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Warhammer Fantasy: Divided Loyalties - an Advisor's Quest

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DragonParadox said:
Guys I know we are all focused on Stinky McMutantArm here, but have you thought of how this might come off to Alric is he does suspect the empress of being a Chaos worshiper? I think that is worth keeping in mind as he would know just saving the noble family least liked by the colleges is unlikely to give him the respect and power he wants back. So let's plot this out:
  1. Alric has become convnced the empress if a Chaos Cultist Haupt Anderssen doing a vengeance ritual
  2. SUDDENLY a Grey Wizard known to be close to the empress (we visited her at the palace more than once) swoops in and kills a mutant she claims was the old count who did not die after all but fell into the warp
  3. The Cultist himself is dead, either ash in the wind or cut in half
  4. Alric the only one who suspects the perfidious empress is left to languish in exile far from the levers of power
We might have a long term problem on our hands here guys. I hesitate to warn Heidi about it since she might choose to just kill Alric out of an abundence of caution and we do not really have the information to justify that.
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I don't think Alric is going to be told that the mutant was an Elector Count, that's the kind of thing that is going to be highly classified:
Boney said:
When it's a former Elector Count fallen to Chaos, Algard absolutely would stonewall Alric to keep that secret buried. This is the sort of nightmare scenario the Grey Order was made to make disappear.
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So it's even worse than you say, Alric will just be told that 'someone' got taken down the Mathilde and now everything is fine, no worries, don't investigate any further.
That could be a problem, yes. On the bright side, Alric will probably see the ritual fail, which at best will convince him that Mathilde really did get the murderer, and at worst convince him that his plan was so awesome that the evil Emperess had no choice but to stop her own ritual or risk getting caught. Alric is the only one strong and wise enough to save the Empire!

Dark as Silver said:
Meanwhile in Alric quest.... "How the hell were we meant to know there where two Grey Wizards we were competing against?!?!"
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"There were some background rolls, but generally speaking when you make enemies you run the risk of those enemies working against you, and they are under no obligation to warn you beforehand."
Cue the thread getting super paranoid about Horstmann and the lies he's whispering in Mathilde's ear.
 
mathymancer said:
I don't think Alric is going to be told that the mutant was an Elector Count, that's the kind of thing that is going to be highly classified:
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He would not be told right off the bat but the witch hunters know and the Lights have good relations with them. I think there are good odds he would be able to get it out of them given that he is technically still the Patriarch of the Light College.
 
Tasoli said:
Incidentally Greys getting one over The lights publically like this is going to do good things to Greys rep.
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The Greys' reputation is that you don't know they're behind it. Mathilde drawing attention like this is very atypical and might even bring it down. "Yes, they can get stuff done, but I want this done without anyone knowing it was them, so who else can do it?"
 
[X] Capture: Throttle

You know, I'm feeling good about this. Might as well go for it. We can bag this asshole, keep Alric out of it, and wring his accomplices out of him.
 
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DragonParadox said:
He would not be told right off the bat but the witch hunters know and the Lights have good relations with them. I think there are good odds he would be able to get it out of them given that he is technically still the Patriarch of the Light College.
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I don't think he knows that he should ask to Witch Hunters. Considering it was Greys and Longsharks that took the point he might not think to ask any body else.
 
Codex said:
Hmm. Well, you know, I'm fine with that. I suppose I was a bit spoiled with Alkharad. Even when we caught the guy off guard, investigated him for weeks, saw him teaching his students, studied his methods, used Nightprowler to learn everything possible, then systematically broke down his plans by killing every single one of his apprentices, and we then surprised attacked him, he still put up one hell of a climactic fight and almost killed Mathilde despite all her advantages, and if it weren't for her ridiculous overpreperation and gear she would have died.

In this case, Mathilde has even more advantages than she had back when she was fighting Alkharad, and perhaps I was overestimating Alberich to put him on the same level as him. Mathilde is more well trained, and has even greater prep than the Alkharad situation, and has far, far more assistance than just herself.

I respect your dedication to your players Boney.
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The dice of the Alkharad fight were absurdly cooperative for a nice climactic showdown.

Opening clash that establishes the high skill level:
[Mathilde vs Alkharad: Martial, 88+23=101 vs 87+28=105]

Alkharad demonstrates himself a genuine threat:
[Mathilde vs Alkharad 2: Martial, 1+23=24 vs 56+28=84.]

Alkharad slips up and Mathilde recovers:
[Alkharad's magical spot check: Learning, 17+34=51.]
[Mathilde vs Alkharad 3: Martial, 47+23=70 vs 7+28=35]

Extremely close back-and-forth:
[Mathilde vs Alkharad 4: Learning, 83+26=109 vs 76+34=110]

Final victory:
[Mathilde vs Alkharad 5: Martial, 57+23=80 vs 11+28=39]

If Alkharad had whiffed that first roll, it would have been a lot less memorable. For better or worse I've sworn myself to the whims of chance, and I roll dice somewhere verifiable so that readers can be sure that it is chance. Which reminds me, I need to edit the links to those rolls into the update.

(Also frankly I wouldn't blame anyone for calling bullshit on things like the multiple boxcars or Eike being a Wizard if it weren't for me linking the actual rolls in the updates.)
 
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Codex said:
Hmm. Well, you know, I'm fine with that. I suppose I was a bit spoiled with Alkharad. Even when we caught the guy off guard, investigated him for weeks, saw him teaching his students, studied his methods, used Nightprowler to learn everything possible, then systematically broke down his plans by killing every single one of his apprentices, and we then surprised attacked him, he still put up one hell of a climactic fight and almost killed Mathilde despite all her advantages, and if it weren't for her ridiculous overpreperation and gear she would have died.

In this case, Mathilde has even more advantages than she had back when she was fighting Alkharad, and perhaps I was overestimating Alberich to put him on the same level as him. Mathilde is more well trained, and has even greater prep than the Alkharad situation, and has far, far more assistance than just herself.

I respect your dedication to your players Boney.
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Alphabetsoup was an old and powerful Necrach vampire; I'm personally comfortable assessing him as a significantly higher martial threat than a cultist with 2/3 known mutations being socially focused.
 
silentorphan said:
The Greys' reputation is that you don't know they're behind it. Mathilde drawing attention like this is very atypical and might even bring it down. "Yes, they can get stuff done, but I want this done without anyone knowing it was them, so who else can do it?"
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Oh please Everyone knows Mathilde is a maverick. It will not reflect badly on the rest of the collage.
 
NSMS said:
Alphabetsoup was an old and powerful Necrach vampire; I'm personally comfortable assessing him as a significantly higher martial threat than a cultist with 2/3 known mutations being socially focused.
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The only people that survived entering the Chaos Realm and leaving in canon (that aren't Gods) are Doomslayer Oxyotl and Witch King Malekith. He stayed there for 18 years, which could have been much more than that because of the Chaos Realm. Even if he didn't survive on his own merit, he needed a very powerful patron to survive, which gave me the impression he was very powerful.
 
silentorphan said:
The Greys' reputation is that you don't know they're behind it. Mathilde drawing attention like this is very atypical and might even bring it down. "Yes, they can get stuff done, but I want this done without anyone knowing it was them, so who else can do it?"
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we are basically the James Bond of the Grey College. We make a lot of noise and blow stuff up so that no one notices all the other mi6 agents doing sneaky stuff.
 
Tasoli said:
Oh please Everyone knows Mathilde is a maverick. It will not reflect badly on the rest of the collage.
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That might work if we were a Journeymen or a normal Magister, but we are a Lord Magister, the highest representation of the Grey Collage there is behind its head having passed the collages highest scrutinizes and tests. That means that what we do does reflect on the college. Any argument of us being a maverick may well reflect worse on the college that they let someone like that become a lord magister if they would do things like this.

Edit: just reread and realize I misread what you were responding to, yea I do agree with what you were saying in context. My bad.
 
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something i think we all need to consider is our job isnt just to catch this guy, its to make certain a certain light wizard doesnt get any credit or it is shared

So I think we need to make it nice and showy with us being known as the one that stopped the chaos plot
 
azereath said:
something i think we all need to consider is our job isnt just to catch this guy, its to make certain a certain light wizard doesnt get any credit or it is shared

So I think we need to make it nice and showy with us being known as the one that stopped the chaos plot
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Technically we never made that deal. Our actual job is making sure Heidi isn't implicated or found out. Killing him is probably more conducive to that, but while it is nice that we could interfere with his credit so he doesn't come back into power and causes more problems, it's not necessarily our objective.
 
Eldon said:
That might work if we were a Journeymen or a normal Magister, but we are a Lord Magister, the highest representation of the Grey Collage there is behind its head having passed the collages highest scrutinizes and tests. That means that what we do does reflect on the college. Any argument of us being a maverick may well reflect worse on the college that they let someone like that become a lord magister if they would do things like this.
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It is worth keeping in mind that the Grey Order is not in any way morally or legally obligated to be sneaky, they have a job to do, and we are apparently doing to really well if flashily. To put this into perspective if a Bright Lord Magister went into the sneaky business and killed cultists with scarce a whiff of smoke would it reflect badly on his College for not fitting the stereotype of being explosive and flashy?
 
Honestly I feel like the dice already pitched in for a solid climax? Taking him out in a well orchestrated hit on the night he's on his way to the target seems pretty climatic. If he'd rolled worse on his hiding roll everything could have ended off screen a couple days ago with Mathilde just getting a report the Longshanks has run him down and he was killed in the ensuing confrontation.
 
Codex said:
The only people that survived entering the Chaos Realm and leaving in canon (that aren't Gods) are Doomslayer Oxyotl and Witch King Malekith. He stayed there for 18 years, which could have been much more than that because of the Chaos Realm. Even if he didn't survive on his own merit, he needed a very powerful patron to survive, which gave me the impression he was very powerful.
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That's fair, and I don't think he'll be a non-threat. Just not elder Necrach level.
 
Codex said:
Technically we never made that deal. Our actual job is making sure Heidi isn't implicated or found out. Killing him is probably more conducive to that, but while it is nice that we could interfere with his credit so he doesn't come back into power and causes more problems, it's not necessarily our objective.
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I thought it was part of the deal with the Light wizards that for their help we make certain Egrimm's master could not get back in charge of the light wizards which means sabataging this whole thing so he doesnt get the political capital to make the play
 
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