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Warhammer Fantasy: Divided Loyalties - an Advisor's Quest

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Boney said:
On Ulthuan, the correct accent to have is the same one as the Elf you're currently talking to. Try to avoid all situations where you must speak in front of multiple Elves.
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Apropos of nothing, does history record previous Phoenix Kings as being very good at linguistics?
 
So what you're saying is, we gotta get real good at telepathy that transmits thoughts and concepts rather than just words if we really don't wanna piss anyone off. Easy enough.
 
Obviously what we need to do is bind a Whispering Darkness and use its thousand voices to speak in multiple different accents simultaneously. I'm sure the elves will find a that us more personable that way, people always like it when you go out of your way to accommodate their cultural sensibilities, especially when you do so by grafting an Apparition to your soul with you very own chisel-fingered hands.
 
Boney said:
The Phoenix Kings fall into three broad categories: warlike, scholarly, and cosmopolitan. The latter two categories would probably qualify.
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Oh, I was asking half-jokingly because I was wondering if the Phoenix King can be expected to talk to the rest of the princes in a way that doesn't irritate them, but I suppose any king worth his political salt would need all the advantages they could get, most of the time.
 
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Boney said:
On Ulthuan, the correct accent to have is the same one as the Elf you're currently talking to. Try to avoid all situations where you must speak in front of multiple Elves.
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Judging by Teclis feelings on the Embassy in Altdorf, he would probably find a human showing up speaking like some forest dwelling hick fairly entertaining.
 
Clearly we 'just' need to develop a spell based on Illusion and our Xenolinguistics to ensure each individual elf hears our words in their own accent.
 
Boney said:
The College accent would be based on Teclis' Cothiquan one, so it'd be more like if they showed up speaking like Barbossa from Pirates of the Caribbean.
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On finding Eike leaving Lothern after ninety days with multiple sacks of Ulthuani gold:

Customs official: "I thought you human shadowmancers had rules about wealth. Some kind of vow of poverty?"
Mathilde: "The code is more what you'd call guidelines than actual rules."
 
Shard said:
Clearly we 'just' need to develop a spell based on Illusion and our Xenolinguistics to ensure each individual elf hears our words in their own accent.
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Ok you know what, unironically yes I'd back that idea. (After we're done with, uh, enough of the current backlog to go around picking up new projects...)
 
Shard said:
Clearly we 'just' need to develop a spell based on Illusion and our Xenolinguistics to ensure each individual elf hears our words in their own accent.
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It's been brought up before as something we can definitely do.

Boney said:
[...] Xeno-Affinity can be used to make a spell that would make people not notice if she's missing subconscious cultural cues because that's directly Xeno-Afiinityish and Ulgu-y.
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Though, I suspect that'd be closer to Doppelganger than Illusion, or a very narrow Take No Heed variant that only covers cultural cues.
 
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Shard said:
Clearly we 'just' need to develop a spell based on Illusion and our Xenolinguistics to ensure each individual elf hears our words in their own accent.
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Parabola said:
It's been brought up before as something we can definitely do.
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Looking back and to expand on Parabola's point, Boney once said a spell to make people "not notice that you're screwing up subconscious cultural cues" was a valid space for Xeno-Affinity and Ulgu.

That was before Polyglot came on the scene, but looking at the reasoning Boney expanded upon in a later post, it seems like the biggest problem here would be whether its Ulgu-Okay or if it would need to be narrowed down to something like "not noticing you're screwing up the local accent." Since learning accents and dialects sounds pretty deep in Polyglot 's themes.

All that laid out, I've long been fond of Ulgu diplomacy spells myself.

(EDIT: Yes, I did get ninjaed halfway through writing this. Well, I still think raising the second post and my support for the idea overall adds to the discussion.)
 
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I guess the issue with Ulgu diplomacy spells is that Mathilde doesn't really seem to need them any more. She's long past the days of her awkward first interactions with Van Hal and generally comes across as fairly smooth and competent when talking with pretty much anyone.

I can't remember the last time she had an 'on-screen' conversational mis-step that such a spell would have covered for her. Even a minor one.

EDIT: Actually, there's the case of misreading House Tindomiel's intentions. And I suppose she could be flubbing every conversation, everyone's too polite to react to her barbarism even slightly, and we just never find out.
 
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I mean, even if Mathilde no longer needs an Ulgu crutch, there are probably some more socially awkward members of our college who would greatly appreciate it.
 
Of course, if people notice you're using ulgu to manipulate them (even in a relatively benign way) it'll probably be a bigger faux pas then whatever you were covering up to begin with.
 
Language is more Hysh's thing than Ulgu's. If we want to magically pump up diplomacy without enchanting people, what about being a copycat? Cast a spell on you and someone else, letting you mimic their speech and mannerisms. If you cast it on an expert diplomancer, you become an expert diplomancer yourself. It'd also be good for charlatanry. It's quite Ulguy and showmanshippy.
 
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Andres said:
Language is more Hysh's thing than Ulgu's. If we want to magically pump up diplomacy without enchanting people, what about being a copycat? Cast a spell on you and someone else, letting you mimic their speech and mannerisms. If you cast it on an expert diplomancer, you become an expert diplomancer yourself. It'd also be good for charlatanry. It's quite Ulguy and showmanshippy.
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Speech-pattern, accent and mannerism copying, I can see being Ulguish as a matter of deception/disguise/confusion.

Gaining actual expert-level diplomatic skill ("If I say this, they'll respond like that") is Hysh's bailiwick. If it's entirely self-enhancing, it's Clarity of Thought. If it's borrowing skill from others, it's somewhat similar to what Egrimm's speculum does.
 
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Gavin Prince said:
Speech-pattern, accent and mannerism copying, I can see being Ulguish as a matter of deception/disguise/confusion.

Gaining actual expert-level diplomatic skill ("If I say this, they'll respond like that") is Hysh's bailiwick. If it's entirely self-enhancing, it's Clarity of Thought. If it's borrowing skill from others, it's somewhat similar to what Egrimm's speculum does.
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Surely, the Golf Order must be able to get themselves a silver tongue.
 
Andres said:
But we can't read Tilean, so there's not really any point compared to copying a Reikspiel library.
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There isn't a point if you want to get bigger bonuses for Mathilde. We run a public library, and there's value in having books that Mathilde herself won't use. Tilean books on war and combat (a category the Aquila Academy is guaranteed to have a lot of books on) could be useful to the Undumgi, who are going to make up most of KAU's patrons in the near future since they're the ones who are here and who are most used to the giant spiders. Also maybe it'll be useful to Braganza's Besiegers if some of them stop by, just thought about it since Gretel is probably going to win (is she still with them or did she switch companies? guess we'll find out soon)
 
mathymancer said:
There isn't a point if you want to get bigger bonuses for Mathilde. We run a public library, and there's value in having books that Mathilde herself won't use. Tilean books on war and combat (a category the Aquila Academy is guaranteed to have a lot of books on) could be useful to the Undumgi, who are going to make up most of KAU's patrons in the near future since they're the ones who are here and who are most used to the giant spiders. Also maybe it'll be useful to Braganza's Besiegers if some of them stop by, just thought about it since Gretel is probably going to win (is she still with them or did she switch companies? guess we'll find out soon)
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The thing is the public library part is going to happen anyway, on the scale the Undumgi are going to need to increase literacy they are not going to see much use out of those books in a while. Mathilde by contrast is engaged in potentially world-saving research right now. I would rather have more bonuses for her to tell the truth, the library isn't going anywhere.
 
Parabola said:
Apropos of nothing, does history record previous Phoenix Kings as being very good at linguistics?
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The wonderful thing about being Phoenix King is that you are always the one people are talking to. The perks of being the most powerful person in whatever room you're in. Well, unless the Everqueen is also in that room.

...we must ensure Mathilde never ends up in the same room as both Finubar and Alarielle at the same time. Not unless we get a trait to talk out of both sides of our mouth.
 
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