But what if we strat trading with Skaven using fake whiskers
Warhammer Fantasy: Divided Loyalties - an Advisor's Quest
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But what if we strat trading with Skaven using fake whiskers
I think if we offer the Emperor a way to bypass Marienberg's stranglehold on maritime trade he'll bite our hand off, he'll be so keen.
Not to mention that I don't think there's any evidence that we're not allowed to trade magical lore. Mathilde is a Grey Lady Magister assigned to Laurelorn. This kind of deal is literally her job that she's empowered to do.
The Waystone Project itself is an example of trading very high end magical lore. We're just sweetening the pot for the Eonir so they share more in turn, as one of the many benefits.
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Tasoli
Life is for Living
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That depends tough, Verenans consider themsleves the god given authority on books. They will want presence or even control of our library at some point. I wouldn't be suprised to see a Verenan temple just appearing at K8P if our library becomes famous. Even if they are denouncing us, or perhaps especailly then.
Infact this tiff we have is about that anyway, they are angered that we have not given them tribute to copy Nuln libraries to their library racket despite owning no libraries themselves.
But we aren't? Laurelorn doesn't want to trade with ulthuan because that will make their crafting houses irrelevant. And you need like 2 of these houses to flip to bring their isolation back.
And we already gotten the emperor a way to go around Marienburg... The channels...
Ok, sorry, Rivals, not enemies.
So still not great people to have a rivalry with. As both the largest organisation of nerds, but also the main religion of nerds as well.
I do t think your argument is necessarily wrong, we could get stuff and support as rivals to the cult. but I think it's trying to be too smart by half.
What we could get as the rival of the verenans pales in comparison to what we get if we have a good working relationship with them.
None of Araby, the Far East nor the Southlands are Ulthuan. They can just trade with those Asur merchants who sail that route, rather than the ones who trade in Ulthuani goods. Beyond that, Bretonnia, Estalia, and Tilea also exist and most of the trade with them will be carried around the coasts, so will also be something the Great Houses can trade in. Marienberg's wealth and power was great well before Ulthuan opened trade with them.
This is a non-problem. Tariffs or simple export bans exist.
And the Fogers made clear that the Black Water Canal doesn't meaningfully impact Marienberg's position.
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The waystone project is us bluffing we have lore... And the emperor knows this...
Tasoli
Life is for Living
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Eonir is never going to become a trade port. They don't have the political will to do that. Best we are going to get is another source for elven luxury crafts which is actually pretty good thing to have since that is one of the exports Marienburg has so that should weaken their hand some.
Not a silver bullet as you are thinking but that is one more leg kicked under the Marienburg monopolies which is good enough.
Turns out we weren't bluffing, as demonstrated by the Jade College's Tributary Ritual and the Dhar channeling stone for river leylines.
Mopman43
Mountain-Hermit of Nitpeak
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It is probably going to be a somewhat lengthy transition period that Tor Lithanel would need to go through to go from 'isolationist hidden city' to 'entrepôt'. I don't think they'll have Cathayan merchants sailing up the Schaukel on day 1.
(Not to say it's not worth it to start the process, it is, but the Eonir also get a vote on if they want to become a trading hub, and they might not want to yet)
That is true, on the other hand we are already rivals, any attempts to mend bridges would also come with costs and concessions, is the balance still as favorable when one considers those? What if we try to mend bridges and they ask for something unacceptable (getting rid of those nasty unsanctified spiders for instance and replacing them with good pious Verenans as an example)? That would leave the tensions even worse than it was. Then too one must consider that we do not have infinite AP to deal with their ruffled feathers. We are not in the position to choose 'rivals or friends' we are rivals and we have to decide if we let sleeping dogs lie and make as much hay out of it as we can with those who bear the cult no love or if we take the time and effort to attempt to turn it around, knowing that it might not work.
Why wouldn't they become a trade port. They currently don't know the option exists, but when they do and realise they can both make a spectacular fortune and become strategically vital to the Empire, near guaranteeing future support against Nordland from Middenland and the Reik basin provinces, why wouldn't they?
They most certainly have the political will to make money and to guarantee their security.
yes, but it still doesnt matter because the emperor thinks we are bluffing. so when we go and say to our boss "we want to sell the eonir the cutting edge battlemagic that lets them cross pretty much any terrain they want with even heavy combatants for a bridge that will mostly help them so that we might get a look at their stuff hes gonna answer "we already get a good look at their stuff through your waystone project, why cant we build the brigde, the elves certainly will not feel threatened by our chiselhand bridge that they can probably dismantle in seconds."
because they have been isolationists for better part of 4 millennia. they are changing now and even that is almost splitting their communities in two. its probably gonna take another millennia before they could be ok with becoming a trade port big enough to rival marienburg.
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The answer is that we don't know and won't know until we take the action: taking the action is us setting up the deal, probably between the Eonir, Middenland, the EIC, and the Grey College. The point of codifying the spell, though, was that now Mathilde is not a necessary component of the work: someone else can learn the spell and do the enchanting, and depending on rolls I suspect those someones will either be members of the Grey College or mages of Laurelorn. If this is something that requires Mathilde to spend personal AP on it, then it becomes way, way less attractive as compared to "get the right people in the right place with the right information."
I don't know what you mean here; we've consistently voted to expand the EIC's capabilities for intelligence gathering at every opportunity. Take a look at the actions we've taken to enhance that:
- Have those supplying the Stirland Army keep you informed of events in the Sylvanian Campaign.
- Have the Eight Peaks branch keep a careful eye on the mood and actions of the Undumgi.
- Put policies in place that local news should be collected and sent to you (rumour mill).
- Bring in a Perpetual Apprentice to start grooming as a handler for intelligence matters of the EIC.
- Start hiring handlers who can then start hiring informers and begin to collect non-public information.
- Have the Hochlander set up a shadow headquarters for the EIC in the Sunken Palace.
There isn't any "get better at doing espionage" action we've left on the table. The only options are economic ones and actually doing espionage. The capabilities expanded as far as they can go, we just need to find things we actually want to use it on.
Tasoli
Life is for Living
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They are isolonist by culture. And being trade port means being naval power which means either coming to an understanding with Asur and Druchii and which ever they choose other will be pissed off and might lead to fighting.
And more to point it means getting connected to Empire economy rather uncontrollably and being under its sway which is not good for its independece.
And finally it means they have to oversee a port full of foreigners that might not have the best intentions for them and worse, might become an attractive target for raiders as they grow rich. How many Norscans they can kill before they run out of soldiers do you think? Because Norscans don't have any reason to raid them ATM but they will have them if Eonir builds a port. You have to remember that Marienburg got sacked several times by bunch of people. I don't think Eonir wants even one such sack on their lands.
That and many other reasons I imagine.
Verena is also the Goddess of law and justice, so maybe we can just pass on information on crimes and stuff? Though we do worship the God of crime, so maybe we shouldn't...
I think the idea definitely has some merit, but maybe we shouldn't worry about all this for now. There's a giant pile of books that is available for us and a number of potential future BOÖK sources that don't require good relations with Verena (Vlag, Light Order's Ancient Library) so unless the Cult of Verena actually starts actively getting in our business there isn't much to worry about in the medium-term.
Speaking of social actions the thread refuses to take, the Skull River Ambush was one of the few times the Hochlander was actually useful, and the thread has decided not to follow up on that ever since.
Hmm. Can the EIC start sniffing around people who had dealings with House Akkerman, particularly around Ubersreik where the Skaven gunpowder almost certainly came from? They probably used intermediaries and deniable assets and so on, and it's been years since the events took place, but maybe the Hochlander could still find something. Might not even be related the to the Skull River Ambush, the Akkermans were probably involved in a lot of shady stuff.
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Thanks for the correction. I misremembered in part, but was thinking of the [ ] EIC: Insert agents into a particular province, cult, company, or institution to start gathering their secrets. (specify who) action.
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Gentlemen, I am going to be a boring asshat, but it irks me quite a bit how the personal trading company of a Lord Magister Shadowmancer still has no internal audits.
You just simply don't know how much money and information we are losing. And it could be quite a freaking lot.
You just simply don't know how much money and information we are losing. And it could be quite a freaking lot.
You forgot the internal ciphers.
What are you talking about? The Hochlander heads the Office of the Auditors General. He does spy stuff too, sure, but they also do internal auditing.
In fact, they've been around since turn 25 (thanks to Pickle for the summary post, it's so much easier to find things that way):
-EIC: Found an internal investigation division, to investigate possible misconduct.
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You're unlikely to get Cathayan merchants sailing there, but if the RoW causeway is open while the Asur diplomats are in town, I suspect we're have some enterprising Cothique merchants sailing up the river with their holds full of 'exotic' goods the next year.
They'll be smart enough to know that selling elven goods to other elves is likely to be much less profitable than something novel.
And once the Cityborn start getting a taste for the finer things in life, then they'll start having to pay for it, at which point having more goods to sell to the Asur becomes more attractive, as does buying more of said exotic goods, selling most of them on to the Empire and keeping the best for yourself as your profit.
This kind of thing can develop very quickly.
All of this can be done with no Ulthuan manufactured goods ever entering Laurelorn, but everyone involved making big profits.
We don't go to our boss and say that. We make the deal and sell the spell under our own authority as a Grey Lord Magister, just as Dragomas negotiated a treaty with Cathay, and then present the results as a triumph.
We've opened up a trade route through the the Sea of Claws that bypasses Marienberg, tied a neutral but friendly polity into the Imperial economic sphere making them easier to influence with soft power, and probably secured the services of some skilled elven mages to teach at the Colleges.
In return, the Eonir are no more of a strategic threat to the Empire than they were before, which is zero, as they are too fragile and too few in number to project power, and the magical nukes that the Grey Lords may be are exactly as dangerous as they were.
It simply isn't a big deal if the Eonir know Rite of Way or not. They already know how to cross their swamp and aren't users of heavy cavalry or heavy infantry for whom the spell is more of a game changer.
And the Emperor didn't know if we were bluffing or not. That's why we recruited the other Colleges, to try to avoid bluffing. It turns out we succeeded.
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I mean the action to negotiate the bridge is on the list and there is no indication that it would involve either of the precisely three people above us in the hierarchy of the empire. I suspect this concern is very much underestimating the kinds of deals Mathilde is allowed to make of her own will, though again to keep this from spiraling over tens of pages @Boney does Mathilde foresee involving any of her superiors in the opening of a mist bridge?
They were isolationist, but have accepted that doesn't work anymore. They've already started importing things and becoming dependent on the Imperial economy. Opening themselves to naval trade reduces that dependence, as they could import from Bretonnia, Tilea, Estalia, or directly with the dwarves.
The Norscans have plenty of reasons to raid them now, and will have the same incentive in future. It's currently a very rich city full of people the Chaos Gods would love to have sacrificed to them. That's not going to change whether or not they're open to international trade.
They don't need to be a naval power to be a trade port. It helps, but isn't essential, as long as the high elves and Marienberg are patrolling the Sea of Claws the Eonir don't need to.
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Ah. We've taken that twice: once in K8P (to spy on the cult of Karnos and see what was up with that) and once in Laurelorn (to insert agents into the Talabecland administration, which was extremely useful in figuring out what Alric was up to).
So, we have taken the following action:
So we've got internal investigations to make sure people don't do naughty things like consorting with enemies of the Empire and to catch enemy agents inserted in the EIC, and compared to that auditing just doesn't seem very important? Like, it's just money, I don't actually care if people embezzle.
(And on a meta note, I don't think there will be any support for another "eat your vegetables" action for a while.)
I did not; I didn't count that as expanding our espionage capability because it just enhances our ability to avoid other folks spying on us rather than improving our own ability to do spy shit.
and cathay and laurelorn are two very different housenumber.
one is a direct neighbour that had military conflict with parts of the empire in recent years and the other is so far away that messages have to be year stamped to be viable...