Voted best in category in the Users' Choice awards.
Voting is open
[Stirland Tributaries underway. Estimated completion date: late 2493.]
"The thread will (intermittently) remember that."

Keep The Wagons Rolling: Eike believes implicitly that logistical efficiency is absolutely essential for the continued survival of the Empire and its allies. +2 Learning, +3 Stewardship.
That looks familiar. Ah yes I remember now:
-[*] [EIC] Instil corporate policy: long-term financial good of the Empire.

Your collegiate interlude must come to an end, and this time your target is Blutdorf, where once more the major figures of the EIC gather to hear your words. You could simply give orders along these lines, but you're very much aware of how little an order can mean when the one who gave it isn't watching. As the Kislevites say: the Gods are high above, and the Tzar is far away. And while the EIC as a whole has bought into Wilhelmina's personal policy of 'don't skin the sheep', you're very aware that even the best-kept sheep are pinned down and forcibly shorn on a regular basis, so you don't want to entrust the Empire's long-term good to that alone.

So instead of commanding, you need to make them believe your words, and a week back in Eight Peaks prepared you for the task. Under the sceptical eye of burghers, carters and stevedores, you make a multi-pronged attack on selfish profit. You describe the perpetual state of every variety of anarchy in the Border Princes, and the many threats nearby that can and likely eventually will wipe out every one of them. You tell of the constant sacrifice in lives and materiel that keeps the roads safe and the rivers clear, and you tell them of how much it costs to hire a proper protective detail from Barak Varr to go through roads that have no such protections, and how little of even the best equipped return. And knowing your largely Stirlandian audience, you speak at length about Sylvania. The years between Boris Goldgatherer's death and the coronation of Mandred Ratslayer, when the plague raged through the territory again and again and only a stalemate between two existential threats kept the Sylvanians from total extinction.

Then you move on to the Time of the Three Emperors, when central power disintegrated and each individual city became vulnerable to any and every threat that wandered along. The Battle of Meadow Glades, and the town that was exterminated by the Elves of Athel Loren in retaliation for the trespass. The Night of the Restless Dead, when Sylvania declared independence. The Waaagh of Gorbad Ironclaw, which utterly destroyed Solland and came damn close to destroying Averland and the Moot. The Von Carsteins and the three Vampire Wars. The Fourth Sack of Marienburg. The corruption of the Order of the Blood Dragon. The partial destruction of Mordheim by meteor, and the subsequent complete destruction of Mordheim by anarchy. And finally, the Great War Against Chaos, and how close the Empire came to extinction before Magnus the Pious took power, defeated the Everchosen Asavar Kul, and rebuilt the Empire into the one that allowed each of them the chance to profit so handsomely from trade between provinces and countries.

You wrap up the presentation by reiterating the central point: the Empire was not merely needed for any profit to be made, it was needed to prevent the violent death of every single person present. Judging by the near-universal looks of horror on the faces of everyone present, you feel you managed to get the message across.

[Instil Corporate Policy: Stewardship, Breakpoints 40/80: 96+19+7(Library: The Empire of Man)=122.]
So does she know that her Aethyric Armour is a modded upgrade version?


[X] Swordplay
[X] Sofia
[X] The Black Water Canal
[X] Gold College
 
Mm. Mathilde's own complete Intrigue skills are kinda awkward, being Infiltration, Interrogation, and Assassination. Eike is trained for combat, but I'm not really clear on how well that represents an intent to commit violence, or if it's just a sort of hobby to copy Mathilde.

On the other hand, we are close to completing the Scouting skill, and Mathilde has worked well with dwarf rangers before, so maybe they could work together on that somehow?

It's admittedly kind of weird that most of Mathilde's intrigue actually comes from traits rather than skills.
 
Personally if we wanted to combine things-we-should-have-done-a-while-ago then having the EIC set up a spy network in middle land or nordland and having Eike help with that seem good.
 
Mm. Mathilde's own complete Intrigue skills are kinda awkward, being Infiltration, Interrogation, and Assassination. Eike is trained for combat, but I'm not really clear on how well that represents an intent to commit violence, or if it's just a sort of hobby to copy Mathilde.

On the other hand, we are close to completing the Scouting skill, and Mathilde has worked well with dwarf rangers before, so maybe they could work together on that somehow?

It's admittedly kind of weird that most of Mathilde's intrigue actually comes from traits rather than skills.

Like you said we can take 'train scouting with dwarf rangers' and take her along. Maybe at the end of it Mathilde will even be able to tell one tree from another.
 
On an entirely separate topic:


So what do we think is Mathilde's problem child title among the Grey Lord Magisters?

Remember, it has to be things that we are actually known for, so no mentioning the Liber Mortis.
In the same conversation, Boney said this:
Mathilde likes her creature comforts, keeps just so happening to stumble over big piles of money that can fund those creature comforts, has a worrying ability to grasp forbidden magics, might have been banging a Van Hal, and is probably more fond of Dwarves than she is of humans.
So I think her problem title would be Don't Ever Make Her Choose Between Us And The Karaz Ankor Because We Won't Like The Answer, with runner ups of Uncomfortably Good At Analyzing Dark Magic and These Fish Keep Jumping Into My Boat I Swear.
 
@Boney is my idea of trading the Elementalist's lore to the hags and the Hedegewise workable? It was Baba Niedzwenka's glee in mentioning an Ice Court secret that made me think of it.
 
Last edited:
On an entirely separate topic:


So what do we think is Mathilde's problem child title among the Grey Lord Magisters?

Remember, it has to be things that we are actually known for, so no mentioning the Liber Mortis.
Inadvertently Nearly Kicked Off a War Against the Skaven

Found Lost Dwarf Kingdom In Strategic Location as A Sidequest

Killed Entire Black Magister College On Her Own
 
Ooh, ooh, Mathilde also learned Queekish. Didn't that used to literally drive people insane when they tried? Not to mention her being friends with a dragon, elf Prince, sentient spiders, all the dwarves…

Basically Mathilde likes other races more than humans, which is a bit awkward, really.
 
Unilaterally giving away vast swathes of magical knowledge to foreign powers and illegal magic users is frowned upon in some circles.

Fair, I mean sure one could argue that it would be easy to do so anyway since the Colleges have no way to compare and contrast what the Hags/Hedgewise knew previously, but that is unlikely to get a vote in the face of existing loyalty to the Empire.
 
But all except the first one aren't problems.
The last one, at least, is another one of those "not bad, but still really eyebrow raising if you're not one hundred percent convinced of their utter loyalty" things. Like walking into a nightmarish city and making it even more so.

And if you reworded the middle one as "pulled a dwarf mountain out of hell" without really explaining how—which we didn't, really—it gets the same kind of "what?" Look, from me at least.
 
Last edited:
Yes, Mathilde would have explained it to her and she would have spellbooks to compare to.
I have a silly question.

You can master spells you've been taught.
You can be taught a mastered spell.

...Is it in any way possible to master a spell if you were taught a mastered version from the get-go?
 
Personally if we wanted to combine things-we-should-have-done-a-while-ago then having the EIC set up a spy network in middle land or nordland and having Eike help with that seem good.
We've got RoW codified, so I'm hoping our EIC action next turn is getting the Fog Road trade route set up between Middenland and Laurelorn.
 
I have a silly question.

You can master spells you've been taught.
You can be taught a mastered spell.

...Is it in any way possible to master a spell if you were taught a mastered version from the get-go?

No. Mastery is improving a spell by adapting a spell to your paradigm. You can only learn a Mastery from someone else by sharing their paradigm, so it's already fully adapted to your paradigm.
 
The cloud to all these silver linings is that the local Verenans apparently got their noses quite out of joint when they learn about all this after the deed was already done, with nobody so much as checking in with those that considered themselves the divinely-appointed authority over libraries. They raised objections with the various Colleges, who had no desire to rehash the entire business and told them to butt out. They raised them with the Elector Count, and then had no real counterargument for when he asked how many cannon foundries they were going to build for him. So their ire turns, inevitably, to you. They aren't quite denouncing you from the pulpit, but this is likely to have an influence on any future dealings with the Cult of Verena.

I know it was a dice roll, but wow. I'm not entirely clear, but it sounds like the Vererans were not one of the libraries that got strong-armed into giving copy access, they are a religious institution more generally about Verenan knowledge and library stuff? And their primary objection was just that they weren't involved? And both the libraries and the Elector Count told them to fuck off, so they are reduced to frowning in our direction and probably stonewall anything we try to ask of them? Yeah that feels like pure unfiltered "organization acts purely to preserve it's own influence and importance by stepping on anyone who tries to do what they do" bullshit, in conflict with what results the organization was built to accomplish.

Whatever losers. I'll just be over here with my massive perpetually financed library in the center of a Dwarven Karak gathering a continuous stream of books from across the four corners of the continent with a revolutionary system for indexing and storage.
 
Last edited:
Voting is open
Back
Top