- Location
- Burgundian Netherlands
If we didn't want to play a double loyalties quest, maybe we shouldn't have picked the option at the start to begin with?
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.
If we didn't want to play a double loyalties quest, maybe we shouldn't have picked the option at the start to begin with?
- Location
- Norway
Nitpick: We chose Sleeper Agent, not Very Divided Loyalties.If we didn't want to play a double loyalties quest, maybe we shouldn't have picked the option at the start to begin with?
And we also voted to be Brave.
Let's tell Abelheim stuff, we can keep sending information. Our string-puller should either be fine with Abelheim knowing, or is someone we shouldn't be siding with.Besides:
If our mage is supposed to be (wrong?) genre savvy, she should know that in those kinds of books, cover-ups never last and people always find out dark secrets at the worst possible, most dramatic moment. The only thing that could be worse would be if we had an identical twin separated at birth. Tell Abelheim now, and head off drama.
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- Location
- Memphis, TN
Tell him Abellheim now and you make enemies with many in the Empire and expose us too completely ruining the point of us being a spy so good jobNitpick: We chose Sleeper Agent, not Very Divided Loyalties.
And we also voted to be Brave.
Besides:
If our mage is supposed to be (wrong?) genre savvy, she should know that in those kinds of books, cover-ups never last and people always find out dark secrets at the worst possible, most dramatic moment. The only thing that could be worse would be if we had an identical twin separated at birth. Tell Abelheim now, and head off drama.
Also I'm not doing this out fear I'm doing it because it is common sense not to make enemies that you can't do anything to stop and in the end are on our side
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[X] Plan No Place Like Home
Number of voters: 5
veekie, Night_stalker, butchock, wingstrike96, Miffychan
[X] Plan Ivory Tower
Number of voters: 5
Happerry, Artemis1992, PotentialPlateau, egexxx, Siual
[X] Plan: Planning For the Future
Number of voters: 3
DocMatoi, Atam the Ork, avatar11792
[X] Plan Starting out
Number of voters: 2
No7sHere, Redhead222
[X] Plan Heretek
Number of voters: 1
Heretek
[X] Plan Fork
Number of voters: 1
Exmorri
---
The first two plans are variations on each other, the major difference being where your new home will be - in a tower along the walls of Wurtbad or a hidden place in the slums or underground. The only other variation is that No Place Like Home doesn't have the Greatswords interrogating the stablehand, though I'm not sure if that's an oversight or not since the possibility wasn't discussed until after that plan was written.
Voting will close in ninety minutes, so you've got that long to convince each other or for someone from a runner-up vote to weigh in on the tower location. Otherwise, once more Ranald will decide.
Number of voters: 5
veekie, Night_stalker, butchock, wingstrike96, Miffychan
[X] Plan Ivory Tower
Number of voters: 5
Happerry, Artemis1992, PotentialPlateau, egexxx, Siual
[X] Plan: Planning For the Future
Number of voters: 3
DocMatoi, Atam the Ork, avatar11792
[X] Plan Starting out
Number of voters: 2
No7sHere, Redhead222
[X] Plan Heretek
Number of voters: 1
Heretek
[X] Plan Fork
Number of voters: 1
Exmorri
---
The first two plans are variations on each other, the major difference being where your new home will be - in a tower along the walls of Wurtbad or a hidden place in the slums or underground. The only other variation is that No Place Like Home doesn't have the Greatswords interrogating the stablehand, though I'm not sure if that's an oversight or not since the possibility wasn't discussed until after that plan was written.
Voting will close in ninety minutes, so you've got that long to convince each other or for someone from a runner-up vote to weigh in on the tower location. Otherwise, once more Ranald will decide.
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In_lurk_shadow
[ ]
- Location
- here and there
[X] Plan No Place Like Home
- Location
- Germany
Just make a cointoss and give the winning option a bonus for being Ranald's choice.
- Location
- Germiston, South Africa
[X] Plan Ivory Tower
- Location
- Germiston, South Africa
Oops apologies
Turn 2 Results - 2470.5
Okay. Getting him those books. It's only the entire feudal contract of Stirland that depends on you. No pressure.
Okay, so they're either in the castle or out of the castle. If they're in the castle, they'll be found sooner or later by Herr Schultz, so you only have to worry about outside the castle. Judging by the size of the room that used to contain them, there were a massive amount of ledgers and documents that made up Stirland's archives. And from handling tomes back in College, you know for a fact that paper is actually quite heavy. So this isn't a matter of someone loading books into a sack and sneaking off into the night - it's more like five, six cartloads of ancient, dusty paperwork. Very unwieldy, and very noticeable.
So noticeable, you're hoping, that they couldn't be stashed somewhere in Wurtbad itself. They'd have to have left the city, and that narrows down the point of egress considerably - Wurtbad has three gates, and trade can only go through the southern one, and all the carts and their contents are recorded by the Wurtbad Watch to make sure nobody's trying to sidestep tolls and tariffs. So all you have to do is look through those records until you find multiple cartloads of books and you'll have taken a significant step down the road of finding them.
(Unless, you realize with a sinking feeling, they crated up the books before moving them, then transferred them to a boat. Once they got onto the River Stir they could go just about anywhere unnoticed. You're hoping that whoever it is didn't think of that.)
Putting aside your misgivings, you round up your platoon and make your way to the gatehouse, drawing stares and parting the crowds as you lead them down Wurtbad's main street. The gate guards snap to attention as you approach - reacting more to the two dozen heavily armed and armoured men than your own slight form, if you had to guess, but you'll take it - and when you tell them your reason for being here they scramble to obey. You're shown into a cramped and poorly ventilated room filled with a battered table, a dented stove, and a small bookshelf filled with crudely-bound books. You pick one at random and open it, and feel a headache start to form as you try to make sense of the handwriting.
Your procession back to Eagle Castle is slightly less impressive on account of the armful of books each of the Greatswords is carrying.
---
You've read alphabets older than the Empire that were easier to understand than the handwriting of these bloody Watchmen.
It takes you weeks of constant effort to make your way through them. You send your Greatswords (who claimed illiteracy) out to chase down false lead after false lead, as printers, booksellers, accountants and bankers are paraded in and out of the castle to explain the most mundane of cargo. You never would have guessed how much paperwork flows into and out of Wurtbad.
And then, at long, long last, you have it. Just under a year before the previous Elector Count's death. Six cartloads over two days, each of them after dark, each of them exempt from tolls, tariffs and excise by the authority of the Castle, driven by a local carter by the name of - you squint - Jolan? Johan? You think it's Johan. Once more, you round up your Greatswords from where they had gotten off to. Some were down in the cells slowly and thoroughly working the truth out of the poor stablehand, some were following Herr Schultz around in the hope that he'll uncover more undead for them to cheerily bisect with their enormous swords, and the rest were hanging around the kitchens trying to wheedle snacks out of the head cook.
If anything, the Guild of Carters and Coachmen put up even less of a fight than the Watchmen on the Guardhouse. The moment you told them what you were there for, they gave you the address of a licensed freelance cart owner-operator by the name of Johan (you were right!). You head over there immediately before any of his coworkers can tip him off, and that his response to a pair of Greatswords knocking on his door was to climb out a window was a promising sign. Especially since you had three more waiting just around the corner from that window.
---
"I didn't know what was happening until it were too late," poor Johan blubbers to you from his position shackled to a bench. You hadn't even had to threaten him, you just sat there looking at him while it sank in for him what was going on, and he had started telling you the entire story. "I thort it was just another job from the castle. They'd bin movin all sortsa furniture and whatnot, redecoratin I think. So I go there with my cart and poor Delilah starts actin all sorts of funny, stampin' and whinnyin' and as I'm tryina calm her down the builders start pilin' all these books into the cart. None of 'em said a word, just pilin' it all in while I'm standin' there tryina calm my horse down. So I thort, okay, that was bad enough, but for what they was payin' I could put up with Delilah sulkin' for a few weeks, but then I take the instructions they gave me back to the guildhall and ask someun to read it for I, and they wanted it taken to a mound halfway to Julbach."
That got your attention. Every child raised in Stirland knew to never, ever, ever go near the burial mounds that dotted the landscape, and the books you read at College agreed - both those concerning magic and those that weren't approved parts of the curriculum. The tribal chieftains from before the coming of Sigmar did not rest soundly in their graves.
"I shoulda dumped the books right there and then, but then I think, the only thing worse than gettin inta business with the sorta folk that want things delivered to those sorta places is tryina get outta business with 'em. So I just did the job. Unloaded the books outside the mound, and when I got back with the next lot the last lot was gorn. Six loads, and Delilah still gets jumpy on dark nights, and until today I thanked Morr every night that that was the worst of it."
[VISITING THE WATCHMEN: Automatic success because Greatswords.]
[READING THE RECORDS: Req 50, Learning, 39+13=52. A long and hard-fought battle.]
[VISITING THE CARTER'S GUILD: Automatic success because Greatswords.]
[HUNTING JOHAN: Req 40, Intrigue, 68+12=80. Fish in a barrel.]
[INTERROGATING JOHAN: Req 40, Intrigue, 75+12=87. Singing like a bird.]
---
The other lead you were following was what Wilhelmina had said. Most of the nobles, she said, were inadvertently assisting her in her stopgap attempt to rebuild Stirland's tax code. So which weren't, then?
When you put the question to her, she guides you back to the room that had once been the archives, and now contained a battered desk half-covered with paper. She searches through it and finally produces a hand-written list, which she compares to a map of Sylvania hanging from a pair of nails driven into the wall.
"Alright, so not counting Abelhelm, there's thirteen centers of power in Stirland. Four each in Western, Central, and Southern Stirland, and Countess Gabriella of Nachthafen in Sylvania." She points to a town in Western Sylvania. "Flensburg, I haven't gotten anything from. But I expected that. The Lord Mayor of Flensburg told me to talk to the Countess of Flensburg, and the Countess of Flensburg told me to talk to the Lord Mayor. Weird, ugly little geopolitical argument. I doubt either of them are involved in anything but trying to screw over each other." Then she pointed to Sylvania. "I haven't received anything from Countess Gabriella. But that could be nothing, she's in the middle of Sylvania. Maybe she sent it and it never arrived, maybe she decided not to bother since tax collectors haven't penetrated that far into Sylvania in decades." She hesitated for a second, then pointed to Siegfriedhof. "Nothing from them, but the Knights of Morr don't pay secular taxes anyway." Then she pointed to Leicheburg in southern Sylvania, nestled against the Haunted Hills. "Count Petr is the last of them, and not only has he not sent me the documents but he hasn't been paying taxes either. It's almost entirely livestock and farming down then so at first I thought it might just be a bad year, but I've gotten the documents from Hornau, Sigmaringen and Schramleben, and they're all paying taxes as normal. And Sigmaringen is almost as poor as Leicheburg."
So, Leicheburg. The more you look at the map, the less you like it. Wurtbad to Worden, then down the Moot Road to Schramleben, then to Hornau and finally the Black Run up to Leicheburg... at least 500 miles. That'd be about two weeks on a typical horse, or since you were on official business, you could change horses at every post station and cut that in half. But that was travelling on a horse of flesh and blood, with the limitations of a living, breathing creature. Not on a horse of shadow that could gallop for a day and a night without rest until banished by the rising sun. On such a horse, you could make the ride in a day, except for one other limitation - the fact that sixteen hours of galloping would turn your body below the waist into pulp. Four days, maybe.
---
They say that the Moot is lovely in autumn. You'll have to take their word for it. While the blur of reds and yellows you saw was certainly vivid, the only memories you've gained of the Moot are stumbling into an inn as your horse disappears in a puff of Ulgu and pleading for a hot dinner, a cold bath, and a soft bed. Though to the Moot's credit, that was certainly delivered.
Two days later, you're dismissing your horse once more and bribing a thoroughly alarmed farmer on the road a couple of coins to carry you the rest of the way into the town, and you gratefully curl up on a pile of sheepskins in the cart he's driving. The city guards barely glance at a farmgirl napping in the back of a cart - you'd thought to change into something a little less attention-getting than your usual robes. A few more coins later, you've found a man willing to claim he'd ridden from Wurtbad to ask after the tax documents, and you trail after him as he heads into the castle where Count Petr von Stolpe is holding court.
The Count turns out to be a middle-aged man with thin features and an alarmingly aquiline nose, which he uses to great effect to look down at anyone who has the temerity to speak to him. You watch him as a dozen complaints and suits for adjudication are brought before him, and he's obviously paying as little attention as possible - an assistant leans forward after every speech to tell him what a suitable response would be.
But as your patsy is heard, he shows some animation, leaning forward with an eager smile as he's reminded that he was asked to send his tax records to Wurtbad. After your puppet trails off, he leans back in his chair, steepling his fingers with a look of satisfaction on his face. "If Wurtbad believes, as they so transparently do, that I have been remiss in my tax obligations," he says, smug grandeur radiating off him, "I invite them to compare what they have received to what the feudal contract says they are owed."
Well, that was about as subtle as a thrown brick. You make your way back out of the castle, exchanging a polite smile with the guards on the gate as you leave. Now you just have to get home again...
[RIDING A HORSE OF SHADOW: Roll, Martial, 85+7=92. Riding skill acquired.]
[BAITING THE COUNT: Req 60, Intrigue, 62+12=74. He's a bit of a shit.]
[ACTING UNNOTICED: Req 40, Intrigue, 44+12=56. Like you were never there.]
---
Though you spend a day or two recovering, you're able to leap back to work surprisingly quick after your thousand mile round trip. And you're glad you did, because in your absence the Greatswords had gone a little off the rails. You explain to them that, yes, he is technically an enemy of the Empire for obstructing the investigation of an Elector Count's councilwoman, but that doesn't mean he should be executed on the spot. You order them to deconstruct the gallows they had entertained themselves by building in the courtyard, though not before you lead the stablehand out to have a good, hard look at it.
The Greatswords may have been on the verge of taking away your lead, but they did do a passable job of softening him up. Unfortunately, he doesn't know much. All he really knows is that he was paid a handful of shillings to go to Wurtbad, present himself as a former employee of the castle, and if anyone asks about the previous occupants to tell them a set of specific lies about the spymaster.
Who told him? A man in a cloak in a bar, he says, and you fight back a grimace at the dead-end of an answer. But then you leap on one specific part - 'to go to Wurtbad', he said. Where was he living before?
"Julbach," is his answer.
[HOW MUCH DOES HE KNOW: Roll, 46. Snippets and tidbits.]
[HOW MUCH DOES HE SAY: Req 40, 37. Failure avoided only because you rolled so well riding your shadowhorse.]
---
Interspersed with your official duties, you found time to fulfil your obligation to whoever it was that was pulling your strings. Between Anton's visits to the closest of Stirland's nobles, you engage him in conversation about Stirland's political landscape to try to gauge his level of ability, and he's more than happy to cooperate. The results are... unexpected.
Anton Kiesinger II is quite possibly the least politically savvy person you have ever encountered.
You first assumed that his simplicity was a facade, a way to put people at ease while gaining their trust. But every indication is that Anton is exactly what he appears to be: open, honest, a bit dim, and entirely blind to the deeper meaning behind every word and action in high-level political discourse. And apparently that he is so non-threatening as a diplomat is why he's able to perform the job so well. He's not a threat as a politician, and because his father's lands are relatively small and out of the way, he's not a threat as a future noble.
In a world of wolves, he's a puppy. And like a puppy, now that you've shown him attention, he adores you. After you had found everything you needed to know, he continued to seek you out and ask how you've been eating and making sure that the Greatswords assigned to you are being properly respectful. Whether you like it or not, he's decided that you're his new little sister.
It was almost a shame that you went on to completely violate the trust he had in you by breaking into his quarters while he was off making friends on Van Hal's behalf. Then again, 'breaking in' might be too strong a wording. He didn't even lock his door. He even left a little note on his desk apologizing to the maids for spilling soup on his bed linen!
A search of the room revealed a trove of information in the form of a box full of correspondence, and Anton possesses that odd compulsive quirk of keeping a copy of every letter he sends. Most of it was between him and his father, and though Anton Senior is making the most of the opportunity of his son being on the council of the Elector Count, it seems his highest ambition is to encourage more overland trade to Wissenland so he can profit from the increase in tolls. Anton Junior apparently found out that Van Hal routinely used a Nuln rifle, and he was hoping that this would mean that Stirland's crossbowmen could be replaced or supplemented with handgunners in the near future.
You skim back through the thick bundles of letters, finding that most of them were between father and son and the rest polite missives thanking one noble or another for some social event or another. But as you're about to put the box away, you notice that it's deeper on the outside than on the inside, and it doesn't take you long to lever out the false bottom and find another bundle of letters entirely. These are between him and a person he addresses as 'Auntie Julia'. The letters to her are mostly filling her in on events in the family, though they frequently mention how much he misses her. The letters back are much less prosaic, filled with descriptions of a military campaign against Beastmen in some forested corner of the Empire - and from her descriptions of events, Auntie Julia appears to be a Jade Wizard.
The most recent letter is dated two years ago.
You replace everything where you found it and leave the room.
The report you prepare describes a diplomat who is skilled at building and maintaining relations with his fellow nobles, though thoroughly unsuited to the darker sides of politics. It lists his largest influence as his father, whose motives appear entirely benign, and notes friendly relations with every noble of note in Western Stirland and most of them in Central Stirland, too. It also describes his talent at making friends with those he works with.
No mention is made in the report of Auntie Julia.
Exactly three months after you received your orders, a Roadwarden arrives in the castle courtyard and mentions to a guard that you might have a letter for him. When you bring it down to him, you have a thousand ideas in your head for different ways you could try to winkle information out of him, but in the end you decide all of them are too obvious. Better not to risk it... this time.
[INNOCENT CHAT: Req 60, Diplomacy, 96+9=105. You manage to get a solid read on Anton, and won him over in the process.]
[INNOCENT B&E: Req 40, Intrigue, 67+12=79. In and out unseen.]
[ANYTHING ELSE?: Req 60, Intrigue, 73+12=85. Hidden compartment found.]
[ROADWARDEN: Req 50, Diplomacy, 34+9=41. Better not to risk it.]
---
For the past few months, your spare moments have been spent thinking about finally moving out of the terrible guest room and into your very own home. But you were thoroughly torn on what form that home would take. One half of you wanted to claim a tower along the walls of Wurtbad. You are a wizard, after all, and a wizard wears a tower like a crab wears a shell. But on the other hand, you weren't just any wizard - you were a Grey Wizard, masters of shadow and secrets, so the other half of you wanted a secret lair, secreted somewhere in Wurtbad's slums or catacombs. You went back and forth, making up and then changing your mind, until finally you decide to do the only sensible thing: you take a coin you had embezzled from your operational funds, cross your fingers, and flip it into the air.
[HEADS, A TOWER. TAILS, A DUNGEON. Result: Tails.]
[DOES THIS PLEASE RANALD?: Roll, 98. Ranald is amused.]
With your answer from on high, you start spending a great deal of time among the populace of Wurtbad, rebuilding old connections while scouting the darker corners of the town. The more you walk its streets, the more your memories of the town return, and you quickly find yourself at home in the maze of streets and alleys away from the main roads. Your slang is ten years out of date, but that just starts conversations about where you've been, and that gives you an opportunity to insult Reiklanders which is always popular. You chat easily to your new friends and let it be known you were looking for an out-of-the-way place to get some peace and quiet from the demands on your time, and would they know anywhere like that?
[HOW GOOD A HOME DO YOU FIND?: Roll, Diplomacy+Ranald's Blessing, 87+9+20=116. Well, then.]
You know, for all the cautionary tales you've read about why spirited young women shouldn't go wandering into dark tunnels, you tend to find yourself in them an awful lot.
It started with a harried innkeeper telling you that she had no use for one of the outbuildings and if you like, you could buy it off her for a handful of crowns and the promise that the Wurtbad Watch would fail to notice the still she'd set up in one of the other outbuildings. As you poked around in it, you thought for sure you wouldn't take it in a hundred years - though it was a sturdy stone construction, it was tiny and as filthy as a pigeon coop. Then you realized why, exactly, that comparison occurred to you, looking at row after row of recessions in the wall of the shack. It didn't make any sense for a pigeon coop to be here, at street level in a crowded alley where the sky overhead was barely visible. Then you looked down at the floor.
Half an hour of pushing what could have been centuries of accumulated junk out of the way (the innkeeper seemed to have forgotten about you, and from the waves of rowdy noise coming from the interior, you couldn't blame her), you finally found what you suspected you would find - a trapdoor made of wood so ancient it was nearly fossilized. It took you another ten minutes to lever it open with the help of a bent metal bar you had found in the refuse. And when you descended down the ladder, what you found took your breath away.
The explanation, you pieced together later, was fairly simple. Every few years, the River Stir would flood, depositing another layer of silt onto the streets of Wurtbad. In a single lifetime, this meant stepping up onto a street that used to be level with your door. But over the centuries that Wurtbad had served as capital of Stirland, ground floors had become basements and attics had become ground floors, and people had put an extra floor on their houses and forgotten about the now sub-basement they had no use for. Over the years, Wurtbad had risen, its walls protecting it from the erosion that washed back the flood-deposited silt everywhere else.
Underneath Wurtbad, entire buildings lay forgotten.
Entire underground ecosystems fled at your approach, the dim light of the lantern blazing like a supernova to creatures whose ancestors had forgotten the sun a hundred generations prior. Ornate windows showed a view of soil and rock. Rusted scraps of metal protruding from the wall mark where fine tapestries once hung. In places, many places, the walls had given way and soil had poured in, drowning entire wings. And only the vaguest hint of differing colours showed where frescoes once covered entire walls. But like a lingering ghost, the grandeur of this forgotten palace was still visible.
You announce to the innkeeper that you would be taking the outbuilding, thank you very much.
---
Later, as you make the entrance room of your underground home liveable and barricade the doorway into the rest of the palace (just in case), it occurs to you that there's barely anything you can do to set up more of a shrine to Ranald. It's a shack that's a palace, bought from the unknowing by sanctioning their theft of tax money. In the end, all you can really do is draw some crosses on the wall and put out milk for the cats that were already lounging around the place. And you could swear that the look the black one was giving you was especially smug, even for a cat.
SKILL ACQUIRED: Riding (Basic)
HOME ACQUIRED: Buried Palace
BLESSING ACQUIRED: Ranald's Gift (choose one action per turn; +20 bonus will apply where most needed during that action)
DISCRETIONARY GOLD EMBEZZLED: 100
DISCRETIONARY GOLD SPENT: 20 (Leicheburg investigation)
PERSONAL GOLD SPENT: 30 ('shack' purchased)
KNOWLEDGE ACQUIRED: Anton (see character sheet)
TITHE PAID: 5
STUDENT LOANS PAID: 35
---
It has been a year since you arrived back in Stirland, but it feels like much longer. You've gone from a student whose biggest problem was that the people smuggling novels into the College never manage to get all three parts of a trilogy, to being neck-deep in conspiracies that threaten the social fabric of an entire province. Van Hal has finally been convinced to stop wearing his Witch Hunter's hat everywhere he goes, but it'll be a longer battle to get him out of his armour. You're not sure whether it's Anton or Wilhelmina who are worrying about that, but you don't envy them the task.
Professor de Verezzo has reappeared from his tour of the towns of Stirland, and explains in his normal drone that he's making headway on filling up the ranks of Stirland, but he's taken on most of the 'low-hanging fruit' of Stirland, and if the task is to be completed by this time next year an additional signing bonus will be required to tempt people into joining.
MILITARY OF STIRLAND: Poor. 30,000 of 40,000 positions filled.
Anton, too, is back, describing a fairly successful tour of Western and Central Stirland. Most of the nobles are hoping that Van Hal represents stability over so many years of rapidly changing Elector Counts, and as long as he doesn't do anything to go against that impression they'll be happy to fulfil their obligations to him.
NOBLE RELATIONS: Very Good. Van Hal benefits from the contrast with his predecessors.
Wilhelmina has been continuing to manage the budget as best she can when all she can do is wait for taxes to be sent in and hope that they're the right amount. She's been focusing on Wurtbad in particular, using the Mayor's copies of the tax laws to make sure everyone in the city was paying what they were supposed to.
WEALTH OF STIRLAND: Poor; Wilhelmina managed to prevent it from falling this turn.
INCOME OF STIRLAND: Poor; will fall to Terrible if the nobles realize that they could just not pay taxes and get away with it.
Brother Kasmir has resanctified the castle's chapel to Sigmar, which had been thoroughly neglected over the decades. He also takes great pleasure in describing the adventures he and Van Hal got up to in penetrating and scourging walled-up chambers found in Schulz's charting of the castle. It seems that unlike any proper castle where the secret passages lead to hidden caches of treasures and artwork and the private hideaways of attractive nobles, Eagle Castle's passages contain only horrible creatures that hunger for the flesh of the living.
EAGLE CASTLE: Chapel built
Herr Schultz's mapping of the castle went as well as could be expected, as several more hidden chambers were found and cleared. He reports that he wasn't able to penetrate below the first floor of the dungeon - one stairway down was caved in and a second was flooded.
EAGLE CASTLE: Everything from B1 and above mapped, excluding the East Wing; no hidden chambers remain (?)
Finally, heads turn to you.
[] Write in your report
Of course, you have learned some things that are rather sensitive, especially about your fellow councillors. Maybe you should give a second report to Van Hal in private.
[] Write in a one-on-one report (optional)
Suggest possible orders for the next turn (new ones up top, old ones below):
[] A dozen centuries of tax ledgers and records don't just vanish. And I may have found them. Let's go raid a tomb.
[] Count Petr is definitely tied up in the ledger theft. I can go get him for you, and bring him back in chains.
[] The disappearance of your predecessor is very concerning, especially since he's actively trying to sabotage the hunt for him. He must be found, and I've got a lead: Julbach.
[] If I had proper facilities, I could do better work. Please fund me renovating my secret underground palace.
[] The Stirlandian League is a cancer eating at Stirland's economy, and it must be destroyed.
[] The Stirlandian League is a gold mine of information, and it must be yours.
[] There is a risk of enemy agents infiltrating the castle staff - they must be watched.
[] The castle staff can be a great source of information and first line of defence - they should report to you.
[] Seriously what is up with the East Wing.
[] I need a proper information network. Please fund me wandering around making friends.
[] Other (write in)
Okay, so they're either in the castle or out of the castle. If they're in the castle, they'll be found sooner or later by Herr Schultz, so you only have to worry about outside the castle. Judging by the size of the room that used to contain them, there were a massive amount of ledgers and documents that made up Stirland's archives. And from handling tomes back in College, you know for a fact that paper is actually quite heavy. So this isn't a matter of someone loading books into a sack and sneaking off into the night - it's more like five, six cartloads of ancient, dusty paperwork. Very unwieldy, and very noticeable.
So noticeable, you're hoping, that they couldn't be stashed somewhere in Wurtbad itself. They'd have to have left the city, and that narrows down the point of egress considerably - Wurtbad has three gates, and trade can only go through the southern one, and all the carts and their contents are recorded by the Wurtbad Watch to make sure nobody's trying to sidestep tolls and tariffs. So all you have to do is look through those records until you find multiple cartloads of books and you'll have taken a significant step down the road of finding them.
(Unless, you realize with a sinking feeling, they crated up the books before moving them, then transferred them to a boat. Once they got onto the River Stir they could go just about anywhere unnoticed. You're hoping that whoever it is didn't think of that.)
Putting aside your misgivings, you round up your platoon and make your way to the gatehouse, drawing stares and parting the crowds as you lead them down Wurtbad's main street. The gate guards snap to attention as you approach - reacting more to the two dozen heavily armed and armoured men than your own slight form, if you had to guess, but you'll take it - and when you tell them your reason for being here they scramble to obey. You're shown into a cramped and poorly ventilated room filled with a battered table, a dented stove, and a small bookshelf filled with crudely-bound books. You pick one at random and open it, and feel a headache start to form as you try to make sense of the handwriting.
Your procession back to Eagle Castle is slightly less impressive on account of the armful of books each of the Greatswords is carrying.
---
You've read alphabets older than the Empire that were easier to understand than the handwriting of these bloody Watchmen.
It takes you weeks of constant effort to make your way through them. You send your Greatswords (who claimed illiteracy) out to chase down false lead after false lead, as printers, booksellers, accountants and bankers are paraded in and out of the castle to explain the most mundane of cargo. You never would have guessed how much paperwork flows into and out of Wurtbad.
And then, at long, long last, you have it. Just under a year before the previous Elector Count's death. Six cartloads over two days, each of them after dark, each of them exempt from tolls, tariffs and excise by the authority of the Castle, driven by a local carter by the name of - you squint - Jolan? Johan? You think it's Johan. Once more, you round up your Greatswords from where they had gotten off to. Some were down in the cells slowly and thoroughly working the truth out of the poor stablehand, some were following Herr Schultz around in the hope that he'll uncover more undead for them to cheerily bisect with their enormous swords, and the rest were hanging around the kitchens trying to wheedle snacks out of the head cook.
If anything, the Guild of Carters and Coachmen put up even less of a fight than the Watchmen on the Guardhouse. The moment you told them what you were there for, they gave you the address of a licensed freelance cart owner-operator by the name of Johan (you were right!). You head over there immediately before any of his coworkers can tip him off, and that his response to a pair of Greatswords knocking on his door was to climb out a window was a promising sign. Especially since you had three more waiting just around the corner from that window.
---
"I didn't know what was happening until it were too late," poor Johan blubbers to you from his position shackled to a bench. You hadn't even had to threaten him, you just sat there looking at him while it sank in for him what was going on, and he had started telling you the entire story. "I thort it was just another job from the castle. They'd bin movin all sortsa furniture and whatnot, redecoratin I think. So I go there with my cart and poor Delilah starts actin all sorts of funny, stampin' and whinnyin' and as I'm tryina calm her down the builders start pilin' all these books into the cart. None of 'em said a word, just pilin' it all in while I'm standin' there tryina calm my horse down. So I thort, okay, that was bad enough, but for what they was payin' I could put up with Delilah sulkin' for a few weeks, but then I take the instructions they gave me back to the guildhall and ask someun to read it for I, and they wanted it taken to a mound halfway to Julbach."
That got your attention. Every child raised in Stirland knew to never, ever, ever go near the burial mounds that dotted the landscape, and the books you read at College agreed - both those concerning magic and those that weren't approved parts of the curriculum. The tribal chieftains from before the coming of Sigmar did not rest soundly in their graves.
"I shoulda dumped the books right there and then, but then I think, the only thing worse than gettin inta business with the sorta folk that want things delivered to those sorta places is tryina get outta business with 'em. So I just did the job. Unloaded the books outside the mound, and when I got back with the next lot the last lot was gorn. Six loads, and Delilah still gets jumpy on dark nights, and until today I thanked Morr every night that that was the worst of it."
[VISITING THE WATCHMEN: Automatic success because Greatswords.]
[READING THE RECORDS: Req 50, Learning, 39+13=52. A long and hard-fought battle.]
[VISITING THE CARTER'S GUILD: Automatic success because Greatswords.]
[HUNTING JOHAN: Req 40, Intrigue, 68+12=80. Fish in a barrel.]
[INTERROGATING JOHAN: Req 40, Intrigue, 75+12=87. Singing like a bird.]
---
The other lead you were following was what Wilhelmina had said. Most of the nobles, she said, were inadvertently assisting her in her stopgap attempt to rebuild Stirland's tax code. So which weren't, then?
When you put the question to her, she guides you back to the room that had once been the archives, and now contained a battered desk half-covered with paper. She searches through it and finally produces a hand-written list, which she compares to a map of Sylvania hanging from a pair of nails driven into the wall.
"Alright, so not counting Abelhelm, there's thirteen centers of power in Stirland. Four each in Western, Central, and Southern Stirland, and Countess Gabriella of Nachthafen in Sylvania." She points to a town in Western Sylvania. "Flensburg, I haven't gotten anything from. But I expected that. The Lord Mayor of Flensburg told me to talk to the Countess of Flensburg, and the Countess of Flensburg told me to talk to the Lord Mayor. Weird, ugly little geopolitical argument. I doubt either of them are involved in anything but trying to screw over each other." Then she pointed to Sylvania. "I haven't received anything from Countess Gabriella. But that could be nothing, she's in the middle of Sylvania. Maybe she sent it and it never arrived, maybe she decided not to bother since tax collectors haven't penetrated that far into Sylvania in decades." She hesitated for a second, then pointed to Siegfriedhof. "Nothing from them, but the Knights of Morr don't pay secular taxes anyway." Then she pointed to Leicheburg in southern Sylvania, nestled against the Haunted Hills. "Count Petr is the last of them, and not only has he not sent me the documents but he hasn't been paying taxes either. It's almost entirely livestock and farming down then so at first I thought it might just be a bad year, but I've gotten the documents from Hornau, Sigmaringen and Schramleben, and they're all paying taxes as normal. And Sigmaringen is almost as poor as Leicheburg."
So, Leicheburg. The more you look at the map, the less you like it. Wurtbad to Worden, then down the Moot Road to Schramleben, then to Hornau and finally the Black Run up to Leicheburg... at least 500 miles. That'd be about two weeks on a typical horse, or since you were on official business, you could change horses at every post station and cut that in half. But that was travelling on a horse of flesh and blood, with the limitations of a living, breathing creature. Not on a horse of shadow that could gallop for a day and a night without rest until banished by the rising sun. On such a horse, you could make the ride in a day, except for one other limitation - the fact that sixteen hours of galloping would turn your body below the waist into pulp. Four days, maybe.
---
They say that the Moot is lovely in autumn. You'll have to take their word for it. While the blur of reds and yellows you saw was certainly vivid, the only memories you've gained of the Moot are stumbling into an inn as your horse disappears in a puff of Ulgu and pleading for a hot dinner, a cold bath, and a soft bed. Though to the Moot's credit, that was certainly delivered.
Two days later, you're dismissing your horse once more and bribing a thoroughly alarmed farmer on the road a couple of coins to carry you the rest of the way into the town, and you gratefully curl up on a pile of sheepskins in the cart he's driving. The city guards barely glance at a farmgirl napping in the back of a cart - you'd thought to change into something a little less attention-getting than your usual robes. A few more coins later, you've found a man willing to claim he'd ridden from Wurtbad to ask after the tax documents, and you trail after him as he heads into the castle where Count Petr von Stolpe is holding court.
The Count turns out to be a middle-aged man with thin features and an alarmingly aquiline nose, which he uses to great effect to look down at anyone who has the temerity to speak to him. You watch him as a dozen complaints and suits for adjudication are brought before him, and he's obviously paying as little attention as possible - an assistant leans forward after every speech to tell him what a suitable response would be.
But as your patsy is heard, he shows some animation, leaning forward with an eager smile as he's reminded that he was asked to send his tax records to Wurtbad. After your puppet trails off, he leans back in his chair, steepling his fingers with a look of satisfaction on his face. "If Wurtbad believes, as they so transparently do, that I have been remiss in my tax obligations," he says, smug grandeur radiating off him, "I invite them to compare what they have received to what the feudal contract says they are owed."
Well, that was about as subtle as a thrown brick. You make your way back out of the castle, exchanging a polite smile with the guards on the gate as you leave. Now you just have to get home again...
[RIDING A HORSE OF SHADOW: Roll, Martial, 85+7=92. Riding skill acquired.]
[BAITING THE COUNT: Req 60, Intrigue, 62+12=74. He's a bit of a shit.]
[ACTING UNNOTICED: Req 40, Intrigue, 44+12=56. Like you were never there.]
---
Though you spend a day or two recovering, you're able to leap back to work surprisingly quick after your thousand mile round trip. And you're glad you did, because in your absence the Greatswords had gone a little off the rails. You explain to them that, yes, he is technically an enemy of the Empire for obstructing the investigation of an Elector Count's councilwoman, but that doesn't mean he should be executed on the spot. You order them to deconstruct the gallows they had entertained themselves by building in the courtyard, though not before you lead the stablehand out to have a good, hard look at it.
The Greatswords may have been on the verge of taking away your lead, but they did do a passable job of softening him up. Unfortunately, he doesn't know much. All he really knows is that he was paid a handful of shillings to go to Wurtbad, present himself as a former employee of the castle, and if anyone asks about the previous occupants to tell them a set of specific lies about the spymaster.
Who told him? A man in a cloak in a bar, he says, and you fight back a grimace at the dead-end of an answer. But then you leap on one specific part - 'to go to Wurtbad', he said. Where was he living before?
"Julbach," is his answer.
[HOW MUCH DOES HE KNOW: Roll, 46. Snippets and tidbits.]
[HOW MUCH DOES HE SAY: Req 40, 37. Failure avoided only because you rolled so well riding your shadowhorse.]
---
Interspersed with your official duties, you found time to fulfil your obligation to whoever it was that was pulling your strings. Between Anton's visits to the closest of Stirland's nobles, you engage him in conversation about Stirland's political landscape to try to gauge his level of ability, and he's more than happy to cooperate. The results are... unexpected.
Anton Kiesinger II is quite possibly the least politically savvy person you have ever encountered.
You first assumed that his simplicity was a facade, a way to put people at ease while gaining their trust. But every indication is that Anton is exactly what he appears to be: open, honest, a bit dim, and entirely blind to the deeper meaning behind every word and action in high-level political discourse. And apparently that he is so non-threatening as a diplomat is why he's able to perform the job so well. He's not a threat as a politician, and because his father's lands are relatively small and out of the way, he's not a threat as a future noble.
In a world of wolves, he's a puppy. And like a puppy, now that you've shown him attention, he adores you. After you had found everything you needed to know, he continued to seek you out and ask how you've been eating and making sure that the Greatswords assigned to you are being properly respectful. Whether you like it or not, he's decided that you're his new little sister.
It was almost a shame that you went on to completely violate the trust he had in you by breaking into his quarters while he was off making friends on Van Hal's behalf. Then again, 'breaking in' might be too strong a wording. He didn't even lock his door. He even left a little note on his desk apologizing to the maids for spilling soup on his bed linen!
A search of the room revealed a trove of information in the form of a box full of correspondence, and Anton possesses that odd compulsive quirk of keeping a copy of every letter he sends. Most of it was between him and his father, and though Anton Senior is making the most of the opportunity of his son being on the council of the Elector Count, it seems his highest ambition is to encourage more overland trade to Wissenland so he can profit from the increase in tolls. Anton Junior apparently found out that Van Hal routinely used a Nuln rifle, and he was hoping that this would mean that Stirland's crossbowmen could be replaced or supplemented with handgunners in the near future.
You skim back through the thick bundles of letters, finding that most of them were between father and son and the rest polite missives thanking one noble or another for some social event or another. But as you're about to put the box away, you notice that it's deeper on the outside than on the inside, and it doesn't take you long to lever out the false bottom and find another bundle of letters entirely. These are between him and a person he addresses as 'Auntie Julia'. The letters to her are mostly filling her in on events in the family, though they frequently mention how much he misses her. The letters back are much less prosaic, filled with descriptions of a military campaign against Beastmen in some forested corner of the Empire - and from her descriptions of events, Auntie Julia appears to be a Jade Wizard.
The most recent letter is dated two years ago.
You replace everything where you found it and leave the room.
The report you prepare describes a diplomat who is skilled at building and maintaining relations with his fellow nobles, though thoroughly unsuited to the darker sides of politics. It lists his largest influence as his father, whose motives appear entirely benign, and notes friendly relations with every noble of note in Western Stirland and most of them in Central Stirland, too. It also describes his talent at making friends with those he works with.
No mention is made in the report of Auntie Julia.
Exactly three months after you received your orders, a Roadwarden arrives in the castle courtyard and mentions to a guard that you might have a letter for him. When you bring it down to him, you have a thousand ideas in your head for different ways you could try to winkle information out of him, but in the end you decide all of them are too obvious. Better not to risk it... this time.
[INNOCENT CHAT: Req 60, Diplomacy, 96+9=105. You manage to get a solid read on Anton, and won him over in the process.]
[INNOCENT B&E: Req 40, Intrigue, 67+12=79. In and out unseen.]
[ANYTHING ELSE?: Req 60, Intrigue, 73+12=85. Hidden compartment found.]
[ROADWARDEN: Req 50, Diplomacy, 34+9=41. Better not to risk it.]
---
For the past few months, your spare moments have been spent thinking about finally moving out of the terrible guest room and into your very own home. But you were thoroughly torn on what form that home would take. One half of you wanted to claim a tower along the walls of Wurtbad. You are a wizard, after all, and a wizard wears a tower like a crab wears a shell. But on the other hand, you weren't just any wizard - you were a Grey Wizard, masters of shadow and secrets, so the other half of you wanted a secret lair, secreted somewhere in Wurtbad's slums or catacombs. You went back and forth, making up and then changing your mind, until finally you decide to do the only sensible thing: you take a coin you had embezzled from your operational funds, cross your fingers, and flip it into the air.
[HEADS, A TOWER. TAILS, A DUNGEON. Result: Tails.]
[DOES THIS PLEASE RANALD?: Roll, 98. Ranald is amused.]
With your answer from on high, you start spending a great deal of time among the populace of Wurtbad, rebuilding old connections while scouting the darker corners of the town. The more you walk its streets, the more your memories of the town return, and you quickly find yourself at home in the maze of streets and alleys away from the main roads. Your slang is ten years out of date, but that just starts conversations about where you've been, and that gives you an opportunity to insult Reiklanders which is always popular. You chat easily to your new friends and let it be known you were looking for an out-of-the-way place to get some peace and quiet from the demands on your time, and would they know anywhere like that?
[HOW GOOD A HOME DO YOU FIND?: Roll, Diplomacy+Ranald's Blessing, 87+9+20=116. Well, then.]
You know, for all the cautionary tales you've read about why spirited young women shouldn't go wandering into dark tunnels, you tend to find yourself in them an awful lot.
It started with a harried innkeeper telling you that she had no use for one of the outbuildings and if you like, you could buy it off her for a handful of crowns and the promise that the Wurtbad Watch would fail to notice the still she'd set up in one of the other outbuildings. As you poked around in it, you thought for sure you wouldn't take it in a hundred years - though it was a sturdy stone construction, it was tiny and as filthy as a pigeon coop. Then you realized why, exactly, that comparison occurred to you, looking at row after row of recessions in the wall of the shack. It didn't make any sense for a pigeon coop to be here, at street level in a crowded alley where the sky overhead was barely visible. Then you looked down at the floor.
Half an hour of pushing what could have been centuries of accumulated junk out of the way (the innkeeper seemed to have forgotten about you, and from the waves of rowdy noise coming from the interior, you couldn't blame her), you finally found what you suspected you would find - a trapdoor made of wood so ancient it was nearly fossilized. It took you another ten minutes to lever it open with the help of a bent metal bar you had found in the refuse. And when you descended down the ladder, what you found took your breath away.
The explanation, you pieced together later, was fairly simple. Every few years, the River Stir would flood, depositing another layer of silt onto the streets of Wurtbad. In a single lifetime, this meant stepping up onto a street that used to be level with your door. But over the centuries that Wurtbad had served as capital of Stirland, ground floors had become basements and attics had become ground floors, and people had put an extra floor on their houses and forgotten about the now sub-basement they had no use for. Over the years, Wurtbad had risen, its walls protecting it from the erosion that washed back the flood-deposited silt everywhere else.
Underneath Wurtbad, entire buildings lay forgotten.
Entire underground ecosystems fled at your approach, the dim light of the lantern blazing like a supernova to creatures whose ancestors had forgotten the sun a hundred generations prior. Ornate windows showed a view of soil and rock. Rusted scraps of metal protruding from the wall mark where fine tapestries once hung. In places, many places, the walls had given way and soil had poured in, drowning entire wings. And only the vaguest hint of differing colours showed where frescoes once covered entire walls. But like a lingering ghost, the grandeur of this forgotten palace was still visible.
You announce to the innkeeper that you would be taking the outbuilding, thank you very much.
---
Later, as you make the entrance room of your underground home liveable and barricade the doorway into the rest of the palace (just in case), it occurs to you that there's barely anything you can do to set up more of a shrine to Ranald. It's a shack that's a palace, bought from the unknowing by sanctioning their theft of tax money. In the end, all you can really do is draw some crosses on the wall and put out milk for the cats that were already lounging around the place. And you could swear that the look the black one was giving you was especially smug, even for a cat.
SKILL ACQUIRED: Riding (Basic)
HOME ACQUIRED: Buried Palace
BLESSING ACQUIRED: Ranald's Gift (choose one action per turn; +20 bonus will apply where most needed during that action)
DISCRETIONARY GOLD EMBEZZLED: 100
DISCRETIONARY GOLD SPENT: 20 (Leicheburg investigation)
PERSONAL GOLD SPENT: 30 ('shack' purchased)
KNOWLEDGE ACQUIRED: Anton (see character sheet)
TITHE PAID: 5
STUDENT LOANS PAID: 35
---
It has been a year since you arrived back in Stirland, but it feels like much longer. You've gone from a student whose biggest problem was that the people smuggling novels into the College never manage to get all three parts of a trilogy, to being neck-deep in conspiracies that threaten the social fabric of an entire province. Van Hal has finally been convinced to stop wearing his Witch Hunter's hat everywhere he goes, but it'll be a longer battle to get him out of his armour. You're not sure whether it's Anton or Wilhelmina who are worrying about that, but you don't envy them the task.
Professor de Verezzo has reappeared from his tour of the towns of Stirland, and explains in his normal drone that he's making headway on filling up the ranks of Stirland, but he's taken on most of the 'low-hanging fruit' of Stirland, and if the task is to be completed by this time next year an additional signing bonus will be required to tempt people into joining.
MILITARY OF STIRLAND: Poor. 30,000 of 40,000 positions filled.
Anton, too, is back, describing a fairly successful tour of Western and Central Stirland. Most of the nobles are hoping that Van Hal represents stability over so many years of rapidly changing Elector Counts, and as long as he doesn't do anything to go against that impression they'll be happy to fulfil their obligations to him.
NOBLE RELATIONS: Very Good. Van Hal benefits from the contrast with his predecessors.
Wilhelmina has been continuing to manage the budget as best she can when all she can do is wait for taxes to be sent in and hope that they're the right amount. She's been focusing on Wurtbad in particular, using the Mayor's copies of the tax laws to make sure everyone in the city was paying what they were supposed to.
WEALTH OF STIRLAND: Poor; Wilhelmina managed to prevent it from falling this turn.
INCOME OF STIRLAND: Poor; will fall to Terrible if the nobles realize that they could just not pay taxes and get away with it.
Brother Kasmir has resanctified the castle's chapel to Sigmar, which had been thoroughly neglected over the decades. He also takes great pleasure in describing the adventures he and Van Hal got up to in penetrating and scourging walled-up chambers found in Schulz's charting of the castle. It seems that unlike any proper castle where the secret passages lead to hidden caches of treasures and artwork and the private hideaways of attractive nobles, Eagle Castle's passages contain only horrible creatures that hunger for the flesh of the living.
EAGLE CASTLE: Chapel built
Herr Schultz's mapping of the castle went as well as could be expected, as several more hidden chambers were found and cleared. He reports that he wasn't able to penetrate below the first floor of the dungeon - one stairway down was caved in and a second was flooded.
EAGLE CASTLE: Everything from B1 and above mapped, excluding the East Wing; no hidden chambers remain (?)
Finally, heads turn to you.
[] Write in your report
Of course, you have learned some things that are rather sensitive, especially about your fellow councillors. Maybe you should give a second report to Van Hal in private.
[] Write in a one-on-one report (optional)
Suggest possible orders for the next turn (new ones up top, old ones below):
[] A dozen centuries of tax ledgers and records don't just vanish. And I may have found them. Let's go raid a tomb.
[] Count Petr is definitely tied up in the ledger theft. I can go get him for you, and bring him back in chains.
[] The disappearance of your predecessor is very concerning, especially since he's actively trying to sabotage the hunt for him. He must be found, and I've got a lead: Julbach.
[] If I had proper facilities, I could do better work. Please fund me renovating my secret underground palace.
[] The Stirlandian League is a cancer eating at Stirland's economy, and it must be destroyed.
[] The Stirlandian League is a gold mine of information, and it must be yours.
[] There is a risk of enemy agents infiltrating the castle staff - they must be watched.
[] The castle staff can be a great source of information and first line of defence - they should report to you.
[] Seriously what is up with the East Wing.
[] I need a proper information network. Please fund me wandering around making friends.
[] Other (write in)
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STIRLANDIAN GEOPOLITICS
Red: Controlled by the Elector Count
Dark Blue: County
Light Blue: Barony
Yellow: Chartered Free Town
Green: Knightly Order
Sickly Brown: Here There Be Monsters
Red X's mark the capital of the region
WESTERN STIRLAND
Wurtbad (Capital) - Elector Count Abelhelm Van Hal
Wordern (County) - controlled by the Elector Count
Munzhausen (Barony) - controlled by the Elector Count
Purgg (Barony) - controlled by the Elector Count
Wolfsbach - Countess Petra Harden
Flensburg (Free City) - Lord Mayor Emil von Flensburg
Franzen - Count Artur von Treitschke
Blutdorf - Baron Anton Kiesinger
CENTRAL STIRLAND
Halstedt - Count Erich von Halstedt
Steinbachthal - Count Tristan Haupt
Marburg - Baron Immanuel Krebs
Siegfriedhof - Order of the Raven Knights ('Knights of Morr')
Gablitz - contested
Thalheim - contested
SOUTHERN STIRLAND
Hornau - Count Robert Toppenheimer
Sigmaringen - Countess Alexandra von Munsterburg
Leicheberg - Count Maksim von Stolpe
Schramleben - Grand Mayor Victor van Grissenwald
Texing (Barony) - controlled by the Elector Count
EASTERN STIRLAND
Nachthafen + Pfaffbach - Currently Unheld
Drakenhof (County) - controlled by the Elector Count
Waldenhof (County) - 'controlled by the Elector Count'
Tempelhof (County) - 'controlled by the Elector Count'
Red: Controlled by the Elector Count
Dark Blue: County
Light Blue: Barony
Yellow: Chartered Free Town
Green: Knightly Order
Sickly Brown: Here There Be Monsters
Red X's mark the capital of the region
WESTERN STIRLAND
Wurtbad (Capital) - Elector Count Abelhelm Van Hal
Wordern (County) - controlled by the Elector Count
Munzhausen (Barony) - controlled by the Elector Count
Purgg (Barony) - controlled by the Elector Count
Wolfsbach - Countess Petra Harden
Flensburg (Free City) - Lord Mayor Emil von Flensburg
Franzen - Count Artur von Treitschke
Blutdorf - Baron Anton Kiesinger
CENTRAL STIRLAND
Halstedt - Count Erich von Halstedt
Steinbachthal - Count Tristan Haupt
Marburg - Baron Immanuel Krebs
Siegfriedhof - Order of the Raven Knights ('Knights of Morr')
Gablitz - contested
Thalheim - contested
SOUTHERN STIRLAND
Hornau - Count Robert Toppenheimer
Sigmaringen - Countess Alexandra von Munsterburg
Leicheberg - Count Maksim von Stolpe
Schramleben - Grand Mayor Victor van Grissenwald
Texing (Barony) - controlled by the Elector Count
EASTERN STIRLAND
Nachthafen + Pfaffbach - Currently Unheld
Drakenhof (County) - controlled by the Elector Count
Waldenhof (County) - 'controlled by the Elector Count'
Tempelhof (County) - 'controlled by the Elector Count'
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- Location
- Norway
This is going well.
Now, the Count can (normally) only take one 'Intrigue action' a turn and I'm fairly confident he'll take Find Tax Ledgers if we present that, so offering possible options this turn should mostly be a matter of being consistent in our presentation of secondary options.
Let's think about that report a bit. We did well; we can give a great public report. Privately, I'm in favor of disclosure. Be brave, be willing to surrender control to the Count!
Now, the Count can (normally) only take one 'Intrigue action' a turn and I'm fairly confident he'll take Find Tax Ledgers if we present that, so offering possible options this turn should mostly be a matter of being consistent in our presentation of secondary options.
Let's think about that report a bit. We did well; we can give a great public report. Privately, I'm in favor of disclosure. Be brave, be willing to surrender control to the Count!
Alectai
Speaks Words of Wisdom... On occasion
[X] Report: This deal's getting worse all the time!
-[X] "The investigations have been going about as well as can be expected--hardly anybody seems to know what's going on and those who do aren't talking. The good news though is that they still have to move stuff from one place to another overland, and people tend to notice big carts of stuff being moved from place to place. Managed to get a hold of their patsy, and he was rather better than average at remembering what was going on--a bunch of extremely efficient, mysterious people that scare animals with their presence alone--or at least horses, not sure if that's going to be important or not. Either way, it was definitely an enormous pile of books coming from the castle, which means it's almost certainly our missing tax codes. What's deeply unfortunate is that they decided to have him bring them to a burial mound halfway to Julbach, and that's not exactly a place where sane people hide stuff, so we're probably going to want to load for surprises when we go down there and kick in the door--and probably make sure we've got some priests on hand to boot, you don't take chances with these places.
Speaking of Julbach, our little misinformant that we brought in? That's where he was from, and that's where he was told to come here and try to confuse us. Seems solid enough for closer inspection.
In other news, I took the liberty of discreetly poking Count von Stolpe to see if he'd let something slip--being the one non-paying high nobleman who doesn't have an excuse for it. The good news is that he's an arrogant and cocky fellow who's all too easily led to brag, and all but admitted that he's aware that we don't have our copies of the tax records. His exact words were 'If Wurtbad believes, as they so transparently do, that I have been remiss in my tax obligations, I invite them to compare what they have received to what the feudal contract says they are owed.' In a really smug and self satisfied way. Might be a patsy, might be a collaborator--either way, it'd be poetic justice to actually whip out the proper tax codes and nail him to the wall with them.
That about sums it up."
-[X] "The investigations have been going about as well as can be expected--hardly anybody seems to know what's going on and those who do aren't talking. The good news though is that they still have to move stuff from one place to another overland, and people tend to notice big carts of stuff being moved from place to place. Managed to get a hold of their patsy, and he was rather better than average at remembering what was going on--a bunch of extremely efficient, mysterious people that scare animals with their presence alone--or at least horses, not sure if that's going to be important or not. Either way, it was definitely an enormous pile of books coming from the castle, which means it's almost certainly our missing tax codes. What's deeply unfortunate is that they decided to have him bring them to a burial mound halfway to Julbach, and that's not exactly a place where sane people hide stuff, so we're probably going to want to load for surprises when we go down there and kick in the door--and probably make sure we've got some priests on hand to boot, you don't take chances with these places.
Speaking of Julbach, our little misinformant that we brought in? That's where he was from, and that's where he was told to come here and try to confuse us. Seems solid enough for closer inspection.
In other news, I took the liberty of discreetly poking Count von Stolpe to see if he'd let something slip--being the one non-paying high nobleman who doesn't have an excuse for it. The good news is that he's an arrogant and cocky fellow who's all too easily led to brag, and all but admitted that he's aware that we don't have our copies of the tax records. His exact words were 'If Wurtbad believes, as they so transparently do, that I have been remiss in my tax obligations, I invite them to compare what they have received to what the feudal contract says they are owed.' In a really smug and self satisfied way. Might be a patsy, might be a collaborator--either way, it'd be poetic justice to actually whip out the proper tax codes and nail him to the wall with them.
That about sums it up."