- Location
- Earth
Mathilde was picked up from Kelham at the age of 10, and she was recently promoted to Journeywoman at the age of 20 (Turn 1), so we can extrapolate an average length of 10 years.
Warhammer Fantasy: Divided Loyalties - an Advisor's Quest
- Thread starter Boney
- Start date
- Fantasy Users' Choice!
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- Tags
- warhammer warhammer fantasy fantasy be gay do crimes (gay) female protagonist pansexual protagonist ck2 quest divided loyalties mountain vietnam ranald is real this is a dwarf quest (dwarfs) this is maybe an elf quest this is not a vampire quest this is not an empire quest try it and find out open voting
Voted best in category in the Users' Choice awards.
I would expect that this paradigm of mutual benefit from the Conspiracy of Silence would have some interesting implications for the behavior of the Skaven leadership. The Conspiracy of Silence is ultimately an extremely fragile social construct. It would only take a few major Skaven victories (EX: sacking cities, regularly plundering major trade routes, destroying armies) for the whole thing to fall apart. The higher levels of Skaven leadership must be constantly struggling to prevent their ambitious underlings from going to far in their raids on the Empire. The lower-ranked Skaven stand to profit immensely from major raids on the Empire as it is reasonably wealthy nation whose forces ae generally unprepared to face the unique challenge of a Skaven military force. Their limited perspective and clan loyalty means that the long-term benefits of maintaining the Conspiracy of Silence would simply not matter to them.
There would also be some de-facto cooperation between the Skaven assassins' and the Witch Hunters. Both of these factions would target people who seek to spread knowledge of Skaven activities. The Witch Hunters significantly aid Skaven infiltration efforts by making it impossible to oppose them through the public spread of information or a direct mobilization of conventional forces. The particularly clever (or lazy) Skavens would share information with the Witch Hunters as a means of cheaply eliminating targets. This could potentially be expanded into a greater level of cooperation when Chaos Worshippers, Vampires, or other threats to the humanity expand into territory within the Empire that is being exploited by the Skaven (EX: Sewers, Criminal Networks, Smuggler Ports). The Skaven would seek to use the Witch Hunters as a disposable tool for taking out a threat and the Witch Hunters can hardly refrain from acting against a known enemy merely because their information comes from a questionable source or will serve the interests of a different enemy.
My understanding is that Canon primarily focuses on the perspective of the Empire and doesn't really deal with the internal politics of the Skaven in anything but the most surface level plotting of immediate enemies. You could easily fit in these details in a way that brings in some great world-building and story possibilities without contradicting Canon.
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DocMatoi
Theoretical Lover of Girls
- Location
- within 2 hours of the White House
- Pronouns
- They/Them
Huh, you know that sounds kinda familiar, almost like-
Empire does enough fighting to reassure their populace, skaven do enough raiding to cow their underlings. Try to push a proper fight, you get hushed up or declared a madman by the empire, or just plain murked by the skaven
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[X] Plan Disregard WEBMAT, Acquire AP (Fatherless)
-[X] One Overwork Action
-[X] WEB-MAT: Hire someone as a full-time Gyrocopter pilot (Adela)
-[X] Lay the foundations: work with the current members of WEB-MAT and the Waystone Project to build a single unified framework for understanding the Waystones.
--[X] COIN: The Gambler
-[X] Attempt to bring a Major House or Ward into the Waystone Project (Tindomiel)
-[X] Branulhune's ability to disappear and reappear at a thought allows entirely new forms of combat. Continue to work on them.
-[X] Study an artefact: Ghyran Nut
--[X] With Panoramia
-[X] Investigate how the Vitae reacts to a power stone.
-[X] EIC: Have the Hochlander set up a shadow headquarters for the EIC in the Sunken Palace.
-[X] KAU: Decide who your library staff will consist of, and go about recruiting them.
-[X] SERENITY: Write a book: Windsoak Mushrooms (1/2)
-[X] One Overwork Action
-[X] WEB-MAT: Hire someone as a full-time Gyrocopter pilot (Adela)
-[X] Lay the foundations: work with the current members of WEB-MAT and the Waystone Project to build a single unified framework for understanding the Waystones.
--[X] COIN: The Gambler
-[X] Attempt to bring a Major House or Ward into the Waystone Project (Tindomiel)
-[X] Branulhune's ability to disappear and reappear at a thought allows entirely new forms of combat. Continue to work on them.
-[X] Study an artefact: Ghyran Nut
--[X] With Panoramia
-[X] Investigate how the Vitae reacts to a power stone.
-[X] EIC: Have the Hochlander set up a shadow headquarters for the EIC in the Sunken Palace.
-[X] KAU: Decide who your library staff will consist of, and go about recruiting them.
-[X] SERENITY: Write a book: Windsoak Mushrooms (1/2)
Any given Skaven sufficiently profiting from anything inevitably leads to them overthrowing their immediate superiors. So it can be assumed that major raids on the surface are merely sabotaged even more thoroughly than every other path for upwards mobility. But they are probably handled more professionally: it is one thing to cause a catastrophic failure on a more normal venture in the Underempire, but a sufficiently large disaster on the surface could unveil the Skaven just as easily as a success would. So they just bite the bullet, and pay Clan Eshin to guarantee it will be done quietly and effectively.
When faced with a path where you have to go through Eshin Assassins no matter what, and every other path, in which your boss is probably too cheap to/can't afford to shell out for the professionals and you only have to worry about regular assassination, the choice is obvious.
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DocMatoi
Theoretical Lover of Girls
- Location
- within 2 hours of the White House
- Pronouns
- They/Them
This whole conversation has melded with previous instances of thread culture in my brain and made me realize that the Eshin Sorceror (what was it we were calling him? ratkashi?) probably gave a similar speech to his three assassin underlings that mathilde gave to Adela, Gretel, and Hubert:
Theres an omake in this
...
Theres an omake in this
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The impression I always had was that the Skaven were more simply more concerned with fighting each other than anything else. They don't think the Empire is a threat because it isn't. They almost regard the dwarves as a threat, but mostly as 'annoyingly tough to crack'. They may fail to sack a Karak, but there's nothing the Dwarves can do to skavendom itself. The elves... they don't interact with the elves much, but they fall into a similar category. But another Skaven clan? That's an existential threat. That's something that can directly fuck up your clan and kill you, personally, if you piss them off enough.
Sure, they could chuck a doomrocket at every major Imperial city and send in fifty million clanrats to mop up what's left*, but that would be enough of an effort for any single clan would exhaust itself - and therefore be destroyed ... they'd have to cooperate in an environment where plenty of backstabbing is possible. Each clan would be so busy jockeying with its rivals and making sure no one is undercontributing or over-taking, and they'd pretty much immediately fall to infighting against the true threat, each other. This is... pretty much exactly what happened when they fought Mandred - they were flattening the Empire, it was just a question of how long it would take - but their commitment allowed one of the clans to stage a coup. And they were weaker then, coming off a long war with the Dwarfs and without the technical clans (well, Pestilens was the one that did the couping, but... you know what I mean).
No, much better to leave the man-things to their ignorance, raid them occasionally for food and treasure, but ultimately - they're not a threat, they know it, so it's better to focus on actual priorities, like that INFERIOR CLAN OVER THERE THAT'S DOING RATTING WRONG. Once all the lesser clans are dead and <INSERT WARLORD HERE> has been acknowledged as the greatest of all Skaven, then the destruction of the lesser races is a fait-accompli.
*End Times, yeah, but note this is exactly what they did in Vermintide.
Sure, they could chuck a doomrocket at every major Imperial city and send in fifty million clanrats to mop up what's left*, but that would be enough of an effort for any single clan would exhaust itself - and therefore be destroyed ... they'd have to cooperate in an environment where plenty of backstabbing is possible. Each clan would be so busy jockeying with its rivals and making sure no one is undercontributing or over-taking, and they'd pretty much immediately fall to infighting against the true threat, each other. This is... pretty much exactly what happened when they fought Mandred - they were flattening the Empire, it was just a question of how long it would take - but their commitment allowed one of the clans to stage a coup. And they were weaker then, coming off a long war with the Dwarfs and without the technical clans (well, Pestilens was the one that did the couping, but... you know what I mean).
No, much better to leave the man-things to their ignorance, raid them occasionally for food and treasure, but ultimately - they're not a threat, they know it, so it's better to focus on actual priorities, like that INFERIOR CLAN OVER THERE THAT'S DOING RATTING WRONG. Once all the lesser clans are dead and <INSERT WARLORD HERE> has been acknowledged as the greatest of all Skaven, then the destruction of the lesser races is a fait-accompli.
*End Times, yeah, but note this is exactly what they did in Vermintide.
- Location
- The Surface Of A Hostile Planet
Mathilde's threat assessment in the Eshin Bingnaw book has gone up since then - nowadays she's an S-rank Elite Jounin of the Grey College Clan and has Flee on Sight orders among the Eshin apprentices.
- Location
- Somewhere on Earth
Mind that as Boney noted, rolling over the empire like that also came with one rando man-thing figuring out necromancy and becoming a one-man-countless-skeleton army that basically held off an entire front single-handedly. If pushed far enough, humans can get up to some pretty ruthless atrocities, so the Skaven don't really wanna see how far that can go.
consequences
Not A Nice Person At All
- Location
- Jerkville
Ok, take the numerous responses you off gotten so far. Now imagine that each of those posters is actually an entire semi autonomous nation state, itself pulling at cross purposes in accordance to the desires and ambitions of its individual members. Further, imagine that this situation is mirrored by an entirely separate quest running in the same thread, with its own factions.
If the vast majority of each quest doesn't studiously use the ignore function, the thread goes down in flames and no one wins. But there's potential to acquire useful resources to further your goals, as long as you don't push things so far that official notice has to be taken.
The above represents an approximation of why and how a Conspiracy of Silence could work, from the point of view of one of the sub components of the hypothetical interwoven societies.
Or, if you want a simple version that overrides all the potential bickering, just harken to the words of The Great Horned Boney.
Well if you look at it from the Skaven perspective it makes some sense. The first big empire the Skaven dealt with were the dwarfs, and they did fine, when the dwarfs became pressed they turtle up and got more dwarvy, no surprises there. But let's look at the humans, at the beginning its fairly similar, though humans are even easier to kill then dwarfs, but then they got to the point where the dwarfs went isolationistic and the humans went mental and started mucking about with dark magic and holy lightning and shit.
Which would also mean that there is now Eshin "fan-fiction" about her . . .Mathilde's threat assessment in the Eshin Bingnaw book has gone up since then - nowadays she's an S-rank Elite Jounin of the Grey College Clan and has Flee on Sight orders among the Eshin apprentices.
DocMatoi
Theoretical Lover of Girls
- Location
- within 2 hours of the White House
- Pronouns
- They/Them
not just fanfiction, but perhaps, even...
MAGDA WESSER THE MAN-THING MAGISTER, IN: PERIL IN THE CITY OF PILLARS
- Location
- Earth
Agreed. Besides it potentially getting in the way of BÖÖK, I feel that some people are a bit too into it. It would have to be an automatic trait change rather than one of the options for trait gain/upgrade at the end of an arc for it to have any chance of happening, though. Otherwise the thread would get distracted by all the other shinies on offer.
Dwarves and Asur.
No.
Civilized Realms. They're unquestionably civilizations and even at their most troublesome they're not outright enemies to humanity.
Mathilde assumes that the Baba was so helpful in pointing her at the Warhost in the hopes that it would result in them being dealt with.
30, IIRC.
Ten to twelve years.
No.
The Empire has a very reliable dynamic - when they think they're safe, they focus on infighting and internal jockeying. When they think they're under threat, they unite and turn into a divinely-backed juggernaut willing to do whateer it takes to survive. It happened in the Skaven Wars against Grand Supreme Warlord of all Skavendom Vrrmik, it happened in the Great War Against Chaos against Asavar Kul, it happened in the Vampire Wars against three successive Von Carsteins, it happened in the Crusades against Sultan Jaffar. All the way back at the origin of the Empire, it was first united because of the threat of the Norscans, the first Everchosen Morkar the Uniter, and Nagash.
Nagash, back from his first death when the exact same dynamic played out when the Skaven felt threatened by him.
The Conspiracy of Silence works because the Empire and the Under-Empire are intimately familiar with the dynamic the other operates under. They know that if one goes to war against the other, the aggressor will struggle to motivate the rest of its kind to spend their own power and resources while the enemy unites against a common threat. So they mostly step carefully around each other and watch each other for weakness and when they spot and opportunity they dive for it and have a short nasty war before both sides back off again before it escalates.
- Location
- New Brunswick, NJ
- Pronouns
- He/Him/His
Unfortunately, it's unlikely to go away on its own, and trying to convince people to spend an end-of-arc trait vote on getting rid of it sounds like a nightmare unless the replacement trait is very good, which is doubly difficult because Boney has adopted the policy of obscuring the mechanical consequences of traits until they're taken. Trait votes are the most chaotic ones this quest has to offer and basically impossible for anyone to steer, as far as I've been able to tell.
- Location
- Finland
There are two great lies about the Skaven.
First, is that they don't exist.
Second, is that anyone believes the first.
Empire does not have widespread mass media, so keepings things like Skaven secret is lot easier than one might expect if you are willing, and able, to really stamp down on things.
But even with that, lot of people know about Skaven, but don't talk because doing so means you get visited by some very unamused people, or at best laughed at (often by people who do know).
Conspiracy of silence is less "nobody knows" and more "stop talking or i'll shank you", which is helped along by doing what you can to prevent the spread of information.
It is somewhat implausible, bordering on impossible, but it's not as unreasonable as it seems at first.
- Location
- Earth
Is that counting from joining a College or from receiving a master?
- Location
- Canada
The issue with getting rid of disdain for Sigmar is that Mathilde hasn't done/experienced anything that would change her mind on the matter. If a narrativly appropriate sequence of events happen that cause Mathilde to rethink her opinions on Sigmar, then I'm all for getting rid of it. But without such a sequence, removing it does not make sense.
From joining.
- Location
- The Surface Of A Hostile Planet
I'd like an arc where Mathilde overcomes her disdain for Sigmar in-story, honestly.
I'm kind of hoping that something along those lines might happen, either through further investigation of deities-as-people that we're starting on with the Father side-plot, or potentially as part of the Waystone project later on if we work with Kasmir and Roswitta while trying to clear up the Sylvania waystones? There's some potential through Starke interactions, too.
While I won't say that there were *no* in-story reasons for Mathilde to have dropped the disdain for Sigmar during prior trait votes (if there were no reasons we wouldn't have even been offered the choice), I think that those narrative notes were distinctly second-fiddle compared to other things happening during that time. Pair that with what were at the time seen as pretty lacklustre mechanical benefits (since we fully planned on continuing to not have to deal with Sigmarites), and, well - we have our current result.
I'm kind of hoping that something along those lines might happen, either through further investigation of deities-as-people that we're starting on with the Father side-plot, or potentially as part of the Waystone project later on if we work with Kasmir and Roswitta while trying to clear up the Sylvania waystones? There's some potential through Starke interactions, too.
While I won't say that there were *no* in-story reasons for Mathilde to have dropped the disdain for Sigmar during prior trait votes (if there were no reasons we wouldn't have even been offered the choice), I think that those narrative notes were distinctly second-fiddle compared to other things happening during that time. Pair that with what were at the time seen as pretty lacklustre mechanical benefits (since we fully planned on continuing to not have to deal with Sigmarites), and, well - we have our current result.
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Also in regards to Pikkl's post, is he correct in his read that Johann doesn't add enough value to qualify Tindomiel recruitment for a WEBMAT action?
True, on the other hand, we're starting to do more stuff in the empire again. So the odds of her running into something that causes her to reassess are better now than they were when she was mainly in eight peaks and only popped in briefly.
Contrasting with that though is her current project is sort of backed by Ulricans and opposed by Sigmarites... So...
- Location
- Australia
If it wouldn't make sense, Boney wouldn't offer an option for it. Furthermore, Boney has stated the reason why she'd lose the trait: time and distance from the trauma, which is a legitimate way for a person to get over things. It isn't dramatic but I'd prefer that over continuing to keep it.
- Location
- Oklahoma
Well, sort of. In some ways they're very predictable. Anything directly related to boosting Mathilde's ability to magic is nearly an automatic win, and anything related to windsight in particular takes out the 'nearly' part.