Remove ads

Warhammer Fantasy: Divided Loyalties - an Advisor's Quest

Voted best in category in the Users' Choice awards.
Reader mode
Redshirt Army said:
Hmm. So does this mean that neither Mathilde nor Regimand thought they could manage to fluidly cast Invisibility in synchronization with dropping the Illusion without getting caught out by the other?
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

Not at arm's length while the other knew to be watching for it, no. Sometimes all you can do is cut your losses and leave with a little of your dignity intact.

Candesce said:
If Alric can prevent the sixth murder, that disrupts the ritual, right? He might actually have things handled, in that case, and all things considered I'd rather the ritual get stopped.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

At the very least, it would severely weaken it. It might be partly salvageable if Alberich can pull off another murder in the family within a few days of the missed opportunity.

silentorphan said:
This is twice it's happened to her--the first was when she was being so invisible and sneaky that she missed an Eshin assassin being equally invisible and sneaky. Now this?

Once is happenstance; twice is a coincidence. If this happens to her a third time, it'll be plain incompetence.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

Grey Wizards and Eshin Assassins are some of the sneakiest people on the planet. Managing a tie against them is extremely far from incompetence.
 
Last edited:
It sounds like Mathilde has a comprehensive enough grasp of the situation to renegotiate with Mira if we want to squeeze a bit more gain out of this.

Though wait, isn't the Tempter's number 6? If that's what Alberich is shooting for, wouldn't this be the final one?
 
So is following that link back to the source an option?

Would cutting the head off the snake before the ritual finishes not be a good thing?

Edit:
More specifically, are the results of an interrupted ritual expected to be significantly worse than letting it finish if we don't know how to properly counter it?
 
Last edited:
Sculpt0r said:
It sounds like Mathilde has a comprehensive enough grasp of the situation to renegotiate with Mira if we want to squeeze a bit more gain out of this.

Though wait, isn't the Tempter's number 6? If that's what Alberich is shooting for, wouldn't this be the final one?
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

Matching the circumstances that caused him to turn to Chaos is much more important for this ritual than simply hitting the right number for the God it's dedicated to.

Enthusiast#117 said:
Edit:
More specifically, are the results of an interrupted ritual expected to be significantly worse than letting it finish if we don't know how to properly counter it?
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

Not for this ritual specifically.
 
Last edited:
Boney said:
It might be partly salvageable if he can pull off another murder in the family within a few days of the missed opportunity.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
... Right, and Alberich would still be around regardless, and long-term we want him squashed too.

Hmm.

I think at this point it might actually be worth coordinating with Alric; by guarding the other set we ensure the ritual can't be salvaged, coordinating with him makes tracking down and finishing Alberich much easier, and we ensure nothing risks splashing in the Empress's direction if Alric hasn't conclusively identified the ritual type yet, which we think he might not have.
 
Well, it would seem Alric is doing pretty well. It's kind of hard to see his plan fail to be honest.

Boney said:
Hovering overhead like a gathering storm is a deep well of malign energies, with tendrils reaching out for one of the five Unfähigers in particular, inching closer by the day at a rate that will have him within striking range right on schedule, and growing stronger on their fear all the while. The Ritual knows its target and its timetable, and far above, a tendril of the ugly cloud vanishes into the distance somewhere to the northwest, where the creator of these energies waits for the proper time to come.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

Since our Magesight is able to see where the link of the ritual goes we could probably follow the link to its source and hunt down Alberich using the target Unfalhiger as a kind of Human Compass.

Would it be possible to do such a thing? Although, I'm not sure what Alric has to win by allowing us to try. He's probably done many simillar jobs in the past he's got no reason not to be confident.
 
Last edited:
Boney said:
- You cannot follow the ritual's trail all the way to Alberich in the time you have available - it takes days for you to be able to spot it at any given point, so it would take you several weeks to be able to follow it as far as Talabheim, and that's if he stays obligingly immobile for that entire duration.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Thomasfoolery said:
You know that Alberich is somewhere northwest of Bad Dankerode, which means Talabheim or Talagaad,
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

Slight confusion here. Couldn't we Shadowhorse book it to those two cities, and just check there? Assuming we're willing to accept the risk of him having moved while we travel.
 
Sparsebeard said:
Since our Magesight is able to see where the link of the ritual goes we could probably follow the link to its source and hunt down Alby using the target Unfalhiger as a kind of Human Compass.

Would it be possible to do such a thing? Although, I'm not sure what Alric has to win by allowing us to try. He's probably done many simillar jobs in the past he's got no reason not to be confident.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

- You cannot follow the ritual's trail all the way to Alberich in the time you have available - it takes days for you to be able to spot it at any given point, so it would take you several weeks to be able to follow it as far as Talabheim, and that's if he stays obligingly immobile for that entire duration.

BelligerentGnu said:
Slight confusion here. Couldn't we Shadowhorse book it to those two cities, and just check there? Assuming we're willing to accept the risk of him having moved while we travel.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

Just check a city of hundreds of thousands when it takes Mathilde days of concentration to spot if the trail is within a few blocks of her?
 
Last edited:
[ ] Scour the city: specify who with (longshanks or City Watch)

I would like to try and nip this in the bud, and these two are the best groups to keep in quiet.

@Boney I'm assuming we cant talk to both with one action.
 
Boney said:
[ ] Research: Alberich's form
Alberich would not have been unchanged from a trip to and return from the Chaos realm. Research what changes may have occurred to him that may help you locate him.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
I think this is really important for next turn, because there's a strong possibility for a violent confrontation around the time of the murder attempt and preventing Alberich from surprising us with some sort of chaos power is important if we run into them.
 
Sparsebeard said:
It's kind of hard to see his plan fail to be honest.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
The hunting lodge Unfähigers are not staying hidden. Leads to the messy possibility that Alberich substitutes one for the sixth murder.

Combine that with the possibility Alric might not track down and end Alberich even after the ritual fails... well, I don't know if Alberich gets a second try after the first gets spoiled, but even if he doesn't I don't expect the backlash would kill him, so he could still be out and about and causing problems for the Empire afterwords.

Might not count as a failure on Alric's part, but...
 
I do not think we have the time to Find him so we should just set a trap. We know he has to kill in the next few days so watch both sites and than get him.
 
Hmm.

This is a tricky situation, since by all accounts Alric's plan is damn solid. Right now I'm seeing only two ways to reduce his incoming credit - either beating him to the punch by scouring the city and jumping the daemon first, or by diluting it by joining forces.

There's complications involved with the second choice, though - Alric knows that we're involved in fucking with him due to our grand theft Horstmann and is unlikely to be accommodating, so there's a significant chance he just tells us to fuck off, then successfully smites the daemon by himself when it shows up to the killzone that Alric has spent the last month putting up Hysh wards on.

Of course, that's coming at it from a "deny Alric credit" perspective, which isn't actually why we're still here. It should be worth "taking the loss" on letting Alric take credit if it means we can be in a better position to keep Heidi's situation under wraps - though of course if we do go that route we can't be too obvious about it, since Regimand will start asking questions if we are.
 
I'm a bit confused on the nature of the ritual magic being used.

Is the accumulating energy from a specific wind of magic? Is it Dhar? Is it divine magic? Something other?

Boney said:
You spend as long as you can bear studying the ongoing ritual in the hopes of gaining some insight into its intended audience, but until it is completed it possesses none of the nature of the Dark Gods, just the hideous energies of the death and terror that has been inflicted to create it.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

This makes me think it might be Shyish?

If it's Shyish could we point a wizard from that college in this direction and get them to screw the whole thing up, maybe turn it back on him? If it's Dhar, is there anything we could do to screw with the energies? Get them to collapse harmlessly?
 
Enthusiast#117 said:
I'm a bit confused on the nature of the ritual magic being used.

Is the accumulating energy from a specific wind of magic? Is it Dhar? Is it divine magic? Something other?

This makes me think it might be Shyish?

If it's Shyish could we point a wizard from that college in this direction and get them to screw the whole thing up, maybe turn it back on him? If it's Dhar, is there anything we could do to screw with the energies? Get them to collapse harmlessly?
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

It's Dhar, and the only point where it's close enough to reality to try to mess with it would be during one of the murders. While Mathilde would be able to implode the ritual at that time, it would require touching the bad magics, which is something other Wizards would be able to recognize you doing if they were nearby when you did it.
 
Last edited:
Hmm. Got it.

The deaths are supposed to mirror the previous deaths, right? What was the death this next one is supposed to mirror like?

Would killing them in a symbolically opposite way act as a sort of counter-ritual?
 
Boney said:
Then you both realize at about the same time that you'd both tried the same double bluff, actually coming to the table in person but wrapped in an Illusion to make it seem like you were an Illusion. Without speaking or making eye contact the two of you stand from the table and walk away.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
The Grey Order equivalent of two women wearing the same dress?
 
Boney said:
Just check a city of millions when it takes
Mathilde days of concentration to spot if the trail is within a few blocks of her?
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

Boney said:
Hovering overhead like a gathering storm is a deep well of malign energies, with tendrils reaching out for one of the five Unfähigers in particular, inching closer by the day at a rate that will have him within striking range right on schedule, and growing stronger on their fear all the while. The Ritual knows its target and its timetable, and far above, a tendril of the ugly cloud vanishes into the distance somewhere to the northwest, where the creator of these energies waits for the proper time to come.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

This description strongly implies that the ritual, once distinguished from the background magic of an area, has roughly the same visual footprint as a weather formation. The 'vanishing into the distance' bit, in this context, gives an impression of being cut off by the horizon. Further, the fact that it's 'inching towards' one *specific* person indicates that Mathilde can observe the path of the ritual from sky to ground quite precisely.

So yes, 'in a city of millions'. The description you gave made it seem like looking at a tornado and tracing where the funnel tip made landfall. If what you wanted to convey was that Mathilde's sight of the ritual-cloud was a) fuzzy and b) fairly tightly constrained in terms of horizontal distance, then what you achieved was the opposite.
 
BelligerentGnu said:
This description strongly implies that the ritual, once distinguished from the background magic of an area, has roughly the same visual footprint as a weather formation. The 'vanishing into the distance' bit, in this context, gives an impression of being cut off by the horizon. Further, the fact that it's 'inching towards' one *specific* person indicates that Mathilde can observe the path of the ritual from sky to ground quite precisely.

So yes, 'in a city of millions'. The description you gave made it seem like looking at a tornado and tracing where the funnel tip made landfall. If what you wanted to convey was that Mathilde's sight of the ritual-cloud was a) fuzzy and b) fairly tightly constrained in terms of horizontal distance, then what you achieved was the opposite.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

That was after three paragraphs of emphasizing how it takes days of effort to tune out all the background noise of reality before any of that is visible. Days of effort Mathilde will have to replicate at any given location to be able to start looking for that single tendril of the ritual that leads back to Alberich.
 
Last edited:
Candesce said:
... Right, and Alberich would still be around regardless, and long-term we want him squashed too.

Hmm.

I think at this point it might actually be worth coordinating with Alric; by guarding the other set we ensure the ritual can't be salvaged, coordinating with him makes tracking down and finishing Alberich much easier, and we ensure nothing risks splashing in the Empress's direction if Alric hasn't conclusively identified the ritual type yet, which we think he might not have.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Sparsebeard said:
Well, it would seem Alric is doing pretty well. It's kind of hard to see his plan fail to be honest.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Candesce said:
The hunting lodge Unfähigers are not staying hidden. Leads to the messy possibility that Alberich substitutes one for the sixth murder.

Combine that with the possibility Alric might not track down and end Alberich even after the ritual fails... well, I don't know if Alberich gets a second try after the first gets spoiled, but even if he doesn't I don't expect the backlash would kill him, so he could still be out and about and causing problems for the Empire afterwords.

Might not count as a failure on Alric's part, but...
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Alric could successfully defend the Unfahigers, thus stopping or derailing the ritual, but if Mathilde tracks down and slays Alberich then she will be able to take some of Alric's credit away from him.

Unless that is Alberich is going to be investing so much of himself into the murder attempt that Alric could kill him by interfering with his ritual at the murder location?


Either way, I feel like we might be more useful tracking down and sniping Alberich. We have Shadowsteed. And Alric is only one wizard.

Question is, would we want to approach Alric to cooperate on this? "You defend them from the murder ritual, I track down Alberich"?

Question @Boney, would it be easier for us to track down Alberich if we had a cooperative Alric on the defensive side of things?
 
Yeah trying to find him looks difficult in the amount of time we have. At this point we should either work with Alaric or just wait with back up and kill the target when it shows up to do the deed.
 
Reader mode
You must login or register to reply here.
Remove ads
Back
Top