enough time to research a target for deception/surveillance, or soft-subvert a captive, they can do it, but who's going to spend months on one guy's information?

When Mathilde first did this she was greener than grass, while Abelhelm was trained by people who at least partly believe the torture is the point, and the information is only really there to confirm their decision.
She, of course, would pretend she knew better all along now. But thats how she rolls.

 

[DragonParadox]

Fundamentally, I'm pretty sure the operational theory of information extraction is something the Grey College has extensive information on as is, and Mathilde isn't really contributing anything they don't already know.

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I'm not sure they would. I mean who would teach it to them? Not Teclis certainly, he has no interest in such things, the various hendgefolk and ilusionists would not know anything about it so that just leaves trial and error and only 180 years at that.

 

[Rafin]

This is a fine hair to split, but I think it's an important one: Qrech is a prisoner of war. He was an officer in the army of a nation that seeks the complete destruction of the Empire, and the only reason he has never directly contributed to that goal is that he was instead contributing to one of the Skavens' simultaneous wars with pretty much every other polity in the world. The work he does for Mathilde is voluntary, not onerous, and performed in exchange for comforts and luxuries; his basic needs would be met whether he cooperates or not. Modern perspectives can point to ways he could be better treated, but to an in-universe perspective Mathilde's treatment of Qrech has been incredibly generous, to the extent that if it were not for the intelligence she has been able to extract from him by doing so, some might start to question her loyalties.

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You're right. Especially from an in-universe point of view.

That said, I'm not sure his basic needs would have been met for so long if he had shown obstinate and uncooperative without remedy, or if he had found a way to sabotage us in his work for us.

We also used no coercion or force, but we did use something akin to mind control, temporarily taking away his ability to even perceive our lies.

All said, I still kinda feel that exploiting POWs for labor is still technically a form of slavery, even if it is very mild labor that's directly applicable to gathering intelligence for the ongoing war effort and even if refusal to work isn't combined with corporal punishment or heavy threats.

But maybe my definition of slavery is just overly broad. So broad that I can find some forms excusable even. Like this one for instance. Because I definitely don't think that Mathilde did anything wrong here and I believe that even most SIs with modern sensibilities would not have asked her to act differently.

 

[Codex]

I'm not sure they would. I mean who would teach it to them? Not Teclis certainly, he has no interest in such things, the various hendgefolk and ilusionists would not know anything about it so that just leaves trial and error and only 180 years at that.

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Well, Teclis can just do this I guess:

Spoiler

Something to that extent. Teclis talks in his sleep and she heard too much.

"What is it, my lord?" asked Shienara. Concern showed in her beautiful narrow face. "What ails you?"

"Nothing," he lied, rising from the bed and limping across the room. He reached for a goblet and a crystal decanter of wine cut in the shape of a dragon.

"Is it the dreams again, the nightmares?"

He shot her a cold glance. "What do you know of nightmares?" he asked. '

"You talk in your sleep, my lord, and lash out, and I guessed."

He looked at her, long and hard. These were words his many enemies would pay much to hear.

"There were no nightmares," he said, reaching out for the power. Unlike in the dream, it flowed strongly into him. "There were no dreams. You should forget these things."

A slight blankness came over her beautiful face as the spell took her. She looked at him and smiled quizzically. "Sleep," he told her, "and when you wake remember nothing."

So if asked by the Grey College how he extracts information it would probably be a flight school meme where he says something like "Hypnotism, that's what works for me". Not exactly the best source for usable methods.

 

[Dark as Silver]

Fundamentally, I'm pretty sure the operational theory of information extraction is something the Grey College has extensive information on as is, and Mathilde isn't really contributing anything they don't already know.

There is just plain no way to quickly extract reliable intelligence from a hostile and resisting party, and the issue for much of the Grey College is that there is never enough time. Given enough time to research a target for deception/surveillance, or soft-subvert a captive, they can do it, but who's going to spend months on one guy's information?

When Mathilde first did this she was greener than grass, while Abelhelm was trained by people who at least partly believe the torture is the point, and the information is only really there to confirm their decision.
She, of course, would pretend she knew better all along now. But thats how she rolls.

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Yeah, Mathilde was very clear that Grey College is anti torture unless you're running short of time and have a trusted source to verify it.

Skaven, from all you've read of them and what little you've witnessed, are masters of cruelty and you doubt your own ability to match them. But your tutelage from Regimand and Abelhelm had agreed on one fundamental fact: torture was an unsavoury but necessary tool when you had some way to verify the information it produced, and the subject had no way to know what you could or couldn't verify. Torture was better than nothing if you had limited time and information of dubious provenance was better than none. Torture would not, however, convert a sapient being into a font of information - not without the sort of advanced mind magics that only two Colleges possessed, and neither the Light nor the Grey were all that free with them. So if you had time and attention to spare, you did not attack a subject's sanity with cruelty, you attacked their loyalties with kindness.

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Qreech's confinement was unusual in a dwarf/imperial/skaven sense, however the Grey College would probably think its a useful case study to put in a heavily edited text book.
E:

I'm not sure they would. I mean who would teach it to them? Not Teclis certainly, he has no interest in such things, the various hendgefolk and ilusionists would not know anything about it so that just leaves trial and error and only 180 years at that.

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180 years of being spymasters and interrogators is more of a tradition than the CIA or any modern intelligence agency I can think of.
They probably learnt it themselves, humans don't need to recieve all knowledge as the gifts of superior species.

 

[butchock]

Let's not go off on an extended derail about contemporary IRL prison conditions.



Ironically, he'd actually be better off in the historical HRE. Doing nasty things to your own citizens was fairly normal back then, but doing nasty things to the captured enemy wasn't, because that means the enemy would do the same and one day it might be you that is captured. So treatment of the upper classes was very frequently civil. As an Officer it would be taken as a given that that Qrech is also a Gentleman and therefore his solemn oath would be all that was required to give him parole, and then he'd be free to live out his life in a carefully-chosen town in the Empire until the end of hostilities, a formal exchange of prisoners is performed, or a ransom is paid. He might even be released back to the Skaven Empire as long as he swore not to engage in hostilities against the Empire, basically acting as though he was a prisoner but free to return home until the sides meet in a truce and say "okay, this amount of released prisoners on both sides are now once more permitted to serve their country militarily", at which point both Qrech and an equivalent Empire soldier (who had sworn the same oath and had been released by the Skaven) would both return to military service.

For a whole bunch of reasons, that isn't how things work in the Warhammer world between Empire and Skaven, but it often would be in conflicts between the above-ground nations of the Old World.

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There is actually a story about this in the Tales of the Old World Anthology when a punitive invasion from Parravon attacked Reikland. One of the Reikland nobles believing that a captured Bretronian knight is honorable... well, he was disabused of that notion soon enough.. standard grim dark story but i love it.

 

[deathofrats0808]

180 years of being spymasters and interrogators is more of a tradition than the CIA or any modern intelligence agency I can think of.
They probably learnt it themselves, humans don't need to recieve all knowledge as the gifts of superior species.

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AFAIK the oldest intelligence agency in the world is the Secret Intelligence Service, founded in 1909. Although that depends on how you're defining an intelligence agency, and what you consider a break in tradition, because spies have been around since at least the 4th century BC.

 

[Dark as Silver]

AFAIK the oldest intelligence agency in the world is the Secret Intelligence Service, founded in 1909. Although that depends on how you're defining an intelligence agency, and what you consider a break in tradition, because spies have been around since at least the 4th century BC.

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Thats true, I was looking for an unbroken and formal tradition as comparable as we can manage to the Grey Colleges, given we don't have magical spy universities.
Or that would otherwise be capable of developing and propogating an institutional understanding of:

operational theory of information extraction

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[Nerdasaurus Rex]

I know some people consider British Military Intelligence to date all the way back to Elizabeth I, but I suspect it's nowhere near that clear cut, and that the "modern" version probably only dates back to the First World War or something.

 

[16 characters]

Ironically, he'd actually be better off in the historical HRE. Doing nasty things to your own citizens was fairly normal back then, but doing nasty things to the captured enemy wasn't, because that means the enemy would do the same and one day it might be you that is captured. So treatment of the upper classes was very frequently civil. As an Officer it would be taken as a given that that Qrech is also a Gentleman and therefore his solemn oath would be all that was required to give him parole, and then he'd be free to live out his life in a carefully-chosen town in the Empire until the end of hostilities, a formal exchange of prisoners is performed, or a ransom is paid. He might even be released back to the Skaven Empire as long as he swore not to engage in hostilities against the Empire, basically acting as though he was a prisoner but free to return home until the sides meet in a truce and say "okay, this amount of released prisoners on both sides are now once more permitted to serve their country militarily", at which point both Qrech and an equivalent Empire soldier (who had sworn the same oath and had been released by the Skaven) would both return to military service.

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I'd actually love seeing this AU like this at some point at some point but that is almost certainly my huge bias for skaven generally and qrech specifically rearing it's fluffy scruffy head again.
Like If skaven had some sort of honor culture they'd be powerful enough by not backstabbing each other that everyone not completely insane would have to parley with the fine whiskered Gentlerats. The right honorables of SkavenBurg, New Nuln, and Havens Hill especially if they wanted to get anything done.

WAIT A SECOND THIS TURN GIVES ME AN OPTION TO VOTE FOR OUR PRECIOUS RAT OFFICER?! I must read over things and consider doing so very seriously.

 

[Dark as Silver]

I know some people consider British Military Intelligence to date all the way back to Elizabeth I, but I suspect it's nowhere near that clear cut, and that the "modern" version probably only dates back to the First World War or something.

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For some reason I can't put my finger on these Secret Services tend to be extremely secretive. And it really obsfucates their history.

 

[16 characters]

[X] Thorek Ironbrow, to witness the arrival of the first Dwarf in Tor Lithanel for over four thousand years.
[X] Qrech, who is putting the finishing touches on his tome on the Chaos Dwarves.
[X] The Amber College, to check in on the salamanders.

Not only do we get to hear from the second-best rat in the quest but we can get to hear about stumpies with daemon engines, that's amazing yes, please. Seeing living flamethrowers growing by leaps and bounds is guaranteed to be eventful, has the empire ever reared any before to this extent? Thorek Ironbrow presents us such a cool moment how could we ever give up a chance to miss a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity like this?

 

[Mopman43]

[X] Thorek Ironbrow, to witness the arrival of the first Dwarf in Tor Lithanel for over four thousand years. This is such a cool moment how could we ever give up a chance to miss a once-in-a-lifetime oppurtunity like this?
[X] Qrech, who is putting the finishing touches on his tome on the Chaos Dwarves. Not only do we get to hear from the second-best rat in the quest but we can get to hear about stumpies with deamon engines, that's amazing yes, please.
[X] The Amber College, to check in on the salamanders. Seeing living flamethrowers growing by leaps and bounds is guaranteed to be eventful, has the empire ever reared any before to this extent?

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If you want your votes to count, you have to take out the extra stuff.

The tally only groups a vote if the wording is identical.

 

[16 characters]

Ah, I had forgotten that, fixed and thank you!
On this note though I also feel pretty bad that this might be the last book our rat is liable to write without us having Skalm on hand or anything of the sort.

 

[BeepSmile]

I'd actually love seeing this AU like this at some point at some point but that is almost certainly my huge bias for skaven generally and qrech specifically rearing it's fluffy scruffy head again.
Like If skaven had some sort of honor culture they'd be powerful enough by not backstabbing each other that everyone not completely insane would have to parley with the fine whiskered Gentlerats. The right honorables of SkavenBurg, New Nuln, and Havens Hill especially if they wanted to get anything done.

WAIT A SECOND THIS TURN GIVES ME AN OPTION TO VOTE FOR OUR PRECIOUS RAT OFFICER?! I must read over things and consider doing so very seriously.

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What about a very alternate AU, where we are dealing with skaven-in-name-only?

You had me at "Gentlerats" and I am fully willing and able to depart from warhammer fantasy in order to read such.

 

[K von Carstein]

the second-best rat in the quest

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Who's the first? Eshin-friend?

 

[16 characters]

What about a very alternate AU, where we are dealing with skaven-in-name-only?

You had me at "Gentlerats" and I am fully willing and able to depart from warhammer fantasy in order to read such.

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Ah yeah, I've had an idea like that idea stuck in my head and unable to leave after reading a thread about warhammer AU's before of course my idea was less honor-bound skaven and more just an inversion, like wood elfish squirrels who are mostly driven to their occasional violence by bouts of luddite type feelings.
I'd really been thinking about expanding something like that starting with a group of Skaven getting themselves stranded in alovelorn through magic or some such first, ghyran obsession and the whole shebang if only I could take the time to get all my notes in one place and make them coherent.

What was lightly suggested by Boney was fairly different from that though.
The idea of just the Skaven but they all sincerely care about rules and loyalty and not murdering for the sake of it is more amusing and terrifying for me though, because nothing about such implies they loose their giant superiority complex, heck they'd be liable to feel even more entitled in such. Enough to make a high elf blush perhaps. In such I imagine they'd be more liable to want to conquer the world for it's own good which is a huge fear-enabling notion if you know what they say about moral busybodies vs robber barons.
Sorry for going off-topic like this though.

Who's the first? Eshin-friend?

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Absolutely, Eshin friend is best-best frieind-rival!

 

[Potus]

I hope we meet Eshin friend in the future