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Warhammer Fantasy: Divided Loyalties - an Advisor's Quest

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Mathilda does also probaly know what she isn't or is allowed to read. So if we dig up the castle, Mathilda can probaly look at the cover of the books and go "This would get me thrown in jail", if that's the case, and we hand over the forbidden knowledge books to whatever poor perpetual that's the one who has to read up all this cursed stuff.

So i'd not say it's a huge worry. Mathilda should have the knoweldge and capability to figure out what we can't or can keep. So it will probaly be a vote of "Keep forbidden books or give them over to proper people"
 
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LadyLynn said:
I wonder what exactly the Colleges will expect us to do with the books from the Black Library.

Like, uh, reading books on Dhar would be breaching the Articles, wouldn't it? But at the same time we can't exactly avoid reading the vampire books if we want to put them at the appropriate clearance levels/figure out which ones are Bad and which ones are not.

Would it just be a sort of "yeah, we all know Mathilde read a bunch of vampire/necromancy books, but we don't really talk about it"?

What is the normal protocol when the Colleges have to figure out what to do with possibly-Article-breaching-books?
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I think Boney explained that already?

In an ideal world, in a perfect vacuum and with the Colleges having infinite personel, they might wish for the books to be secured by someone they can both trust and keep under watch afterwards.

But realistically a Lady Magister deciding to secure the books in a Karak far from any potential warlocks (nevermind Black Magisters) is the by far best option that can happen.

So people will trust Mathilde with these books, because she is generally trusted and people who are both perfectly trusted and can be supervised all the time simply do not exist and if they did they weren't capable of digging up old dungeons full of dangerous books and potentially more dangerous undead.
 
IronFist said:
It still only goes so far: we are on a watch list after we learned of those rituals when we were hunting albreich.
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Every Grey Lord Magister is on a watchlist, somewhere. Wilhelmine stole Ghal Maraz. Kurtis is a spy who has changed allegiance so many times they promoted him to head diplomat so now every time he flips sides, he's the one who has to deal with the paperwork. When Algard faked his death, every chaos cult in the Empire went "Sweet, now all those books on dark magic he has hidden in his tower are free for the taking" and promptly ran into an ambush he organised.

Mathilde having a Karak full of dark texts doesn't make her special, it makes her typical.
 
Artemis1992 said:
I think Boney explained that already?

In an ideal world, in a perfect vacuum and with the Colleges having infinite personel, they might wish for the books to be secured by someone they can both trust and keep under watch afterwards.

But realistically a Lady Magister deciding to secure the books in a Karak far from any potential warlocks (nevermind Black Magisters) is the by far best option that can happen.

So people will trust Mathilde with these books, because she is generally trusted and people who are both perfectly trusted and can be supervised all the time simply do not exist and if they did they weren't capable of digging up old dungeons full of dangerous books and potentially more dangerous undead.
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Boney explained that, yeah, and I'm aware the Colleges will trust us with securing the books. But that's not what I'm wondering about.

What I'm wondering about is how people will react when we display a lot of insight into Dhar, while they know we have a bunch of vampire books.

Previously we were just gonna use the justification of "oh we just have a lot of experience fighting a plethora of Dhar users", but I'm wondering if the vamp books change the equation, whether it be for better or for worse.
 
IronFist said:
It still only goes so far: we are on a watch list after we learned of those rituals when we were hunting albreich.
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A Witch Hunter watch list. They're a bit institutionally paranoid about magic users and Mathilde wearing their traditional hat has for some weird reason not completely reassured them.

For the College leadership Mathilde is beyond fine - she's one of the greatest and most consistent problem solvers.
 
Zero Gravitas said:
A Witch Hunter watch list. They're a bit institutionally paranoid about magic users and Mathilde wearing their traditional hat has for some weird reason not completely reassured them.
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Checks and balances.
That the witch hunters trust a Lord Magister to the point of letting her read their worst stuff, and only put her on a list of "people to watch, just in case" is a pretty good sign of institutional trust between the colleges and the witch hunters.
 
LadyLynn said:
Boney explained that, yeah, and I'm aware the Colleges will trust us with securing the books. But that's not what I'm wondering about.

What I'm wondering about is how people will react when we display a lot of insight into Dhar, while they know we have a bunch of vampire books.

Previously we were just gonna use the justification of "oh we just have a lot of experience fighting a plethora of Dhar users", but I'm wondering if the vamp books change the equation, whether it be for better or for worse.
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When I asked about a Dhar insight paper the answer was 'it would be classified to hell and back, they might have to invent a new level'. I don't think there is much else they could do about it no matter where they thought we had it, as long as they did not think we touched the bad magic which has nothing to do with any books.
 
LadyLynn said:
Boney explained that, yeah, and I'm aware the Colleges will trust us with securing the books. But that's not what I'm wondering about.

What I'm wondering about is how people will react when we display a lot of insight into Dhar, while they know we have a bunch of vampire books.

Previously we were just gonna use the justification of "oh we just have a lot of experience fighting a plethora of Dhar users", but I'm wondering if the vamp books change the equation, whether it be for better or for worse.
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I don't think it'll change anything? Mathilde already displayed a lot of knowledge on Dhar pre-vamp books, and she was still trusted then.

If you're talking about new people, well, they're unlikely to know about the vamp books anyway, should we get around to it, so that's not a problem.
 
As long as Mathilde isn't using dark magic, and she's working in the best interests of the Empire, we're fine.

Besides, it's the Grey Order's job to know everyone's secrets, including the secrets of their enemies magic. It's completely on brand for a grey wizard to have our level of insight into something forbidden.

Now if we were a Gold or a Bright, then yeah, people would be right to be concerned, because those orders don't have the same responsibilities or safeguards the Grey's do. But the Grey's specifically have cultivated a reputation of duty, discipline and loyalty for precisely these situations. We can't be bribed because it violates our vow of poverty, for example.
 
Nerdasaurus Rex said:
"Magister Patriarch, I have concerns about what Lady Magister Weber is doing with the ruins of Drakenhof—"

"Oh boy I'm sure GLAD a TRUSTED and RESPECTED Lord Magister is RESPONSIBLY securing those books in a DWARVEN VAULT, BEFORE they fall into the hands of the Empire's ENEMIES."

"Magister Patriarch, that doesn't address my concerns—"

"TRUSTED AND RESPECTED."

"But Mag—"

"No. Now get out of my office."
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It occurs to me that even past the Night of a Thousand Arcane Duels, the Colleges can still probably get away with a fair bit more than after Egrimm went traitor.
 
BeepSmile said:
As an example, if trusted Lady Magister Mathilde finds and reads a book on necromancy written by Alakazam and uses that information to write papers showing to better fight necromancers, that is a good use of her time.

If Mathilde ever comes accross an unlabled book, opens it up and realises on the first page or two that she's reading the sort of ritual that she was asking about when investigating that string of murders; what I expect will happen is that she will instantly stop reading, bring it to the College to deal with and tell them (honestly) how far she read.

I expect the college will then make two notes - one on how far she admits to having read, and one stating that she had unfettered access to all the books contents.

And then she will be allowed to carry on with her job.
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Why though, she already read about a lot of dark rituals in trying to find out what exactly the murderer was trying to pull off.
Furthering her knowledge-base in this is not beyond what a LM can justify, to herself or to others.

And besides there's little reason to bring such a book to the College, rather than keep it in the securest part of her own mountain-library.
 
Tobtorp said:
They would know we have books from Drakenhof, they would have no clue what books they are and would not have the manpower ( if it is as many books as we think there are) to catalog them. So how do you think they will know which books are good and which are bad?
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I was answering specifically to the argument using the LM. And it doesn't matter if the GC knows which books we have, it's a certainty there's bad ones.
 
I feel like the fact that Boney himself shut down this argument in favor of 'it's mostly fine, actually' last time means something?

As I remember, the Grey Order would prefer the Dangerous Books be in the control of one LM of proven trustworthiness than in the hands of who-the-hell-even-knows.
 
One Lord Magister transporting the books to a dwarven Karak is better than one Lord Magister transporting them to the college and exposing all the librarians to them.

The first compromises a single individual. The other compromises an entire college.
 
BeepSmile said:
The Liber Mortis gives understanding of the principals of nercomancy. I gave an example of a hypothetical "lesser version" of the Liber Mortis (Alkard's hypothetical nercomancy book) a few posts up being a good thing for trusted Lady Magister Mathilde to read and use to develop countermeasures from.

A book that of instructions on various rituals is a book of instructions on how to do those rituals, not the principals. As rituals are mystical and weird.
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The last chapter of the LM, after the diary-part, did very explicitly have the instructions to cast necromantic spells. It is definitly not just a book on the principles, but on how to do dark magic in spell and rite.
 
BeepSmile said:
Assuming that I know this fact, I hope it can thus be inferred that I trying to communicate the what I perceive to be a functional difference between books on "instructions on how to preform dark rituals" and books on "not preforming dark rituals"

I apologise for having worded my post so poorly as to make someone think that I did not know that the Liber Mortis contained instructions on how to cast various necromantic spells along with explanations for the underlying principals behind those spells; but it was in fact a significant aspect of this quest and I did not consider while writing my post that someone might think me quite that forgetful.
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Tbf knowing how a dark ritual is supposed to look like let's you a) recognize it and b) know how to royally fuck it up.
 
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