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Er... 37 is the dice value, they are rolling +32 intrigue. On that note being able to take martial Champions of the Dark Goods in a cage fight is really not what her character is about. In fact if we are doing anything close to a fair fight with any of them something is deeply, deeply wrong.

I think it needs to be said again 30 is legendary, we are not in a position to be legendary with a sword, we can kind of fake it with a bit of luck but at the end of the day that is not what our day job is and it is not where we would do the most good.
We might never become legendary with the sword in general, but we can become legendary with Branulhune. Also it is just a reality of Ulgi magic that a large amount of the time sword is going to be our most effective offensive option. Like right now.
 
We might never become legendary with the sword in general, but we can become legendary with Branulhune. Also it is just a reality of Ulgi magic that a large amount of the time sword is going to be our most effective offensive option. Like right now.

I agree as far as it goes we can be the One Weird Trick equivalent of a swordswoman... but that does not mean we should seek it out because like right now we do not need it. I was pushing back against the notion that we should have duel with martially inclined candidates for Everchosen. That feels a bit like saying we should get intrigue training so we can out-scheme Kairos or something.

Martial and intrigue are both secondary skills for us and ones that are not that relevant to the project we are on right now.
 
I'm all in favour of finishing the Branulhune sword style.
But let's not kid ourselves, we will never be someone who can go toe to toe with the ever chosen.
Not alone, not with Ranald.
Best we could hope is a decapitation strike during an ambush, and if it fails, legging it.
 
[X] Kill: Branulhune

Alberic must die today. And I don't trust the Shadow Knives to do the job.

As for the Dragonflask, I'm not much worried about the collateral, but I am worried that if for whatever reason that fails to disable him then we are left temporarily blinded and unable to cast spells with a vocal component.

@Boney Which spells can Mathilde still cast without a vocal component?

Our last attempt to pull a fancy sword manoeuvre on a Slaaneshi demon did not go as planned, nor did dragonfire make an MVP performance. We don't exactly have a radiance beam, but the marksdwarf pistol is the next best thing and comes with absolutely no warning and negligible possibility of failure.
We'd have to wait till he exits the sedan.

@Boney What, if anything, does Mathilde see with her Windsight when it comes to the porters?
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.
We are still one bad roll away from initiating a climactic battle.
I think one thing to stress is that this quest is old and long. Throw enough dice and eventually its expected that unusual circumstances will happen.
And yet how many massive and compounding failures or snake eyes during supernatural events with large consequences have we had? I can only think of one of note, which then proceeded to completely alter the Quest's trajectory. Two if you don't count Roswita firing us as still part of the same "Van Hals rolling shit" cascade. Imagine if any other climax had gone a bit more like that. Mathilde might not necessarily be dead, but we definitely wouldn't be where we are now.
also has a number of acts that are sneaky and highly classified (Queekish; Sylvannia's necromancer college)
Yeah, but no one knows about those. :V
- a knight of Stirland in fact -
I like how this remains the case in spirit and not just on paper.

Unfahiger with some weird two dot thing somewhere in there. I don't do German. They call themselves the Krieglitz now.
Do they? All we know is that they call their home that. Many noble families throughout history have lived in homes not named after them for one reason or another, no?

Also, the dots are over the ä. It makes it be pronounced more like the ea in "weather" instead of like the a in "wall". Oonfeaheeger. Ya know, if it were modern German instead of Stirlandian Reikspiel.
His associates might still know something inconvenient when they are caught.
Won't that be true even if we swiftly kill Alberich right here and now?
Aside from the fact that I'm super uncomfortable with asking someone for payment for something we did that they didn't ask for
It's called asking for a reward. And as long as one just asks and doesn't demand I don't see what's wrong with it. Pretty much like a finder's fee after somebody lost something.
and she's friends with the Empress, who is ostensibly from the same family. Getting Alberich dealt with looks to Mira like a request from the Empress. Can't have the public learn that a Haupt-Anderssen was behind the murders.
That's already more info than I want her to have.
and should we kill him then, we really can say with 100% honesty that this guy's killed while resisting arrest.
Wait, why does this matter?
 
[x] Kill: Branulhune

Shame we got no air horns for this big old dunk.
 
@Boney Which spells can Mathilde still cast without a vocal component?

All of them. Vocalizations and gestures make spells easier because you're doing some of the work with your voice and your hands instead of doing it all with your brain, but they aren't required.

@Boney What, if anything, does Mathilde see with her Windsight when it comes to the porters?

If she saw anything that was out of the ordinary for regular humans, it would have been mentioned in the update.
 
Won't that be true even if we swiftly kill Alberich right here and now?

Well maybe , but as long as they are not caught in connection to him odds are the people who catch them will not ask the questions we do not want asked. On top of that anyone he has spoken to in confidence is a Chaos Cultists, it is by no means guaranteed they will be captured, they can come to all sorts of ends, many of them self-inflicted.
 
Martial and intrigue are both secondary skills for us and ones that are not that relevant to the project we are on right now.
Even when we expected to be doing safe jobs far away from anyone near Mathile's weight class... if she'd shown up at the wrong time and place here she might have run into a newly-empowered Everchosen candidate. For better or worse, Mathilde keeps running into enemies against whom staying safe and/or running away just isn't an option. So regardless of how "Mathilde will never be as good as-" a martially-inclined enemy doesn't mean we shouldn't bother having her finish the Branulhune sword style. It's not wasting AP on an unimportant Martial stat. It's about ensuring Mathilde has the best skills and tools reasonably possible to ensure her own survival. Remember, the Draugr are always training.
 
Even when we expected to be doing safe jobs far away from anyone near Mathile's weight class... if she'd shown up at the wrong time and place here she might have run into a newly-empowered Everchosen candidate. For better or worse, Mathilde keeps running into enemies against whom staying safe and/or running away just isn't an option. So regardless of how "Mathilde will never be as good as-" a martially-inclined enemy doesn't mean we shouldn't bother having her finish the Branulhune sword style. It's not wasting AP on an unimportant Martial stat. It's about ensuring Mathilde has the best skills and tools reasonably possible to ensure her own survival. Remember, the Draugr are always training.

No they aren't. This is not Skyrim, there is no artificial leveling with the player, and more importantly there is no obligation to get into cage matches for the vast amount of time. We had a lot more people we could have called into this, not just agents and friends, like literally armies of people. That is the whole point of being an agent of the state (two states in fact). We are not limited to Skyrim's companions either.
 
After how long we spent on training montages during the lead-up to Karag Dum, I'm still a little resistant to spend discretionary AP on self-improvement rather than research stuff, but next turn is a free Overwork and maybe I can be talked around to it, especially if we drop WEBMAT for a turn so we have 6 personal AP to play with? Though, honestly, the main self-improvement I want to do at this point is finishing the spellbook.
 
Most Necromancy is raising bodies without the soul being involved. There are very few necromancy spells focusing on spirits and souls, Shyish has more of that. Lore of Nehekhara is ironically more soul centric.

As I recall from the Liber Necris, which I think is the only description we have of the process, nearly all necromancy depends on using the soul (or pieces thereof) as an essential component of raising and undead. The soul (fragment) acts as the control mechanism. The more complex and capable the undead, the more intact you need the old owner's soul to be, but unless you have a fresh enough corpse that you can implant commands in its decaying brain you need at least a fragment of said soul.

As a result most necromancy is focused on using spirits and souls, as even a fresh zombie will decay past the point of being functional without doing something related to the soul.

There's a pretty complete description of how necromancy works from a theoretical perspective on pages 58-65 of Liber Necris.
 
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After how long we spent on training montages during the lead-up to Karag Dum, I'm still a little resistant to spend discretionary AP on self-improvement rather than research stuff, but next turn is a free Overwork and maybe I can be talked around to it, especially if we drop WEBMAT for a turn so we have 6 personal AP to play with? Though, honestly, the main self-improvement I want to do at this point is finishing the spellbook.
Well, while we are talking about self improvement, I would like to remind people that Eike may be out of junior apprenticeship pretty soon. So we need that teaching class and if possible completing the spellbook.
 
After how long we spent on training montages during the lead-up to Karag Dum, I'm still a little resistant to spend discretionary AP on self-improvement rather than research stuff, but next turn is a free Overwork and maybe I can be talked around to it, especially if we drop WEBMAT for a turn so we have 6 personal AP to play with? Though, honestly, the main self-improvement I want to do at this point is finishing the spellbook.
WEB-MAT actions are kind of earmarked for research, unless there happens to be an opportunity to use them for the Waystone project. With the exception of some research options like AV that are for Mathilde alone, I think we can count on WEB-MAT to chip away at most of our research projects at a reasonable rate.

Also, we're probably going to do at least one WEB-MAT action next turn: getting Adela to be our full time pilot. And once we do that, surely we can find a use for another WEB-MAT action to get our bonus action (say, dictating our mushroom book to Max, and getting Egrimm to research the Kurgan weapons).
 
Well, while we are talking about self improvement, I would like to remind people that Eike may be out of junior apprenticeship pretty soon. So we need that teaching class and if possible completing the spellbook.
To be more precise, we met her on Turn 34, and three years of waiting is six turns, so we should expect her to become available at around Turn 40.
 
Right now, it's looking like people are keen on killing him and being done with this, which is perfectly fine by me. You don't let such a marvelous sneak attack opportunity pass you by!

But I see that the Dragonflask is, somehow, not in the lead. So here are some points in its favor:
- Taking a drink might not break Coin stealth, so we should have the upper hand right up to the very last moment.
- While you can dodge a sword swing, it's immensely harder to dodge an explosion. Who knows what kind of preternatural bullshitery he has? No twisting around the sword all snake-like, no sir! We deal in honest, hard-working AoE damage.
- This is pretty much a perfect set up for the Flask, in which the situation mitigates pretty much every single downside it has.
- His chaos scent stuff could make us whiff a sword swing. Meanwhile, breathing in his general direction is almost impossible to fuck up!
- It'd look incredibly fucking cool. Don't y'all want to finally use this baby? It's the densest boom the Bright College can make. When we need to be absolutely sure he ain't surviving this, there is nothing better!
- It's very in-character for us. Think about our usual exploits and Jane Bond-isms. A "standard" Grey Wizard might go with sneaky Shadow Knives or Throttling, but Mathilde? A big boom right after impecable stealth might as well be our trademark!
 
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Tentative vote plan for next turn then:

plan waystones and self improvement
-invite one of the magic elf houses (the hecate one?)
-framework action
-spellbook
-sword training
-apprentice training
-codify rite of way?

Does that sound right to people?
 
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