Remove ads

Warhammer Fantasy: Divided Loyalties - an Advisor's Quest

Voted best in category in the Users' Choice awards.
Voting is open
Reader mode
StormySky said:
Mathilde can do personal stealth (ie sneaking up on things) and disguises well enough, it's just that she almost inevitably goes loud when it comes to the actual shanking and aftermath. Whereas other Greys stay quiet the whole way through, so that you have trouble telling they were even there (ie the previous Empress's death).
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
That was actually an Amethyst Wizard, though.
 
Redshirt Army said:
It's also important to note that there are, y'know, seven other Grey LM's total.

That's not an overwhelming number of people to gather potential spell creation traits from, setting aside that they're all presumably very busy.

Like, think about it from the other side. If a commission came in from some Grey Magister right now that they wanted a spell made that would act as a sound-dampening fog, how many College favors would they have to offer Mathilde before you'd agree to spend the requisite actions on it right now, delaying the Waystone project?
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Another important point is that just because you've made a spell that works for you, doesn't necessarily mean you're going to be able to teach that spell. Magic among humans is incredibly personalised, and if a spell is too wrapped up in your own understanding of your wind to generalise? Chances are you're not going to be able to pass it on.
 
BurnNote said:
It was more than a single interrogation. It was capturing someone without the enemy knowing, subverting them, feeding them captured intel for translations, and then deciphering a language from those translations.

But if you want a larger thing, then Mathilde also directed the information warfare aspect of the K8Ps campaign, and that was a great success as well.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
I never suggested it was a single interview. Interrogation as referring to the process, almost always consisting of multiple interviews. And the enemy only didn't know because Moulder ceased to exist. If Moulder had survived, they would of course notice the absence of their prisoner. I concede it is likely they would misattribute, but we only embarked upon the operation because the foe faced imminent annihilation.

Our orchestration of the information warfare aspect of the K8P recapture was largely battlefield reconnaissance, not clandestine intelligence operations.

StormySky said:
Mathilde can do personal stealth (ie sneaking up on things) and disguises well enough, it's just that she almost inevitably goes loud when it comes to the actual shanking and aftermath. Whereas other Greys stay quiet the whole way through, so that you have trouble telling they were even there (ie the previous Empress's death).

She can also stay quiet (ie Queekish), she just chooses not to.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Precisely. And in that going loud she definitionally ceases to be clandestine. And again, I discount the Queekish because it's not a clandestine operation, merely the analysis of intelligence extracted through interrogation. I wouldn't call the work of an interrogator at a black site a clandestine operation, nor that of an analyst such (in the sense to be contrasted with overt or covert operations).
 
MiracleGrow said:
I may have been playing to much Elden Ring. But with uglu focus on borders and such. Wouldn't it be easy to make some crazy spell where you swing your sword and it sends out a blade of uglu at people. It's fucking dumb but would look cool and that's what matters :V
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

The 'easiest' way to do that would be to start at Penumbral Pendulum and scale down.

Rafin said:
Ah. Sorry. I might have conflated the question you were answering with my own question, which just boiled down to "where do the Ambers store and disseminate their papers?"
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

Possibly one of the administration buildings of the Altdorf Zoo.

Jyn Ryvia said:
Not sure how much Mathy would be pro EIC trade with the Only 'order' human city is that practices legal slave trade.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

I believe this is the result of a game of fandom telephone from this single line in Realm of the Ice Queen:
"Now, Erengrad is Kislev's main trading city and its largest port. Situated on the coast of the Sea of Claws, vessels from across the Old World, New World, and even Norsca come here with goods, slaves, gems, and precious metals."
All other mentions of the word 'slave' are in the context of Norscan raiders enslaving citizens of Kislev. Whether this single line means 'Erengrad has a full-blown slave market' or 'there's a black market for slaves in Erengrad's underworld' or 'ship-to-ship slave trading goes on here, out of sight of local authorities' or even 'sometimes particularly stupid Norscans come to Erengrad thinking they'd be able to sell their slaves, and then are attacked by port authorities and the slaves liberated' is entirely open to interpretation. And the fact that Tome of Corruption says that 'some dark corners in Marienburg' are famed for their 'flesh markets' means that even if you interpret it as badly as possible, it's not unique to Erengrad.

Ericwinter said:
Isn't he supposed to be kinda ripped though? I remember seeing a probable picture of him at some point that was pretty ripped. He's just had this really good habit of critting.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

He's wide-framed, has an active lifestyle, and is a good shot with a crossbow or a rifle. He's 'wimpy' by choice.
 
It was a clandestine operation because she managed to gather the means to do it from the Skaven without them ever catching on to what she was doing.

(We know they never caught on, because its not currently raining Eshin assassins.)
 
Ericwinter said:
You know, Drycha aside, this whole tangent has made me wonder how many people really are out there planning revenge on Mathilde for something she did to them or their organization. I kind of doubt Boney would ever actually jump us with some random necromancer apprentice out of the blue or something, but we might end up investigating some grand plot somewhere down the line that ties back to something Mathilde has done.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

Or there's the other extreme, where Mathilde suddenly finds herself trapped in a (frankly somewhat mediocre) ambush by a conspiracy created by survivors of the school of necromancy purge, only to be bailed by Eshin Friend who it turns out through fortunate background rolls had discovered the conspiracy and counter ambushed their ambush.

What follows is Mathilde and Eshin Friend teaming up to dunk on the necromantic amateurs and show them real intrigue focused hero units look like, gaining mutual respect and high facing each other after emerging victorious, stepping past the battlefield of the foiled ambush…

Only to turn a corner and find that Sigvald the Magnificent and Burned Drycha had also discovered the (apparently really poor at information security come on guys) necromantic conspiracy and aimed to ambush the consequently weakened Mathilde only to have accidentally ambushed each other instead.

And then Ranald laughs and says 'They'll never believe you,' in Smug Divine Trickster.
 
Ericwinter said:
You know, Drycha aside, this whole tangent has made me wonder how many people really are out there planning revenge on Mathilde for something she did to them or their organization. I kind of doubt Boney would ever actually jump us with some random necromancer apprentice out of the blue or something, but we might end up investigating some grand plot somewhere down the line that ties back to something Mathilde has done.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

Well, Mathilde has been warned a few times in quest that the chaos gods will have their eyes on her- the slaneeshi demon we killed and the tzeechite one that gave moulder such trouble would carry word, and we know Khorne was looking at his champion when we were fighting him.

Plus the ritual we just disrupted.

So I'm wildly speculating that what is going to be thrown at us is a Tzeetch plot: to use us to set Khorne and Slaneesh to fighting eachother by sending then both at us in ways that they constantly trip over eachother.
 
Boney said:
Whether this single line means 'Erengrad has a full-blown slave market' or 'there's a black market for slaves in Erengrad's underworld' or 'ship-to-ship slave trading goes on here, out of sight of local authorities' or even 'sometimes particularly stupid Norscans come to Erengrad thinking they'd be able to sell their slaves, and then are attacked by port authorities and the slaves liberated' is entirely open to interpretation
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Alternatively any slaves brought to Erengrad might not be sold so much as ransomed. It's a fairly decent place for such exchanges, and the authorities could be reluctant to cut off a peaceful method of retrieving slaves from Norsca.
 
FallenPears said:
Or there's the other extreme, where Mathilde suddenly finds herself trapped in a (frankly somewhat mediocre) ambush by a conspiracy created by survivors of the school of necromancy purge, only to be bailed by Eshin Friend who it turns out through fortunate background rolls had discovered the conspiracy and counter ambushed their ambush.

What follows is Mathilde and Eshin Friend teaming up to dunk on the necromantic amateurs and show them real intrigue focused hero units look like, gaining mutual respect and high facing each other after emerging victorious, stepping past the battlefield of the foiled ambush…

Only to turn a corner and find that Sigvald the Magnificent and Burned Drycha had also discovered the (apparently really poor at information security come on guys) necromantic conspiracy and aimed to ambush the consequently weakened Mathilde only to have accidentally ambushed each other instead.

And then Ranald laughs and says 'They'll never believe you,' in Smug Divine Trickster.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Afterward, Eshin Friend finally sees the chance to go for a backstab, but before he can strike he's trampled by a Mammoth.
 
My favorite is more how Mathilde tended to solve things during the Eight Peaks expedition. Namely, instigate an event that makes everybody else fight each other with minimal personal involvement.
 
Anyways got a question for Boney. Is their any wizards out there who really embraced the arts using their magic? Paintings, putting on shows for people, etc. I imagine that the bigotry is probably a bit much in the empire for that. But I wouldn't be surprised if someone picked that up in Reikland.
 
Last edited:
MiracleGrow said:
Anyways got a question for Boney. Is their any wizards out there who really embraced the arts using their magic? Paintings, putting on shows for people, etc. I imagine that the bigotry is probably a bit much in the empire for that. But I wouldn't be surprised if someone picked that up in Reikland.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

Creations: Max, arguably. But for more conventional forms of art, there's not really anyone doing so openly. The biggest market for works of art is religious, and most Cults would shy away from working with a Wizard if they didn't have to.

Performances: Circuses are often filled with magic-users, illicit or otherwise - illusionists, pyromancers, fortune tellers, animal tamers, strongmen performing feats of endurance. But a more outright 'come see the magic-user using magic' show, not really. Altdorf culture is to be performatively unimpressed with any use of magic, and outside of Altdorf the usual reaction is fear and mistrust.
 
Boney said:
Creations: Max, arguably. But for more conventional forms of art, there's not really anyone doing so openly. The biggest market for works of art is religious, and most Cults would shy away from working with a Wizard if they didn't have to.

Performances: Circuses are often filled with magic-users, illicit or otherwise - illusionists, pyromancers, fortune tellers, animal tamers, strongmen performing feats of endurance. But a more outright 'come see the magic-user using magic' show, not really. Altdorf culture is to be performatively unimpressed with any use of magic, and outside of Altdorf the usual reaction is fear and mistrust.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
That makes perfect sense. Also made me realize that The Empire might be hitting that phase in the renissance where the church went 'here is literally all the money, make basically everything' and the art scene explodes for like two hundred something years.
 
Though come to think of it there might be an underground counterculture scene for the appreciation of magical arts forming in major cities as the next step forward from Wizard Chic.
 
Reader mode
You must login or register to reply here.
Voting is open
Remove ads
Back
Top