Mopman43
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It's the vote for contact with the outside world, period.
Galenstra said out-right, if House Elwyn hadn't gone extinct, we wouldn't be in Laurelorn.
Warhammer Fantasy: Divided Loyalties - an Advisor's Quest
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Galenstra said out-right, if House Elwyn hadn't gone extinct, we wouldn't be in Laurelorn.
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I'm pretty sure that's standard Major House procedure. All the Major Houses seem to have communal bunkhouses that you can stay in for free if you can't pay the exorbitant rent for your own home in Tor Lithanel, which is what Mathilde meant when she said the floor was very high for Cityborn. Being homeless seems next to impossible as a Cityborn. In exchange, the Major Houses gain influence and favor from doing this, and they make sure to remind the Cityborn of that fact. Those who attempt to get the favor of the House get a few hints and then go on their way, and the House benefits even if they rent out the bunkhouses at no physical cost.
Tindomiel present a different front in that we haven't seen the same thing happen right in front of our eyes, but maybe they have different standards or procedures to secure their influence.
We are a Lord Magister of the Grey Order. The only reason it's above our pay grade is because we don't get paid. It's literally a part of our job description, and okay, the Graf and the Ar-Ulric are doing a lot of the heavy lifting there, but our project of international magical co-operation is a vital pillar of Eonir-Human relations.
The vote literally says they are "well-educated and respected".
Mathilde has little to no clue how inner Elf politics work as well. And while we have a whole group to deal with research, we have no one to deal with Elves.
It is part of our job to be generally diplomatic and do all we can to advance relations, but we cannot and do not have the time to play political games with people who have been acting on this stage since before Mathilde's ancestors came over the World's Edge Mounties. The way we advance Imperial Eonir relations in my opinion is to get the Project to show results and otherwise trust that the people who organized this do not need the protagonist to be involved in everything.
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A reminder of how things work for those who might have forgotten:
In total, we have ten Major Houses that support contact with the outside world and eleven Major Houses that vote against. Normally that would mean we lose, but we have three Wards on our side and the opposing side only has one. This means that at any given moment where the Warden of Sun, Lady Delynna, acts as Vicarius Triumvir, then the vote is 13-11 in our favor. This happens one year out of every four. In any other case, when another Warden is Triumvir, the vote is 12-12, which is a tie. The Triumvirate then act as tiebreaker. Marrisith is on our side and so are the three Wards who would act as Triumvir when the Ward of the Sun is voting against us. The Champion is currently Kadoh, and he's also on Marrisith's side.
As Mopman said, if a single house decided to flip their vote and vote against us, then we're 12-12 when Delynna is Triumvir and 11-13 on every other occasion, which means we tie only once out of every four years. The balance is certainly precarious.
This is the list of Major Houses and Wards and their position. These are the members of the High Council, barring Elwyn, which is now dead. That's 21 Major Houses and 4 Wards, which would normally be 25 seats. However, at any given point in time, one of those 4 Wards sit on the Triumvirate, which means their vote doesn't count, instead they act as a tiebreaker alongside the Queen and her Champion, the Queen determined by matrilineal descent and the Champion through the Festival of Games every four years. This Warden seat on the Triumvirate is known as the "Vicarius Triumvir". The Vicarius Triumvir cycles between the Wards yearly.
In total, we have ten Major Houses that support contact with the outside world and eleven Major Houses that vote against. Normally that would mean we lose, but we have three Wards on our side and the opposing side only has one. This means that at any given moment where the Warden of Sun, Lady Delynna, acts as Vicarius Triumvir, then the vote is 13-11 in our favor. This happens one year out of every four. In any other case, when another Warden is Triumvir, the vote is 12-12, which is a tie. The Triumvirate then act as tiebreaker. Marrisith is on our side and so are the three Wards who would act as Triumvir when the Ward of the Sun is voting against us. The Champion is currently Kadoh, and he's also on Marrisith's side.
As Mopman said, if a single house decided to flip their vote and vote against us, then we're 12-12 when Delynna is Triumvir and 11-13 on every other occasion, which means we tie only once out of every four years. The balance is certainly precarious.
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By the way, does it mean that there will be 25 seats in High Council from now on, or there will be someone to claim empty seat in due time?
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We are the person who organised this. We are one of the top Imperial representatives in Laurelorn, a city ruled by a council that is one vote away from evicting us. If we get ejected from the city, and our only excuse to Algard as to why that happened is "it wasn't our job to pay attention to the local politics" he will begin to question if we deserve to be a Lord Magister. We're not a researcher, we're a Director, and that means hob-nobbing with the local elites for their support.
Half the city don't want us here. It's our job to prove them wrong, and that means making friends in high places—especially when there's no guarantee that the project will develop anything at all. If we have substandard results, maybe some of the houses will reconsider how important our presence is.
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It seems that empty houses don't get filled. Elwyn's properties were transferred to the crown, who gave us their physical property as research space. The actual seat remains empty and I don't think it'll be filled. The Council of Frost seem to have taken over Elwyn's official duties regarding the Ward of Frost and Malforric has taken the reins for the Temple of Asuryan. From the phrasing used when referring to Elwyn being "the last of Kor Immamor's great houses" I'm of the belief this isn't the first time this has happened, and the Council could have been bigger back in the day.
So yes I believer at 24 votes on the High Council will be the status quo moving forward.
Mopman43
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There doesn't seem to be any precedent for elevating a family to a Great House.
And being a Great House requires a great house, and we're currently occupying Elwyn's manor.
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The Major Houses were an arrangement that Maruviel, first Queen of Laurelorn, made so she could attract powerful families in Ulthuan to migrate over to the fledgeling colony, providing incredibly generous benefits to the families in exchange for them supporting the expedition to colonise Lauren Lauroi. I'm pretty sure just like there is no arrangement to elevate Forestborn to Cityborn, that there is no arrangement to elevating anyone into a new Major House. The powers that be benefit from the status quo.
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26-25 but only 24 get to vote, because one of them joins the tiebreaker council, which can't vote. If you're talking about Major Houses, it went from 22-21.
I presume this isn't the first time a Major House has gone extinct? Afterall, it has been 4000 years or so.
That said, maybe it has, and the other houses have realised that perhaps they are not as secure as they thought?
That said, maybe it has, and the other houses have realised that perhaps they are not as secure as they thought?
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Take note of the phrasing here:
The implication being that there were more Major Houses from Kor Immamor, and they're gone now.
Ok so if the fear is that one house flips and we get thrown out...shouldn't we then try to get a isolationist house on our side? Like we went to house tindomiel because their a magic house and like our project. If we wanted more support in the council we should have went for a house that doesn't like us and convince them. But that would take time and all that people weren't ready to spend (which is fine, we need to start the project anyway). At this point if one of the houses decided to flip and banish us it's not our fault because we didn't have the political capital to do much. To most of the houses we are some jumped up human with too much dwarves cosplay.
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I'm not actually worried about one House flipping destroying our entire project. To clarify, I was just going over the political system. Chances are, it would take some extreme circumstances to get the project to stop at this stage. I do think we should try to keep an eye on the politics of Laurelorn because the project is literally happening right here, and it's possible for bad things to happen that isn't us being kicked out because one House flipped. The Heir isn't the end all be all of political shenanigans we can get up to, but I don't think we can just avoid politics altogether and expect to leave unscathed.
Then we have bigger problems because that probably means laurelorn and Nordland are now at war...
Yep, I'd like to flip a Major House to our side. My main candidate at the moment is Miriel, who serve Vaul. Their main reason for voting isolationist is because they have a monopoly on magic items within Laurelorn that's only challenged by the Grey Lords (and there's only 12 Grey Lords total). If they open up to the wider world, magic items from Ulthuan could flood the market via trade from Marienburg.
If we can find a way to protect their monopoly, they'll happily side with us.
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Ulthuan don't supply magic items to humans. At least, not that I know of. They provide high quality craftsmanship, but unless you're talking about gifts to Magnus the Pious, Ulthuan wouldn't be giving that stuff to humans.
I don't know what the trade between the human realms and Ulthuan looks like, but it's definitely something Miriel are concerned about.
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I think House Miriel are extremely misinformed about the sort of stuff Ulthuan trades in and the quantity that they trade in as a result of their ignorance. Remember that the majority of these people have never seen humans before, and they don't even have books on the Empire as an entity, only the ones that they've interacted with. They are extremely sheltered. I think they really overestimate the products Ulthuan ships to the Old World.
So we could maybe spend an EIC action or something to prove to them that the Empire is desperate for elven craftsmanship, and Ulthuan is not currently fulfilling that demand, leaving the market wide open to be claimed by them?
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Maybe. I'd be willing to try. I do want to get talks going with House Mardil first though. I think the Houses that voted for contact with the outside world should get preferential treatment here, for the obvious reason that we want to encourage that.