Honestly, it strikes me as pretty fitting, for a quest that started with the protagonist in Stirland, pitted against Sylvania, and the unwitting patsy of an (at that point) Lahmian-overseen spy network. Of course the thread always returns to necromancy and vampires. That was where it started.
It really does all come back to the beginning. Anybody remember our character creation? We had all these origins, and all these ways in which we would be made to be secretly plotting against whoever we'd be working for.
Motivation:
Unlike the Elector Counts, one does not inherit a position in the Privy Council by chance. One attains it through great effort or great skill. To achieve such a thing, something must be driving them. Select your private agenda.
[ ] Avarice: To be an advisor to an Elector Count is usually a well-paid position, but even greater opportunity can be found with the lucrative projects and bountiful budgets such a position has access to.
Bonuses to embezzlement attempts and other profitable avenues; willpower rolls to keep from dipping directly into the budgets you control if you make no off-the-books income or other improvement in personal wealth in a particular year.
[ ] Vainglory: The role of advisor is prestigious, certainly, but hardly glorious - unless you go above and beyond the call of duty, and sometimes above and beyond what was asked of you, and sometimes even above and beyond sanity and rationality.
Bonuses to large, revolutionary, or otherwise impressive projects or achivements; maluses to more mundane assignments.
[ ] Nepotism: You have a large family, many of whom are eager for prestigious and well-paying jobs. You do this for them because you love them, of course. Actually getting some peace and quiet at home is just a side-benefit.
Reliable source of very loyal candidates for key roles; malus to all rolls if these positions are not found on a regular basis. A very prestigious position might buy you a few years, or you could fill sundry middle management positions every year.
[ ] Inspiration: To you, this position is merely a stepping stone towards a pet project that consumes you.
One inspired super-project of dubious utility and questionable safety with bonuses to working towards it when given official permission; minor maluses to all other projects as you neglect them in favour of tinkering with your passion. Completing a super-project will give you peace for a few years until a new one occurs to you.
[ ] Zealotry: The Empire is a land of many faiths - the Sigmarites and the Ulricans primarily, but countless others as well. You, of course, know that only one of them is true, and will work to eliminate all false faiths.
Bonuses to working to further your faith; maluses to working with people outside of it.
[ ] Sleeper Agent: Perhaps you did not quite attain the position; perhaps it was thrust unto you, and perhaps those that did the thrusting have attached several strings to the position.
Only required to pass on information, making it usually less burdensome than other motivations; sometimes you may be tasked with seeking out specific information, and in special circumstances you may be required to intervene and risk revealing yourself. You're not entirely sure who your true master is, but they seem benign.
[ ] Corruption: Loyalty to the darker powers has great costs, but greater rewards. Or was it the other way around?
Choice of Chaos (access to blessings of Chaos) or Vampire Counts (access to Necromancy and Vampirism); the downsides to such domineering overseers are as obvious as they are numerous.
Embezzlement, overweening vainglory, malignant nepotism, haunting flightiness, crippling zealotry, being an unwitting pawn, and straight up corruption by the forces of darkness.
None of these were small flaws, and we kind of got away too easy with the one we did pick.
It's been going on thirteen thousandish pages since then, which is a very impressive length, and the vast majority of that time we've been basically clean.
Well, except for that little niggling thing. You know, the curiosity.
Secret gods? Strange Character Flaws? Daemonology? We've got them all. It's got the serial numbers filed off, but it's mostly just that we seem allergic to outside control.
When you look at it abstractly, we're kind of Egrimm Van Horstmann-y, you've got to admit.
And we're already deep enough to die, you know. All for the taste of Necromancy. Sweet necromancy. It's been interesting since the beginning. We made Magister on the back of Dhar's work. We've waged wars using the fruit of a necromancer's studies into combat. We know we could do it better than any amateur in Sylvania these days. No muddling around with material handling research; We can skip straight to the fun blasphemies.
And it doesn't have any fish hooks. There are no daemons flying around that'll tattle if we touch it a little. We don't have to sell anything. It's a deeply solitary art, and no one else will ever have to know.
Even its penultimate achievement, Vampirism, is a deeply personal relationship with a single person.
Our loyalties became divided again, a hair thin crack, the moment we opened the Liber Mortis. It was a separation we made, not one forced on us. But I don't want to leave it there, as if having an entire other lore rattling around our head could just be shrugged off. I want to know more.
I want to see it, as we've seen everything else.
I want to peer past the veil of death, into the pseudo partition of perdition, where the petitioners preside, and hang in solemn silence over their graves, and howl through the air on invisible winds.
There is no garden outside the garden, and no one has ever left until Morr takes them for himself, and everyone who has ever died is waiting.
