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Warhammer Fantasy: Divided Loyalties - an Advisor's Quest

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DragonParadox said:
You know one of the things I wonder is how much Mathilde and Regimand have diverged in terms of investigation techniques over the past 20 years. I think he is more of a hands on sort of fellow where as she tends to lean on mage sight and hitting the books for info.
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Ehh, depends. If there's an enemy position, Mathilde will march right in, steal something important/expensive and/or murders someone important and/or break something important, and then skedaddle again. She's very hands on with scouting. The more intrugy investigations she's very much leans on subordinates (the Hochlander and EIC, Max, and Johann) these days, though she also leverages her windsight. She used to do more personal investigations, but that was back in Stirland when she didn't really have subordinates and a long time ago.

Though she's never really done much of Regimand's type of work in general.
 
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Mathilde has always worked from a high profile position. First it was as Spymaster of Stirland, which wasn't so secret because her job was to fight against Undead rather than humans for the most part. Than she becam a member of the Expedition to Karak Eight Peaks and later a Councillor, she then decided to join an Expedition to Karag Dum and now she's serving as the project manager for a multidisciplinary project with very ambitious goals.

From what I understand, Regimand was never like that. He doesn't work in the spotlight, he's a typical Grey Wizard who does stealthy shenanigans and even when he staked his identity on something (like the Lahmian conspiracy) he still did it in a double agent kind of way where he's trying not to be discovered (better to ask for forgiveness than permission he called it).

This isn't to say that Mathilde doesn't have or use intrigue skills. She certainly does things sort of subtly when she's gathering information. It's just that her methods tend to be very direct and brute force with mindholes and the like, because she doesn't have the luxury of being a low profile individual.
 
Codex said:
This isn't to say that Mathilde doesn't have or use intrigue skills. She certainly does things sort of subtly when she's gathering information. It's just that her methods tend to be very direct and brute force with mindholes and the like, because she doesn't have the luxury of being a low profile individual.
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She also tends to go for brute/magic force because she doesn't have the time mundane methods would require. Take the kidnapping of that one tax evading noble. The whole operation could've been pulled off with purely mundane infiltration. It just would've taken months or years to get someone into place. Using Mindhole to blast through suspicion, Mathilde could do it in a day. Quick and dirty isn't a virtue, it's a necesseity, if your total operational time budget is a month.
 
[X] Plan "Thank you for helping with our investigation, Alric"
-[X] Renegotiate with Mira
-[X] Bring in Egrimm and Elrisse
-[X] Approach Alric directly
 
Codex said:
This isn't to say that Mathilde doesn't have or use intrigue skills. She certainly does things sort of subtly when she's gathering information. It's just that her methods tend to be very direct and brute force with mindholes and the like, because she doesn't have the luxury of being a low profile individual
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In all fairness we don't know if Regimand isn't a master of the quick and dirty that does a lot of work from behind illusions. He's chaincasted teleports a fair few times that we know of.

He has a lot more experience in any case - more recent experience also. Mathilde hasn't been doing spy stuff for about a decade now; Regimand has been doing them his whole life.
 
Codex said:
Mathilde has always worked from a high profile position. First it was as Spymaster of Stirland, which wasn't so secret because her job was to fight against Undead rather than humans for the most part.
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That wasn't even her real job though. That was the cover. She had no business being spymaster of Stirland. She was a mole for the Lahmian's remember?

I think her intrigue's more refuge in audacity though.

The Sigmarite Lord Magister was an example of this too, we were questioned on the watch, we used our grief over Abelheim to cover the fact that we turned to Ranald. Whenever someone asks the college now, the first thing they'll think of was her very real grief over Abelheim, not that she turned to Ranald of all gods.
 
Swantree said:
That wasn't even her real job though. That was the cover. She had no business being spymaster of Stirland. She was a mole for the Lahmian's remember?

I think her intrigue's more refuge in audacity though.

The Sigmarite Lord Magister was an example of this too, we were questioned on the watch, we used our grief over Abelheim to cover the fact that we turned to Ranald. Whenever someone asks the college now, the first thing they'll think of was her very real grief over Abelheim, not that she turned to Ranald of all gods.
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We never embraced being a Mole for the Lahmians. Neither Matty or the thread considered it our real job. It was the unfortuneate blackmail getting in the way of our public job and private faith/hobby.
 
If I remember correctly, the only stuff we did for the Lahmians as a mole was giving them information on Anton and recording the information on the Undead in the Haunted Hills, which we never even managed to give them because they got busted before we had a chance to do it. They were pretty hands off with the mole stuff, so we spent the majority of our time just doing our job.
 
Codex said:
If I remember correctly, the only stuff we did for the Lahmians as a mole was giving them information on Anton and recording the information on the Undead in the Haunted Hills, which we never even managed to give them because they got busted before we had a chance to do it. They were pretty hands off with the mole stuff, so we spent the majority of our time just doing our job.
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I think it was because of how vampires work in general, when you have eternity you can afford to take your time. Push come to shove Mathilde herself would be worth more than to them as a long term asses (maybe even turned) than burned over some petty matter.
 
As an aside, I once expressed a lack of knowledge one whether the Eonir can use the World Roots like the Asrai. Turns out that they can, at least in canon, for a price:

"Travellers can defy time and space by using the Worldroot to cover a hundred miles in a single hour, but the hungry spirits demand sacrifices of magic (or blood) in exchange for safe passage. Characters wishing to use the Worldroot must negotiate with the spirits through Eonir mediators." Archives of the Empire Volume 1 4th Edition WFRP Page 79

The description and cost is left very vague, probably so the GM can decide what the limitations are. You don't want PCs to teleport all over the place with ease, but sometimes you might want to abstract things if you don't care much for travel in the RPG. Overall verdict is that it's probably not something to be done lightly.
 
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Swantree said:
The Sigmarite Lord Magister was an example of this too, we were questioned on the watch, we used our grief over Abelheim to cover the fact that we turned to Ranald. Whenever someone asks the college now, the first thing they'll think of was her very real grief over Abelheim, not that she turned to Ranald of all gods.
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That's not how it went. Mathilde has been a Ranaldite since character creation. The Watch debacle didn't happen because of that. It happened because of our anti-Sigmarite flaw. A flaw we acquired because of our loss in Sylvania. The death if Abelhelm.
 
Lupercal said:
We never embraced being a Mole for the Lahmians. Neither Matty or the thread considered it our real job. It was the unfortuneate blackmail getting in the way of our public job and private faith/hobby.
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Having gone over every post in that affair relatively recently, the thread really kind of did think that whoever it was had if not legitimate authority over us, then the ability to pull levers to punish us as if they did. Even when they were offering bounties for shipping active undead across the Empire, in retrospect to tempt us into performing an action giving them actual blackmail material on us, there really wasn't much pushback in the thread chatter.


At best the voices in Mathilde's head seemed to consider it an asshole second boss adding to our workload outside the org chart, but there was never any significant attempt to skive off even as much as we have done with Belebro on occasion, much less actively test the strength of our leash.
 
Ooh. Divided Loyalties is now a stickied thread alongside the other User's Choice Awards winners. That's nice. Boney's also got a neat little marker under his pfp now.
 
Codex said:
As an aside, I once expressed a lack of knowledge one whether the Eonir can use the World Roots like the Asrai. Turns out that they can, at least in canon, for a price:

"Travellers can defy time and space by using the Worldroot to cover a hundred miles in a single hour, but the hungry spirits demand sacrifices of magic (or blood) in exchange for safe passage. Characters wishing to use the Worldroot must negotiate with the spirits through Eonir mediators." Archives of the Empire Volume 1 4th Edition WFRP Page 79

The description and cost is left very vague, probably so the GM can decide what the limitations are. You don't want PCs to teleport all over the place with ease, but sometimes you might want to abstract things if you don't care much for travel in the RPG. Overall verdict is that it's probably not something to be done lightly.
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As someone that has played the RPG(a lot). The price has to be very, very high for it to not be worth it.

Travel is one of the trickiest things to do in WFRP, by intent, travel through the empire should be dangerous, let along the 'untamed' parts (my swamp story being a big example).

That's probably why I had trouble internalising the way Mathy zips around when I first joined the thread.
 
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Jyn Ryvia said:
As someone that has played the RPG(a lot). The price has to be very, very high for it to not be worth it.

Travel is one of the trickiest things to do in WFRP, by intent, travel through the empire should be dangerous, let along the 'untamed' parts (my swamp story being a big example).

Thank probably why I had trouble internalising the way Mathy zips around when I first joined the thread.
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You can only do it if you have an Eonir willing to negotiate with a spirit, and you can only move through Forests that have an active World Root network. Considering more than 50% of the world's roots are dead, it's not a "fast travel to anywhere in the planet" button. I would also super hesitate to use the World Root to move into a place like the Drakwald, Forest of Shadows or even Athel Loren. Chances are you'd get eaten as soon as you get out. It might be a great way to travel within Laurelorn itself in an emergency, but it likely has too many risks attached to it.

Also, travel should be dangerous if you're an average person. I don't think Gelt should have problems zipping around from Altdorf to Nordland.
 
Jyn Ryvia said:
Travel is one of the trickiest things to do in WFRP, by intent, travel through the empire should be dangerous, let along the 'untamed' parts (my swamp story being a big example).

That's probably why I had trouble internalising the way Mathy zips around when I first joined the thread.
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I mean, we're a Grey, most of the road issues can be bypassed. It's also far more comfortable on Shadowsteed vs a regular horse (No bucking, no need for rest or food, doesn't toss you and run off the instant it sees something it thinks it scary), and well, if anything does manage to find us, the poor bastards.....
 
Night_stalker said:
I mean, we're a Grey, most of the road issues can be bypassed. It's also far more comfortable on Shadowsteed vs a regular horse (No bucking, no need for rest or food, doesn't toss you and run off the instant it sees something it thinks it scary), and well, if anything does manage to find us, the poor bastards.....
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In the beginning of the quest, there were a lot of things that could destroy Mathilde if she ventured through the roads, but very few of them had the ability to catch her on a tireless horse of shadows that moves even faster than the fastest of horses because it can gallop at top speed for 10 hours without slowing down and ignores terrain. At the current point in the quest, there are probably still things out there that can rip Mathilde to shreds, it's just very unlikely that Mathilde will come face to face with them on the roads and she doesn't even need to use Shadowsteed that often since she has a helicopter now.

If Mathilde was part of an adventuring party, she wouldn't have been able to do that because she would have been forced to move at the pace of the slowest person in the group. Thankfully a lot of her travelling is done solo.
 
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