- Location
- Aotearoa
QrechGPT: "She supplies a... prompt-guide? And I have read your entire Romance library over the years. I thus simply fill in the words-dialogue that seems most probable, yes-yes."
Warhammer Fantasy: Divided Loyalties - an Advisor's Quest
- Thread starter Boney
- Start date
- Fantasy Users' Choice!
-
- Tags
- warhammer warhammer fantasy fantasy be gay do crimes (gay) female protagonist pansexual protagonist ck2 quest divided loyalties mountain vietnam ranald is real this is a dwarf quest (dwarfs) this is maybe an elf quest this is not a vampire quest this is not an empire quest try it and find out open voting
Voted best in category in the Users' Choice awards.
Or there's simply no demand for Asur books in the Empire as basically no one speaks Eltharin, so no one bothers importing them.
There's an elven city in Marigenberg, so there's a market, so you can find eltharin books there.
... So your saying the entire academic community in the empire including all colleges of magic, the elementalists and various other groups have no interested in Asur writing... Why exactly?
Seeing as we've opened a trade route to import conventionally made charcoal so that Eonir mage-smiths can use that rather risk contaminating their work by using magical flame, and we've also helped facilitate the importation of ingots of dwarven steel and stone to allow the Eonir to build more extensive fortifications, I think that the helping them militarily horse has long since bolted, and we don't need to worry about opening the stable door.
Not no interest, but too small an interest to be worth importing books to fill.
As there are no books available in Eltharin, no one except for Grey Magisters who are taught it to use in cyphers bothers learning, so no one wants to import books they can't read.
The grey college is the only one who actively teaches it to almost everyone for cyphers but you can learn the language just fine, and it would not surprise me if all colleges and quite a few universities have people who can read and write in it for studies.
And the colleges alone should have a decent demand for books of the Asur because their whole system is partially based on what one elf could cram into their head in 20 years while fighting a war. So learning what else the elf's have that could help would be quite tempting.
The Phoenixian
The Glacier Witch
- Location
- My own little world
Looking at the EIC on the organization sheet, it seems like the another of the risks with the Ithilimar trade is how it might interplay with the EIC's core policies itself. Most notably (but not exclusively) Don't Skin the Sheep, which is currently framed as the EIC having a policy of taking long-term consistency over massive windfalls every time. Given that the Ithilimar trade is kind of the exact opposite of the spirit of that policy... Yeah that, and the results of the profit that can be made doing it, feels like something that could need special consideration in order to fit into the EIC's framework in order to avoid warping things.
Personally, I like the back-fill option for the idea of dropping vast quantities of social information on the Spiders that, up to now, had nearly no conception of the world of things like society or diplomacy.
Last edited:
- Location
- New Brunswick, NJ
- Pronouns
- He/Him/His
When my concern is "taking a trade action which, unlike others, was explicitly flagged as being likely to draw a lot of attention seems like it might bring political opponents of the human-Eonir alliance down on our heads for providing military materiel to a recently-hostile polity, and I don't want the heat," saying "but we've already taken actions that could be interpreted as supplying their war machine" doesn't actually resolve the problem! Quite the opposite, actually! I really don't want Nordland/Sigmarites making political hay out of the stuff we've been doing, which as you have quite cogently pointed out can easily be done! I would like precisely zero attention from them until such point as the Waystone Project is politically unassailable, e.g. the point where we've gotten actual Waystones prototyped and everyone who has trouble with Dhar-users will be on our side if things become public.
That's why you get the Gold Order in on the Ithilmar trading. A trade company would want cash as payment, a order tasked with defending the Empire would want things useful for defending the Empire, which with the Gold Order could mean gold, but could also be knowledge or even the elves allowing access to books on military topics.
- Location
- Outside the Box
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Oh.Personally, I like the back-fill option for the idea of dropping vast quantities of social information on the Spiders that, up to now, had nearly no conception of the world of things like society or diplomacy.
Every book we add to Kron-Azril-Ungol also, by extension, becomes part of the Library-We's memory. And the Library-We is too young to get a pile of romance novels dropped in there. Other kinds of fiction would be ok, but not romance.
[X] [LIBRARY] Back-fill: Social sciences
[X] [LIBRARY] Library of Mournings: Linguistics, Hoeth
Ok but then how would we benefit from the action at all? The gold order has the means to do it all themselves, their filthy rich. And I'm sorry but the eonir don't need ithilmar nearly enough to just do this out of the goodness of our heart...
There's bound to be some Eltharin books - the question is how many and how varied the Eltharin books are.
I'd expect a lot of popular literature and some common (and probably fairly old) works on other topics but there may not be enough books to even fill up the 'Common' category on a given subject.
[x] [COLLEGE] A translation of the Indic Aqshy books obtained from the Elementalists (1 CF)
[x] [LIBRARY] Library of Mournings: Ladrielle, Hoeth
My stance on the Ithilmar thing is that it's going to happen at some point, and I'd much rather the profits end up in Mathilde's pockets or the EIC coffers, than in the hands of some random, potentially unscrupulous trade lord or merchant prince.
Someone, somewhen, is going to discover the untapped one-time only market for Ithilmar in Laurelorn, and they are going to exploit it.
It would be much better for the good of the Empire if that someone was us, and no, that's not just a biased justification for selfish wealth generation—both Mathilde and the EIC have proven themselves to be trustworthy actors within the wider economy, and we have systems of accountability to ensure that, unlike the Jan Jansen's and Max Mustermann's of the world.
Someone, somewhen, is going to discover the untapped one-time only market for Ithilmar in Laurelorn, and they are going to exploit it.
It would be much better for the good of the Empire if that someone was us, and no, that's not just a biased justification for selfish wealth generation—both Mathilde and the EIC have proven themselves to be trustworthy actors within the wider economy, and we have systems of accountability to ensure that, unlike the Jan Jansen's and Max Mustermann's of the world.
We do not have to just trade the Ilthimar for gold, do not get me wrong I do but there is a lot of things we can use besides gold. Besides the obvious books, we can get a teacher for the colleges, military help, training, rare elf goods, books, magic lessons for Mathilde, enchanted made items, language lessons and books. I think we should take the action because someone will do it and I would rather Mathilde gets some partners and uses it to benefit the empire and herself. While a cut of gold would be valuable and can be used to help it is not the only thing we can trade with.
See, that's the thing. We are not using our own resources for this, but the EICs and they do deal in gold. So what we get is gold otherwise we just took a absolutely massive loan from the EIC...
- Location
- Hiding in the walls.
- Pronouns
- She/Her
While I'm not against the notion that it has risks (I think picklepikkl has made a pretty fair case for there being some potential ones that I'd missed, even if I don't necessarily think it's anything we can't weather just fine), I'm not sure I buy the premise that this is against the spirit of Don't Skin The Sheep.
The reason you don't skin the sheep is that you don't have any sheep to shear afterwards. But this isn't a case where we're pursuing short-term profits at the expense of long-term ones. This is a case where we have long-term trade established already, and where making contacts who might be impressed by our ability to get together unusual trade goods or simply have the EIC brought to their attention as humans worth dealing with should they desire outside wares might lead to further long-term business relationships.
And the reason that it's a one-time trade is not that we're gouging people who are desperate in the moment but going to remember that down the line, or that we're scamming people by passing off goods as more valuable than they are and therefore it's going to collapse and tarnish our reputation once they find out. It's that there simply isn't going to be more Ithilimar available for us to trade, at least on a scale where tracking it down is remotely viable.
A finder's fee or whatever the Gold Order receives Mathilde's will receive a share of, whether cash, knowledge or something more esoteric, like access in the Library of Mournings of their military topics. In the collegiate game of trading favors they'll owe Mathilde one, like what they offered for all that Skaven trash. In addition what is being offered by using the Gold Order instead of the EIC is the attention this will cause being focused upon the Gold Order instead of Mathilde Weber, Wizard of the Grey Order, known for their vow of poverty, part owner of a quickly growing trading concern.
We can bring in other parties to offset the cost. Also we only need enough gold to cover the investment, maybe also the Vig if we use Randal contacts or the incurred interest if we use more legal methods.
- Location
- Earth
It's an EIC action using EIC money, not Mathilde going around using her personal funds. If you don't get gold from the action then suddenly there's a giant hole in the ledgers. Also, I don't recall there being any indication that the Ithimar trade can get anything besides gold.
And the investment is roughly a thousand gold per piece of ithilmar, going up from there.
It's absolutely a massive investment and the only other groups we could ask for such amounts of money are the dwarfs, the colleges themselves and maybe a elector count.
So groups that explicitly trust Mathilde and would loan her the money and trust her judgment. You are making my point for me. If Mathilde can get more besides gold that would benefit the empire, colleges or the dawi then yeah I can see them agreeing.
and because its a pure money game and one with gigantic stakes for whoever coughs up the money, we would get very little, very very little.
mathilde is in essence the dude who goes up to his programmer friend and pitches him an app "and we share 50/50 because i had the idea!" the risk is with whoever coughs up the money and does the very visible trading, not mathilde.
as for people being willing to lend us several hundred thousand gold at once? the colleges will just say "nah" because we really dont need it for anything important, the only elector count we know well enough to do this has waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay better things to spend it on and belegar might actually do it but only with a solid idea of what he and k8p gets out of it. not the empire.
The empress who is very close to the godmother of her child is someone we can get money from. There is 2 karaks that would lend or give Mathilde money.
@Boney would the elves be up to trade more besides just gold for Ilthimar? Like say goods or services that the empire or colleges would like. Or to have someone go teach the EIC how to make spin silk.
Last edited:
if the empress lends us hundreds of thousands of gold that will be much much worse then the EIC doing a bit of horse trading with the elfs and pissing of northland... we do not want anyone investigating us or the empress or both together.
vlag might actually lend it to us... but im uncertain if they have cleaned up their vaults by now and we probably would have to use our boon somewhat...
and again, belegar is to savvy to just lend people he knows vast summs of money without a clear answer of what he gets for the money spend.
- Location
- Actually pretty lost
It seems extremely probable - to me at least - that Nordland is already very aware of what's going on between the Empire and Laurelorn, given their extreme interest in Laurelorn's dealings. Hell, Thorek marched in with his retinue through Salzenmund. I'm not worried about bringing their attention to something that I believe already very much has it.
With that in mind, "draw a lot of attention" seems to me like it's notable for also drawing everyone else's attention - namely, other groups who might suddenly realise there's a wealthy trading partner literally inside of the Empire, here, and might scramble to get a piece of that pie.
The EIC has enjoyed first-mover advantage on its other trade routes it has opened to Laurelorn to date, so the results of this have already been mitigated, though it might feasibly see some increased competition after everyone suddenly notices.
In the long term though, I think that other parties coming in to trade will only tie the Empire and the Eonir together. Overall, I expect this to be a net benefit to Empire-Laurelorn relations, which is why I'm not concerned about taking it. (I would also like a big pile of money please, but that's not relevant to the political calculus.)