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Unless it's different in this quest in a way that's slipped my mind, post-independence Marienburg is a democratic republic. It just doesn't have any laws against buying votes, so it's corrupt as all hell.
Warhammer Fantasy: Divided Loyalties - an Advisor's Quest
- Thread starter Boney
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- Fantasy Users' Choice!
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- warhammer warhammer fantasy fantasy be gay do crimes (gay) female protagonist pansexual protagonist ck2 quest divided loyalties mountain vietnam ranald is real this is a dwarf quest (dwarfs) this is maybe an elf quest this is not a vampire quest this is not an empire quest try it and find out open voting
Voted best in category in the Users' Choice awards.
Codex
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Ah, I didn't know there was actual voting for who sits on the council? I just assumed that the strongest merchant clans just automatically got a seat. I suppose being able to buy your votes could get you that position too.
FlyingScanian
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Well, how do you define "strongest merchant clans"? Being able to buy the most votes sounds like a not too horrible way to me
Codex
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If you buy the most votes and got yourself bankrupt doing it then you're no longer the strongest and you're just an idiot who doesn't know how to manage money. I assume there's more to it, but I don't know nearly enough about economics and politics, especially 16th century western economics and politics to even tell.
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Yep, the Directorate is 4 seats held by the high priests of the city, 1 seat held by the dean of the city university, and 10 for which anybody can run. But to quote,
"While the seats held by the priests and the university are permanent, the ten chairs held by the merchant houses are supposedly open to any member of the Burgerhof, rich or poor. Since the time of Magnus, though, these seats have been reserved in all but name for the merchant houses. By informal agreement, the heads of the ten wealthiest families win election at the start of each two-year term, their liberal patronage ensuring that they have the necessary votes."
(Pardon the cursed old PDF spacing.)
The whole government is democratic in theory - Sold Down The River kinda emphasizes how Marienburg is sort of the birthplace of what'd we consider recognizably "modern" democracy in the Warhammer world, with a lower chamber of legislators elected to represent different regional constituencies and so on. There's also some discussion about how it could be hypothetically possible for someone to overcome the biases of the system, and people pushing for reform to make that more feasible.
Codex
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Well, I really should get to reading Sold Down the River then. I've been stuck on Terror in Talabheim for the last few days because of university, but the book indicating the possibilities for reform does pique my interest.
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Don't get your hopes up too much. It's your typical "there's demand for this positive thing, but the people who want it are hopelessly outgunned by the system and also probably secretly influenced by chaos lmao" Warhammer stuff.
- Location
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Sounds like a self correction problem since you will not have the money to even stand a chance of buying enough votes in the next election.
If he doesn't want to go all in and try for complete societal overhaul (which Ranaldian cults often dabble in, but is the sort of thing that gets them stamped down super hard) the thing to do is to pick a side - evaluate who is close to the top of the existing power structure and decide who would be best to take power, and throw your support behind them. One very relevant example of this in western literature is Robin Hood sabotaging evil Prince John while remaining loyal to good King Richard. So your fellow would eye up the major families and decide which of them would be the lesser evil, and then either approach them directly for a partnership or work behind the shadows to build them up and undermine their rivals.
Or, comedy option, try to organize a repeat of the circumstances that gave rise to Prince Piggalo.
Falsehood flies, and truth comes limping after it. The Chamberlain of the Seal rattled his saber back at Marienburg ("Oh, you'll blockade the Reik? Penning up half the Empire's navy while the other half fights and bleeds to protect the Old World from the depredations of the Norscans?") and a thousand miles of retelling later Ljiljana has that version of those events.
Yeah, the recent-ish thread header implementation included the option of having a picture, which I didn't bother with until I recently noticed that without a picture, it just had a big grey question mark sitting there. So I whacked the symbol of the Grey Order in there.
Thanks, fixed.
Not quite, you have to go all the way into the Black Gulf and through the Bay of Wrecks to get access to the river that Karak Izor is on.
Tradition dictates that Dwarf women join their husband's Clan upon marriage, so if a Princess is likely to inherit the throne, she either isn't married or marries inside her own Clan.
Codex
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This is very helpful, thanks. The good thing is that Sold Down the River has all the Great Families listed and prepared for me too choose from, the downside is that I'll have to go over each one with a fine toothed comb to figure out which would be the best.
Sorely tempted to make a Pig the Staadtholder.
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Call him Varkus de Staadtholder.
its an easy portmanteau of Varken (dutch for pig) and Marcus (mark).
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House van Scheldt has a pig on its flag, if that helps.
Wow. As if I needed more reasons to dislike Marienburg... Thanks for digging up the quotes @Codex !
Do keep in mind they also burn a lot of wealth very quickly, and as a trade power, their economy is fundamentally volatile to anything hitting trade partners.
And a lot of this power relies of being overwhelmingly richer than the next guy. They're certain to bilk the Empire given half a chance, coz an Empire willing and able to bid against them for mercenaries at all can rapidly drive up costs.
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Honestly? it's not exactly much of a compliment, but my impression having read most WF background material (excepting, like, White Dwarf) is that Marienburg is probably the best place to live in the world if you're a human. There's no nobility, so social mobility is at least theoretically possible and is shown to occasionally happen, and it seems like even their farce of a democracy gives some amount of influence to everyday people over their own lives. There are civil liberty concepts like freedom of speech and workers rights that just plain don't exist elsewhere, as well as proto-unions in the form of guilds, etc. And unlike the Tilean city states, it doesn't constantly get involved in wars.
It's not good, but it's practically a shining bastion of progress compared to the Empire.
It's not good, but it's practically a shining bastion of progress compared to the Empire.
deathofrats0808
Don’t think of it as dying; just as leaving early
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They also have every reason to not want the Empire to like to move naval ships through their waters too much. The more the Empire gets used to doing that, the more likely they are to take another crack at conquering the city. It's not like charging the Empire for passage for naval ships is going to provide a significant drain on their funds, or gain Marienburg that much. Much more important is the power it gives them over the Empire's navy and the fact it makes the Empire less likely to think of plans like "sail the navy out to sea and then turn them around to attack Marienburg".
If you are a human and not lucky enough to have been born a noble I agree, though if someone put a gun to my head and told me to pick a place and a time to be born on Malus I would pick being born a noble in Bretonia, or alternatively if I did not necessarily have to be born in human lands I would pick being born to human expatriates in Lothern. I mean sure you will never get to be a political leader, but the Asur likely make sure to keep the plagues and rampant poverty off their doorstep even if it is just for aesthetic reasons.
Mopman43
Mountain-Hermit of Nitpeak
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At no point does the Liber Necris straight-out say "All vampires can have biological children". It's all vague.
The relevant quotes:
Page 35
Page 40
For the second quote, it's rather up for debate what "true-born" means in the context of Vampires. I think it'd mean that someone who drank from the Elixir can have kids.
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- Utrecht
And given ulthuan floats, no Skaven.
deathofrats0808
Don’t think of it as dying; just as leaving early
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They do try though. They don't succeed, but they do try.
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Depends on you opinion on capitalism. Personally I believe the source and centre of Hendeck worship (literal god of trickle down economics) is probably a worse place to live then the manoral countries next door unless you are very rich.
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- Utrecht
The only skaven that get to ulthuan get there by boat. Presumably, the high elves root them out before they can get breeders up and running.
Codex
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So I've been to a few libraries in my life, but none of them have been particularly large. My country is small and reading isn't a big past time for most. That being said, scholarly interest has ramped up over the past few years. That being said, I had never really seen a huge library in my life, like an honest to goodness "great library". My mental image of them was always the ones in fiction, those ones with absurdly gigantic bookshelves that would reach the ceiling of a grand hall and required ladders to collect books from the upper shelves, and I believed it despite it being so impractical because that type of library is very common in fiction.
But today, I entered probably the first truly great library that I've ever seen, and it was glorious:
My mental image of what KAU might look like has completely changed after this experience. I want something like that. The happiness I felt climbing to the top of those stairs and surveying the veritable army of bookshelves containing dozens and dozens of books each was unmatched, and I want Mathilde to feel the same.
But today, I entered probably the first truly great library that I've ever seen, and it was glorious:
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I think there is an argument to be made for capitalism being better than feudalism, indeed it is an argument that has been made historically several times over and has driven reform and revolution in a period roughly analogous to what we see in WHF.
"The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which."