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Warhammer Fantasy: Divided Loyalties - an Advisor's Quest

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Rafin said:
Actually, when are College Vows like Vow of Poverty or the Light Order celibacy vow sworn? Right at intake, during the Journeyman promotion, or somewhere in between? Some few students never become Wizards. Even fewer switch College before getting any Arcane Marks. I can't imagine that either category are expected to adhere to a lifetime vow, but I'd also be surprised if any of the vows have a clause along the lines of "for as long as I am a [color] Wizard".
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On intake. There's a ceremony to release them of those vows if they leave the Order.

Rafin said:
I wonder what happened to those fortifications. They were presumably made to Dwarf specification. Did Humans take them apart for stone? If yes, are there any resulting Grudges or did the Dwarves consider above ground forts built far from mountains to be temporary anyway? Maybe I am just underestimating what kind of effect multiple millennia of weather has even on Dwarven construction.
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They were swallowed up by a time vortex that formed as a result of me nailing down a lot of the lore for Laurelorn before Archives of the Empire Volume 1 was released.
 
I'm genuinely annoyed at how the default reaction whenever using the EIC as an information network is brought up is "haha no that wouldn't work", regardless of where it's pointed.

I very much understand choosing not to exercise that option in favour of other things like the Rite of Way bridge. That's fine.

But saying that it can't be or shouldn't be put to use like this at all makes me wish the thread had just been honest with the vote for what the EIC was to become, and had it dedicated to economic intervention or generating income instead.
 
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Somic said:
A trading company into a religious cult? Of knowledge? That might be difficult...
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Vote to drop EIC from our workload. Clearly you think it is useless or dangerious so there is no point of keeping it. Let Hoclander take over and stop wasting AP with it since we are not using it for its intended purpose.

OR we can actually trust Grey Wizards to actually be competent and do their jobs. You know like when they did infltrate Cult of Kurnos which was far more insular.
 
Gavin Prince said:
First-hand reports on the Rider in Red seems likely to be worth a paper even separately from the Ulgu-binding, given that apparently nobody else has survived a fight with one and written about it. It may be a little suspicious to publish this right before it comes out that Mathilde Weber has invented a brand-new spell that involves summoning a man-on-horseback monster, though. Maybe take the "Anonymous Author" hit on the College Favour payout to muddy the connection?
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Per a quote that got reposted a few pages ago, the problem is more that the people who survived tend to indicate that the encounter was eminently survivable. Those who didn't were unavailable for comment.
 
Gavin Prince said:
I'm genuinely annoyed at how the default reaction whenever using the EIC as an information network is brought up is "haha no that wouldn't work", regardless of where it's pointed.
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Tasoli said:
Vote to drop EIC from our workload. Clearly you think it is useless or dangerious so there is no point of keeping it. Let Hoclander take over and stop wasting AP with it since we are not using it for its intended purpose.
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Can y'all please just chill? Yeah, I made an incorrect assumption about how difficult that would be, and people immediately pointed out why it's incorrect, which is cool. But let's not get up in arms and attack someone for a mistake who wasn't even there for whatever debates raged about the EIC :/
 
I feel like the EIC would have a better chance of getting information about Verenans in Nuln where they have a presence than about Ulricans in Nordland where they don't have any.
That being said I don't see using the EIC to help with diplomacy as a negative.
 
I like how the current solution to repairing relations with the Cult of Verena is to insert spies into their organisation.

I'm sure that won't create any problems at all.

(For the record, I do think it's a cool idea, I just found it a bit funny)
 
Wodger said:
I feel like the EIC would have a better chance of getting information about Verenans in Nuln where they have a presence than about Ulricans in Nordland where they don't have any.
That being said I don't see using the EIC to help with diplomacy as a negative.
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The EIC has a presence in middenland and now (iirc) ostland even if it's just a small one. Jumping to nordland from there should be pretty easy.
 
Gavin Prince said:
I'm genuinely annoyed at how the default reaction whenever using the EIC as an information network is brought up is "haha no that wouldn't work", regardless of where it's pointed.

I very much understand choosing not to exercise that option in favour of other things like the Rite of Way bridge. That's fine.

But saying that it can't be or shouldn't be put to use like this at all makes me wish the thread had just been honest with the vote for what the EIC was to become, and had it dedicated to economic intervention or generating income instead.
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I wasn't there for the vote, but personally I enjoy a lot using the EIC for economic actions like we're doing with the Eonir right now. A lot more than the few times when we have used it for spy things in fact.
 
Somic said:
Can y'all please just chill? Yeah, I made an incorrect assumption about how difficult that would be, and people immediately pointed out why it's incorrect, which is cool. But let's not get up in arms and attack someone for a mistake who wasn't even there for whatever debates raged about the EIC :/
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Yeah, I'm sorry. It's just a longstanding irritation for me.

At this point, I've suggested or backed—with varying degrees of seriousness/flippancy—infiltration actions on Marienburg; the Cults of Verena, Ulric, and Kurnous; general cults to get the ability to visit/interact with relics for theurgy purposes; the provinces of Middenland and Nordland and...Ostermark? Whichever one was agitating against the canal early on. And probably some others I'm forgetting. And the very first response from whoever's around at the time is always "Can't be done because they're too poor/too important/too niche/too big/too friendly/too hostile/too far away or it's too threatening to pick up gossip"

There is always an excuse and it's never "we don't need/want the information", but rather unfounded speculation about viability or blowback when nothing Boney has ever said has put constraints that harsh on the EIC's use.
 
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Heck, a while ago we gave the hochlander the sunken palace as a base which apparently enabled him to train actual agents instead of just using normal EIC personal. We haven't done anything with that yet but we could.
 
Nerdasaurus Rex said:
I like how the current solution to repairing relations with the Cult of Verena is to insert spies into their organisation.

I'm sure that won't create any problems at all.

(For the record, I do think it's a cool idea, I just found it a bit funny)
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Last time we inserted spies into a cult the whole sketchy nature of doing so was raised rather prominently during the result phase.

That said, I feel like information gathering does have merit. It's just that instead of spying on the cult of Verena, maybe it might help mend the breach to instead have agents spy for them.

Though... maybe not quite as literally as the straight reversal implies?

Really, the idea is that this whole break with the Cult of Verena in Nuln started with them being left out of the loop in an important decision.

If the EIC's information network could be set to help them track down valuable books or otherwise put them in the loop of information relevant to the cult of Verena, then that feels like that might go a distance towards evening out the scales there.
 
I'm a huge fan of using the EIC for spy shit (folks may recall that the first time we actually have inserted agents somewhere was my hobbyhorse I'd been championing for a while), though I do want to take the magical bridge action first. I've been supporting the Eonir trade actions because of the diplomatic benefits in normalizing relationships between Laurelorn and the Empire; Greys have diplomacy as one of their responsibilities, not just espionage. But once those negotiations are clear and started, hell yes let's gather some secrets.
 
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Tobtorp said:
The EIC has a presence in middenland and now (iirc) ostland even if it's just a small one. Jumping to nordland from there should be pretty easy.
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Sadly no presence in Ostland, we're sourcing the coal from Erengard (which doesn't have any new EIC presence either, I think because we're just paying Kislevite traders to drop off some charcoal instead of properly recruiting them to the EIC). I really don't think we can 'jump' into Nordland: as I understand it, the idea is that the EIC recruits from local traders in areas where it is active, and those traders are familiar with the lay of the land and don't draw suspicion as much as foreigners do. Agents recruited from Middenland could physically get to Nordland quite easily, but Middenland agents might be the worst possible choice for Nordland infiltration in the entire Empire considering current tensions.

Anyway, I don't know if the Verena infiltration thing is wise - it definitely doesn't seem like a better use of the EIC in the next turn than the economic stuff imo - but I don't think it's completely unworkable. The EIC has minor presence in Nuln (where the Verenan branch we pissed off is) and Altdorf (home to a major Verenan order). I think Verena is more popular in the southern Empire like the rest of the Classical pantheon, and that's exactly where the EIC has most of its presence (specifically major presence in Stirland and some moderate presence in Averland and Wissenland IIRC). Infiltrating the Cult of Verena is the kind of thing that could really blow up in our faces, but if all we want is to figure out the very general shape of intra-Cult politics and how much other parts of the Cult respect the Nuln Verenans (that's all we want, right?) then we don't really need to send deep cover agents into the depths of the Cult, and the sort of surface level infiltartion that would be required to get that information is likely to only cause a moderately sized explosion if it fails.
 
To be clear, I'm not against the bridge action at all and really won't mind when it inevitably wins.
I do think intelligence gathering is an equal or higher priority and it's something that has been passed over consistently in favour of economic actions. The bridge is big and shiny, though, and promises immediate concrete results where spywork is inherently speculative.
 
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mathymancer said:
Sadly no presence in Ostland, we're sourcing the coal from Erengard (which doesn't have any new EIC presence either, I think because we're just paying Kislevite traders to drop off some charcoal instead of properly recruiting them to the EIC). I really don't think we can 'jump' into Nordland: as I understand it, the idea is that the EIC recruits from local traders in areas where it is active, and those traders are familiar with the lay of the land and don't draw suspicion as much as foreigners do. Agents recruited from Middenland could physically get to Nordland quite easily, but Middenland agents might be the worst possible choice for Nordland infiltration in the entire Empire considering current tensions.
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Fair enough on the ostland bit, but I will say that we don't only have traders now to fall back on for spying. The hochlander did indicate that with a actual base he could now train actual agents. Which should be more flexible on how and where they get into trouble.
 
The Phoenixian said:
That said, I feel like information gathering does have merit. It's just that instead of spying on the cult of Verena, maybe it might help mend the breach to instead have agents spy for them.

Though... maybe not quite as literally as the straight reversal implies?

Really, the idea is that this whole break with the Cult of Verena in Nuln started with them being left out of the loop in an important decision.

If the EIC's information network could be set to help them track down valuable books or otherwise put them in the loop of information relevant to the cult of Verena, then that feels like that might go a distance towards evening out the scales there.
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That's a pretty neat idea. One of the EIC options is to reach out to Rosie and pass on information about tax evasion by EIC rivals, maybe we could do something similar but with, uh, overdue library books? Ok so it needs some workshopping but this idea definitely has something to it.
 
mathymancer said:
That's a pretty neat idea. One of the EIC options is to reach out to Rosie and pass on information about tax evasion by EIC rivals, maybe we could do something similar but with, uh, overdue library books? Ok so it needs some workshopping but this idea definitely has something to it.
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The big problem i see is that we are now in a sort of rivalry with Verena in certain parts. We also want the rare books so having the EIC give info about them to the verenans seems counter productive...
 
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