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Warhammer Fantasy: Divided Loyalties - an Advisor's Quest

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Now that the immediate threat has been dealt with, does Mathilde have enough time and leeway to head to Praag to figure out just what's happening with the leylines?
 
Yeah, it was basically "finish casting before Mathilde does her thing, or die", and casting just takes too long, plain and simple. It was a simple matter of time.
 
silentorphan said:
Now that the immediate threat has been dealt with, does Mathilde have enough time and leeway to head to Praag to figure out just what's happening with the leylines?
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It would only take her four days of extra travel to do a lap around Praag, but then she'd either know that the energy is in there somewhere and digging around in Praag is the kind of thing she'd need permission for and ideally preparations and backup, or it's leaving Praag and then it would take even more travel time to follow it to the next stop on its journey. Either way you'd need an action's worth of time to get actual answers instead of just changing the question.
 
Yeah… we kinda overachieved this turn with those two investigations.

The best part is Mathilde has no idea how much she really did with them - killed an everchosen candidate and took down an infamous millennia old Malevolent forest spirit.
 
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Simon_Jester said:
Panoramia: "So, how did your side-quest in Kislev go, sweetie?"

Mathilde: "My battle trophy is the bottom half of a dryad."

Panoramia: "..."
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"It was an entire DLC quest chain, with a new faction to fight! Look at this sweet hardwood booty!

The leader, some sort of Ulgu using Dryad apparently had this big introduction video, but I just clicked through. Can always read the wiki later."
 
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Byzantine said:
Yeah… we kinda overachieved this turn with those two investigations.
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Mathilde: goes out to investigate rumors of disturbances in order to recruit a couple of Orders into the project.

Also Mathilde: sets off a city wide manhunt and murders a Chaos champion while making friends with a Cult, then instigates a mass mobilization of Kislevite forces to murder a tree spirit army and murders the most dangerous of said tree spirits personally.

Parranoth and Mira: :o:o
 
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"You return Ljiljana's thoughtful look with a smile"

We know that Ljiljana and the Ice Witches have a connection to The Widow, and Ljilijana saw us duel the Champion alongside Ranald as the Protector.

And here we go out of our way to include Kislev in our investigations. We make sure to deliver the heir to the battle on time (before his father and the city-folk can arrive) and in so doing he asks us to ask for the Ice Witches on his behalf. The Ice Witches (including her once-apprentice who has the hots for Boris) are brought to battle alongside the forces of the rural Boyars. The plot that this friend of Ranald has uncovered is a lethal one, and is well worth the display of force. Better than that, the battle gives a chance for the Ice Witches to once again prove their worth to the forces in attendance. Including to the heir of Kislev, who slays a mighty Treeman and a Manticore at the side of the young Ice Witch that's enamored of him. The friend of Ranald appears from literally nowhere to intercept a skulking foe that also leapt from nothing, and with a slash and a blast disposes of the foe without allowing an escape. In the aftermath, the Ice Witches are given permission to investigate on the word of the heir that you now have an in-road with.

Ahh. We may not be repairing Ranald's standing in Kislev, and yet we're repairing Ranald's standing in Kislev (at least Ljiljana's appraisal of him)
 
Byzantine said:
Always be careful to deploy Mathilde thoughtfully. She is incredibly effective. To the point she will probably do something completely different and so far beyond your expectations you'll be trying to remember what you actually hired her for and have no idea.
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They should have talked to Belegar and Roswita first. Might have gotten some advance warning.

But hey, at least it wasn't like those times she pulled an entire mountain of dwarves out of solid stone, or murdered an entire Black College and loosed all of the Battle Wizards on Sylvania. Those were probably more noticeable.
 
Oh yeah that reminds me Randal standing should also improve just a little with Mathilde who is almost prophet like in her piety helping save what was suppose to be a bloody campaign into a lite casualty one.
 
Well, again - much like Mathilde didn't actually put that much effort towards figuring out Alric's exact gameplan for Mira's ostensible favor, she also didn't put that much effort into figuring out exactly what was causing the disturbance in the Forest of Shadows for her favor to Paranoth.

Mathilde still thinks this was a sanctioned action by Athel Loren and has no clue what a "Drycha" is, which she absolutely could have figured out if she spent a fraction of the time she did gathering armies instead gathering information.

So it's not quite accurate to say that Mathilde overachieves her assigned goals - much like when we were Belegar's Loremaster, Mathilde's go-to seems to be to technically accomplish her assigned task with bare-bones effort, then go above and beyond when it comes to a related task that, while helpful, nobody actually asked her to do.

If you just have problems that you're happy to spray solutions in the general direction of, then this is a fine approach, but having a reputation for that kind of barely-steerable aim does mean that when it comes to more delicate favours Mathilde is a lot less likely to be a good choice.
 
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Redshirt Army said:
So it's not quite accurate to say that Mathilde overachieves her assigned goals - much like when we were Belegar's Loremaster, Mathilde's go-to seems to be to technically accomplish her assigned task with bare-bones effort, then go above and beyond when it comes to a related task that, while helpful, nobody actually asked her to do.
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Including reconquering a Karak!
 
I disagree Mathilde going beyond her stated orders has always helped. Karak Vlag would not have happened if she had just stocked with the convoy. Learning the skaven language and alphabet too. Than there was Castle she destroyed. Also minor examples of Mathilde doing things that have helped go beyond her mandate.
 
Mopman43 said:
One important note here-

We weren't visible until after the Dragonflask was already going.

Even if Drycha comes back, and even if she has perfect retention of what happened, all she'll know is that there was an invisible mage with a sword that cut right though her and then hit her with fire.

Why would her first thought not be an Elf? She's already predisposed to blame everything on them.
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Drycha could have gotten a good look at Mathilde's "aethyric signature" or soul, or she might have been able to see through the Invisibility as a fellow Ulgu caster, as she was definitely glaring in Mathilde's direction and apparently locked eyes before deciding to bug out.
Boney said:
It twists to look at you, glowing eyes locking onto yours as they glow even brighter with hatred and outrage. For a moment you think it is going to try to throw itself at you, but then the eyes dim slightly as Ulgu shivers through the air.
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Redshirt Army said:
Even with the massive mess of the winds the flask made, Mathilde was still able to see that Drycha's teleport spell got disrupted.

So she didn't get away that way. I guess it's hypothetically possible that she managed to abandon the teleport spell, switch to more basic Ulgu based invisibility, completely dodge the Dragonflask, and then get away while the winds were too disrupted for Mathilde to spot the spell use, but that sounds like the domain of Nat 100's alone.

Within the far more likely scenario where she got burned to a crisp... at minimum she's lost whatever portion of her spirit she had invested in this adventure, which likely (though not certainly) includes her ability to figure out what happened, and it'll take her a long time to recover from this. At most, she's just dead. Even if she does recover the memories, it'll be non-obvious to her who exactly murked her unless Mathilde goes wandering into Athel Loren and shows off Branulhune's exact capabilities and/or the Dragonflask.
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My main concern is that Drycha managed to "lock eyes" with Mathilde despite her invisibility, so she might have been able to see past it because of her skill with Ulgu. Kinda like the improvement action we have to "See through Pall of Darkness" spell.

Furthermore, malicious Tree Spirits are sometimes called Tree Daemons, and if they're anything like actual Daemons then it's possible they could reform their spirit elsewhere after losing their physical form. Drycha seems to be more "ethereal" and spirit-like since her body was essentially a puppet-suit made from wood as she exited from the Treeman. However, the concentrated Aqshy fire-blast would probably still be highly effective at damaging Drycha's detached spirit, especially as she didn't expect it at all.
 
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Redshirt Army said:
Well, again - much like Mathilde didn't actually put that much effort towards figuring out Alric's exact gameplan for Mira's ostensible favor, she also didn't put that much effort into figuring out exactly what was causing the disturbance in the Forest of Shadows for her favor to Paranoth.

Mathilde still thinks this was a sanctioned action by Athel Loren and has no clue what a "Drycha" is, which she absolutely could have figured out if she spent a fraction of the time she did gathering armies instead gathering information.

So it's not quite accurate to say that Mathilde overachieves her assigned goals - much like when we were Belegar's Loremaster, Mathilde's go-to seems to be to technically accomplish her assigned task with bare-bones effort, then go above and beyond when it comes to a related task that, while helpful, nobody actually asked her to do.

If you just have problems that you're happy to spray solutions in the general direction of, then this is a fine approach, but having a reputation for that kind of barely-steerable aim does mean that when it comes to more delicate favours Mathilde is a lot less likely to be a good choice.
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Eh, she gets the job done. Just because she also gets other jobs done at the same time doesn't mean she's not a good choice. She can even be discreet about it! Mira will probably guess that Mathilde was involved in fucking over Alberich, but only because she knew Mathilde was going to be in the area in the first place looking for a potential problem. Same with Parranoth, since I doubt the Kislevites will make a public gesture of thanks or anything.
 
Nurgle said:
I disagree Mathilde going beyond her stated orders has always helped. Karak Vlag would not have happened if she had just stocked with the convoy. Learning the skaven language and alphabet too. Than there was Castle she destroyed. Also minor examples of Mathilde doing things that have helped go beyond her mandate.
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Well, I mean - of course Mathilde's decisions will mostly seem like a good idea from her perspective - if they didn't then we wouldn't have voted for them.

But from the perspective of mmm, let's say some Celestial Wizard with 10 College Favors burning a hole in their pocket they want to spend on a surreptitious investigation by a Grey College Lord Magister somewhere, "will cause great vaguely pro-social turmoil around the area of the investigation" isn't necessarily a positive.
 
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Redshirt Army said:
If you just have problems that you're happy to spray solutions in the general direction of, then this is a fine approach, but having a reputation for that kind of barely-steerable aim does mean that when it comes to more delicate favours Mathilde is a lot less likely to be a good choice.
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"Go see if you can help the Karag Dum Expedition, I said. You've a knack for the unconventional, I said. Let's get as many souls as possible home safe, I said."
 
Redshirt Army said:
But from the perspective of mmm, let's say some Celestial Wizard with 10 College Favors burning a hole in their pocket they want to spend on a surreptitious investigation by a Grey College Lord Magister somewhere, "will cause great vaguely pro-social turmoil around the area of the investigation" isn't necessarily a positive.
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Yeah. But really I'd say that reputation is good for us - it means that people will generally point us at problems that they think that approach is probably useful for.

That's more or less why we got assigned to help the Karak Dum expedition, Belegar figured we'd come up with something and probably exceed whatever expectations he had.

We did.
 
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