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Warhammer Fantasy: Divided Loyalties - an Advisor's Quest

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It might have been a century, but he also spent that to invent his Master Rune, no?

Also, forging like a dozen super-swords.

BoneyM said:
They'd try their best, but though the smith would have an extremely good grasp of the foundations of metalworking, they'd have no accumulated knowledge of what makes a sword a good sword, or what can be changed to make a sword better in certain areas, or how to make a sword specifically for a certain person's height or style.

To put it another way: a Dwarf master blacksmith could have +15 to blacksmithing and +0 to swords. A manling master blacksmith could have +10 to blacksmithing and +10 to swords.
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Shouldn't there be specialized swordsmiths within the cult of Gazul, tho?

I figure that ain't the sort of service a random manling can readily acquire, but if we were to drop a shitload of favors on a runic sword, wouldn't that only be a reasonable first step?

And those guys should have the millenia of institutional knowledge, as they have been making swords for priests of Gazul since Gazul was a thing.
BoneyM said:
And events haven't yet progressed to the point where it's time to pay out. Wisdom may suggest that it'd be a good idea to publicly earmark it in mollifying ways when the mercs each get a fistful of loot and then a wheelbarrow comes out for Mathilde.
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When they realize the kind of sum she will be taking out, I figure Belegar will simply have a quiet word with Mathilde on what to do with her cartload of gold.

Letters of credit will probably work well. They gotta have a bank, right?
 
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BoneyM said:
They'd try their best, but though the smith would have an extremely good grasp of the foundations of metalworking, they'd have no accumulated knowledge of what makes a sword a good sword, or what can be changed to make a sword better in certain areas, or how to make a sword specifically for a certain person's height or style.

To put it another way: a Dwarf master blacksmith could have +15 to blacksmithing and +0 to swords. A manling master blacksmith could have +10 to blacksmithing and +10 to swords.



[Glory Unto Ranald: Piety, Req 40, 67+21+20(Empowered)=108.]
[Gambling: Intrigue, 93+17=110.]

Simultaneous crits on Intrigue and Piety rolls with Ranald recently empowered by Mathilde.

And events haven't yet progressed to the point where it's time to pay out. Wisdom may suggest that it'd be a good idea to publicly earmark it in mollifying ways when the mercs each get a fistful of loot and then a wheelbarrow comes out for Mathilde.
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That's fair; i admit i hadn't been thinking of it as "and then the events with renald further improved the crits", because i assumed that the explicit +20 that *made* the crit in the first place was all we were getting from that direction in this case, with almost all of the benefit of the empowering being tied up in the direct relic reward from the actual event. I guess i underestimated how long lasting that empowerment could be if it still let us 'double dip' on bonuses this turn X-)

Also hadn't realized that it would be as obvious as the wheelbarrow re: the downside; i'd assumed we were just carefully keeping all the halfling coins max picked up for us, instead of turning them in as shares :p

Still plan on pushing the 'donate it all (minus tithe) to renaldian causes and shrines' option for what we earmark it for, once that option comes up, just feels both appropriate and less likely to result in more power gaming :)
 
I kinda hope Roswita is still elling off parts of the Haunted Hills when we get back, being promoted from a knight to a baron seems like a good career move.
 
BoneyM said:
And events haven't yet progressed to the point where it's time to pay out. Wisdom may suggest that it'd be a good idea to publicly earmark it in mollifying ways when the mercs each get a fistful of loot and then a wheelbarrow comes out for Mathilde.
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Wisdom may suggest that Mathilde simply wait until all the mercenaries have collected their pay and left the Karak before she shows up for her cut. "Open an account for me in the First Bank of Karak Eight Peaks, using this as my starting balance" would also be an excellent route as it would involve not actually taking any physical wealth until she needs it; dwarf society almost certainly has the kind of sophisticated financial institutions which would be needed for that to work.
 
Alratan said:
[X] Fire
[X] Shadow

With the current plan shadow I can't in good faith vote for it alone given my previous arguments for it, as it's been reduced to the caricature of itself that it's opponents argued against and I insisted it wasn't. It could have been glorious, but the opportunity has gone, and the Explosives option just seems full of potential failure modes for no extra reward.
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That darn Boney, always ruining our fun

That said, I feel lile Dwarfkite has problems of the 'trying to run multiple spells at once' variety, so I'm still sticking with

[X] Fire

Even if it also has its fair share of problems.
 
Abby Normal said:
That's fair; i admit i hadn't been thinking of it as "and then the events with renald further improved the crits", because i assumed that the explicit +20 that *made* the crit in the first place was all we were getting from that direction in this case, with almost all of the benefit of the empowering being tied up in the direct relic reward from the actual event. I guess i underestimated how long lasting that empowerment could be if it still let us 'double dip' on bonuses this turn X-)

Also hadn't realized that it would be as obvious as the wheelbarrow re: the downside; i'd assumed we were just carefully keeping all the halfling coins max picked up for us, instead of turning them in as shares :p

Still plan on pushing the 'donate it all (minus tithe) to renaldian causes and shrines' option for what we earmark it for, once that option comes up, just feels both appropriate and less likely to result in more power gaming :)
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The coins were acting as 'chips' rather than being used for face value, and have been returned to the Halflings. Currently the wealth only exists as a set of two contracts: those that signed over their loot for chips, and the different percentages of those who signed chips back in. The difference between the sums covered by those contracts is Mathilde's 'take'.
 
Abby Normal said:
Still plan on pushing the 'donate it all (minus tithe) to renaldian causes and shrines' option for what we earmark it for, once that option comes up, just feels both appropriate and less likely to result in more power gaming :)
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I suspect you are going to have an uphill battle for this... like uphill to the top of mount Everest. There's a lot of stuff we could be using that money for to the benefit of our fellow man and the cause of order and sanity as a whole, much much better than just dumping enough treasure at random Ranaltides to make them a target for imperial authorities.
 
We could just wink and give it back to the mercenerys while keeping a small cut for ourselves. It'd probably be good for our rep and encourage them to seek out Ranald.

For course, we'll want to just give them enough to think we gave away most of our money.
 
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Abby Normal said:
Yeah like...on one hand, with ~6000 gamblers, betting up to half their shares (sources below), we made out with ~350 full shares worth. So this is, assuming every one of them took out the full half, a little over 10% of the total money in play during the night of gambling, which is fairly reasonable from a realism standpoint. But since i imagine a good number of them took out less (or even far less) than half, its likely more along the lines of 20% of the money in play, which starts to get a bit more ridiculous...
Especially since, as others mentioned, a full blown dwarf built fortress was only 1000 gold (between 10 and 100 of these shares, from what boney mentioned, source again at the end of post), and a cheaper stone bailey was 400, while a proper 10 room manor was only 300... hell, for bigger numbers, we have the fact that the EIC shares were originally 1000 gold for 24%, and then later 750 for 12% meaning that the entire EIC, which had *enormous* potential and resources even from the start, was originally only considered worth ~4000 gold, and after a few years ~6250...

Honestly @BoneyM the fact that rolls of a 67, a 44, and a 93 on a(n admittedly well synergized) pair of downtime actions is enough to earn between 3500 and 35000 gold...which i think literally might equal all the other gold mathilde has made in thequest even at the lower end? It seems... unbalanced from a game perspective. From a realism standpoint i suppose i'm not surprised that 10-20% of the gold in use during a truly drunken gambling fest might have ended up lost, but from a game balance perspective getting this much money for what we put into it is hard to take in.

...Also, i wonder just how closely Mathilde shadowed max while he was collecting a veritable kings ransom, and how much if any of a cut he got (or took), considering that just makes the numbers even more ridiculous o_O
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It's a lot of money for a private individual, but it's a drop in the bucket on a wider scale.

How much money to you think the lord of a decently sized city rakes in taxes, every month?

It's like winning the lottery, seems like a lot of money, but when you have the ability to make purchases sized for your small mountain of cash, without a revenue stream of appropriate caliber, it will go down fast if you use it like that.
 
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wrecksalot said:
I kinda hope Roswita is still elling off parts of the Haunted Hills when we get back, being promoted from a knight to a baron seems like a good career move.
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Being a baroness would be fun, but the Haunted Hills are kind of terrible. Consider:
"What are you doing with all that money, Magister Weber?"
"Dame Weber is buying up the title to the Stirhugel from the Elector Count along with control of titles, towns, and properties in the region. Now me and Anton can be neighbors!"
 
Furthermore, while a lot of money forgives a great many sins, in the end it's just that: money.

The Warboss of Karag Nar had a fortune likely measured in the eight digits, in gold. That didn't stop him from getting shanked by Mathilde, whose net worth is one or two thousand gold.

We have to leverage it, and at some point, a boatload of cash is just the starting point.
 
[X] Plan Dwarf Trauma
-[X] Mathilde uses Substance of Shadow on a dwarven architectural expert to allow her to carry them to the citadel entrance.
-[X] Based on the report from the expert, explosives will be placed in order to collapse the entrance and prevent grobi reinforcements.

I love PTSD... if someone else has it...
 
DarkLight140 said:
Wisdom may suggest that Mathilde simply wait until all the mercenaries have collected their pay and left the Karak before she shows up for her cut. "Open an account for me in the First Bank of Karak Eight Peaks, using this as my starting balance" would also be an excellent route as it would involve not actually taking any physical wealth until she needs it; dwarf society almost certainly has the kind of sophisticated financial institutions which would be needed for that to work.
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We've already seen sophisticated financial institutions in the empire, if your assuming Dwarfs have the same then doubtlessly he can write us a cheque of some sort.
 
dunk1010 said:
[X] Plan Dwarf Trauma
-[X] Mathilde uses Substance of Shadow on a dwarven architectural expert to allow her to carry them to the citadel entrance.
-[X] Based on the report from the expert, explosives will be placed in order to collapse the entrance and prevent grobi reinforcements.

I love PTSD... if someone else has it...
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Vote restarted. It's currently [] Explosives.
 
TotallyNotEvil said:
Furthermore, while a lot of money forgives a great many sins, in the end it's just that: money.

The Warboss of Karag Nar had a fortune likely measured in the eight digits, in gold. That didn't stop him from getting shanked by Mathilde, whose net worth is one or two thousand gold.

We have to leverage it, and at some point, a boatload of cash is just the starting point.
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Not to mention the fact that there a lot of our more expencive projects are not even to make Mathilde personally stronger. Securing the Peaks with the aid of hired adventurers or studying Theurgy for the benefits ma making safer magic for hopefully large numbers of magisters. These are not the sort of things that pay dividends in personal power.
 
BlackWink said:
We've already seen sophisticated financial institutions in the empire, if your assuming Dwarfs have the same then doubtlessly he can write us a cheque of some sort.
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the problem is that I'm not sure any cheque the dwarves would be okay with handing out would be man portable, gotta make sure it is nice and sturdy afterall, to prevent bookkeeping errors
 
@BoneyM Would a monstrous mont, like a Imperial Griffon, be something we could straight up buy?

Or arrange such that, say, we could hire Esbern and Seija to train one for us?

It's a classical Empire mount, and really good. Especially if we can get our dwarf friends to make some armor for it.

Also, looking at the Empire Armybook, Mathilde's closest match in terms of statline is, fittingly enough, a Witch Hunter. She just has 1 more Wound than the average Witch Hunter, the rest is identical (before the Belt).
 
Honestly, just use a bit of the money we earned to pad the pockets of those who lost the most, use some financial rejiggering to hide how much we personally profited and literally buy some good will.

Our Intrigue and Stewardship is fairly high and we have the Coin to help us out. We can probably convince the mercenaries to treat us like a hero while looting them for all thier worth.
 
[X] Explosives.

The Dawi Of K8P will gain the legend of Mathilda Grobi Slayer after this won't they? 😛
 
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Adhoc vote count started by Sinsystems on Sep 26, 2019 at 2:09 PM, finished with 361 posts and 125 votes.
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Question, what happens to the interior shadows of the Citadel if you cast Burning Shadows on it? Or no luck on that, and there's nothing so convenient as having a great big shadow to scorch everybody inside, or at least being able to scorch whole rooms just by poking the Citadel?
BoneyM said:
The trouble, of course, is the caldera. Between the recent religious disagreements and the rapid changes in leadership, the greenskins have fragmented into a dozen or more separate groups, and those that held the Citadel will allow none of the others to approach. That can not be counted on to continue when battle begins, so to prevent the battle turning to a meat grinder, something must be done to prevent reinforcements from the caldera. With your achievements so far, every head turns to you to suggest a way to accomplish this.
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... What kind of greenskins are in the Caldera? Are they all Goblins and normal Orcs? And are all the Black Orcs only in the Citadel? Or is there no such neat racial division of Greenskins in terms of who is where -- both groups are either all Black Orcs, or both groups are varied mixes of orcs, such that there is no neat Black Orcs vs Everybody Else division?

Say... What are the odds of causing (in?)fighting between the Caldera orcs and the Citadel orcs?

I mean, they're not outright attacking the Citadel right now, they're just in a tense standoff, right? What if we turned that into an actual, full-blown open assault?

While the Caldera orcs would be a source of reinforcements if the Citadel were attacked by the Dwarfs... If the Caldera orcs were to pick a fight with the Citadel first, then the Citadel orcs will be fighting them off. And then the Dwarfs attack after the big brawl. (Or perhaps even attack while the Caldera orcs attack -- though... that would mean having to fight the Caldera orcs right after the Citadel orcs, because the Caldera orcs would be streaming in... nevermind, then.)
 
TotallyNotEvil said:
@BoneyM Would a monstrous mont, like a Imperial Griffon, be something we could straight up buy?

Or arrange such that, say, we could hire Esbern and Seija to train one for us?

It's a classical Empire mount, and really good. Especially if we can get our dwarf friends to make some armor for it.
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Not without having favours to cash in from the Emperor or the Imperial Zoo. You could try to commission the theft of an egg but you'd have to raise it.

Pegasi are attainable with cash and College favours, though.

Angelazreal1 said:
How do shares work if they die?
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Null and void. This could lead to Mathilde's payday changing, depending on which ones die.

Garlak said:
Question, what happens to the interior shadows of the Citadel if you cast Burning Shadows on it? Or no luck on that, and there's nothing so convenient as having a great big shadow to scorch everybody inside, or at least being able to scorch whole rooms just by poking the Citadel?
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Being inside doesn't count as being in the shadow of the building.

Garlak said:
... What kind of greenskins are in the Caldera? Are they all Goblins and normal Orcs? And are all the Black Orcs only in the Citadel? Or is there no such neat racial division of Greenskins in terms of who is where -- both groups are either all Black Orcs, or both groups are varied mixes of orcs, such that there is no neat Black Orcs vs Everybody Else division?
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Most of the groups are mixed, but a few have no Goblins and more Black Orcs.[/QUOTE]
 
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