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Warhammer Fantasy: Divided Loyalties - an Advisor's Quest

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After a little bit of thinking, I think my answer would be:

[] Yes
-[] We must all stand together in the face of Chaos. The Empire will benefit from a stronger ally in the coming times.

Where the second line is both the justification for why we'll do this, and our price: basically, "I expect you to build stronger ties with the Empire when you come into power."

Boney said that the Empire and Kislev barely interact now. I want to change that. It'll fit with the pattern of Mathilde coming into a troubled situation, resolving it, and using the rewards and clout from that to create a lasting legacy of cooperation.
 
Hydroplatypus said:
Wow that update's something. My worry is that even if we manage this with no evidence, if shortly after Mathilde makes a visit to Kislev, she vanishes for a month, the Tzar dies, Mathilde's project gets a much more approving view from the leadership, relations with the empire improve, and Mathilde ends up being a notable ally of the new Tzar, a great many people will suspect that she was behind it. It doesn't matter that there's no proof, everyone of note in Kislev would be pointing their eyes upon her with suspicion. The grey order has a reputation after all, and in the aftermath of a Tzar, the only Grey wizard lord on record as having entered Kislev in quite a while will naturally fall under suspicion, even if we frame someone else. While there likely wouldn't be direct opposition with the new Tzar's backing, it's likely there would be consequences to this. Not to mention that our fellows in the waystone project might figure it out.
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The Grey Order has a reputation, but they also have a lot of deniability from how many of their number are diplomats. And very few people are aware of Mathilde's schedule. Even WEB-MAT wouldn't, overall, know what she's doing with all of her time. Even Adela, our pilot, wouldn't know if we just asked her to drop us off in Altdorf and we then hoofed it to Kislev via Shadowsteed, just to be safe that she didn't know.

Even Eike, whose job is currently to shadow us, might not know because coincidentally she is taking Enchanting classes this turn and it could easily overlap with this very action.

Nerdasaurus Rex said:
On the one hand, we kill someone who is widely regard as a weak leader and install one of the greatest leaders Kislev will ever have, who will institute a number of reforms to modernise and militarise Kislev to act as a bulwark against the 13th Everchosen.

On the other hand, civil war.

For me, this is a terrifyingly easy choice to make.
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"Terrifyingly easy" is the right descriptor. This right here is the exact reason the Grey Order holds itself to extremely high standards. It'd be very easy to start going on the path of 'this is all For The Greater Good'.

Wiggy said:
Does that spell scale with our magic? Because we're a *lot* stronger than we were when we did that.
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It does not, but it would still probably unbalance the average person who didn't see it coming. In the heat of combat, that's enough to shift the tide.
 
This feels to me like something we want to double check by investigation about whether Boris is a Khainite or Chaos corrupted. I mean, if he was, this would all go horribly badly once we help. So I say we 'say' yes, research the fuck outta Boris to be sure he's on the up and up, then assassinate someone (Boris if he's not on the up and up, otherwise daddy dearest).

Meanwhile, we charge Boris with becoming a bulwark against chaos and getting his country's shit in order re: a potential chaos invasion.

The big question I have is, quite frankly, we aren't good at the plausible explanation part of assassination. Like when we are done, it'll clearly look like someone murdered the king with our normal methods.
 
Abhorsen said:
The big question I have is, quite frankly, we aren't good at the plausible explanation part of assassination. Like when we are done, it'll clearly look like someone murdered the king with our normal methods.
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If that happens we just do it in a way that makes it easy to blame Chaos, the skaven, or vampires.

Boris is not exactly motivated to let them look deep enough to figure out it was a frame job.
 
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fictionfan said:
We should set our coin to deceiver and deny everything. In fact we even tell Boris that his father just happened to die before we got there. Just a little white lie to make him feel better.
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I want you to imagine an alternative world where we set the coin to Protector and huge swaths of people become aware that Mathilde totally DID murder the fuck out the Tsar to selflessly prevent a civil war and help protect the Old World from the coming Everchosen.

I wrote that as a joke but ... associating the Protector with a fake identity (which is something we have been told we CAN do) and then having some folk hero rise up to kill the Tsar who's not doing enough to prepare for the coming Chaos incursion is actually an interesting option to consider. And falls well within Ranalds mantle of "throw down bad rulers"
 
Killing Vlad discreetly should be simple enough, thinking on it. All we need is for him to be on a multi-day hunting expedition, away from the Ice Witches and Hags. Sneak into camp while he sleeps, stick him with a Matrix of False Death set to go off remotely, then withdraw and observe from stealth. Once he finds a suitably dangerous beast to hunt, we activate the Matrix to give the creature the opening it needs.
 
Boney said:
If waiting is not the solution, then acting must be." He pauses again, but this time, it is not for emphasis - it is genuine hesitation. "And your Order has a reputation for a certain kind of action."
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Oh no. No no no no no, please don't ask us that.

Boney said:
Will you agree to assassinate Tsar Vladimir Bokha?
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Well, shit.

Enthusiast#117 said:
We've managed to avoid this sort of thing up until now. Killing for political reasons is a step we've not had to take yet and I see no reason to start now.
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We didn't. When Mathilde was working for Stirland, there was a noble who refused to pay taxes. He mysteriously disappeared, and we asked his successor for his taxe ledger, and he was very happy to give it to us. Here it's not taxes that are at stakes, it's the very existence of the Old World's buffer against Choas.

Mopman43 said:
I'm not really at all concerned about the morality of it (Boris has outright said if we don't he'll do it another way that will hurt Kislev worse and we don't exactly have any way to stop him), or if we can manage it, mainly just worried about that chance of being caught.
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That's Thorek vs the Runesmith Guild all over again.

Ganurath said:
His death is inevitable, what we're voting on is whether or not we want to influence the details toward a better outcome than a Kislevite civil war.
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Technically we could assassinate Boris instead, that would likely prevent the war…
 
Ganurath said:
Killing Vlad discreetly should be simple enough, thinking on it. All we need is for him to be on a multi-day hunting expedition, away from the Ice Witches and Hags. Sneak into camp while he sleeps, stick him with a Matrix of False Death set to go off remotely, then withdraw and observe from stealth. Once he finds a suitably dangerous beast to hunt, we activate the Matrix to give the creature the opening it needs.
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Ooh. That's an angle I'd not considered. That gives an entire new dimension of flexibility to the execution of the plan in conjuction with potential other measures, though it does increase our exposure.
 
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Boney said:
You nod, and for a long, quiet moment the two of you stand in silence, watching the work below. You think of the Emperor, of Dragomas and Algard, of Abelhelm and Frederick. "Sacrifice," you say eventually. "All worthy rulers sacrifice their time and effort. Some their lives. A few, even their sanity. But the hardest test is when it is their honour they are called on to sacrifice."
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Boris has just asked us to kill the man who has loved him and raised him since he was a child. To commit regicide and kinslaying by proxy. We're looking at a man who is willing to both sacrifice both his honor and some of his sanity for the sake of his people. Hopefully he'll be a good Tzar. At the very least he'll be a strong one, a weak man wouldn't be able to go through with such an agonizing choice even if he knew intellectually that it would be better for the people of Kislev. He is willing to accept condemning one man to death and another man, himself, to a lifetime of guilt, shame, and grief to spare countless others from the suffering and death the Thirteenth Everchosen would wreak upon an unprepared Kislev.
 
Mathilde is actually really goddamn good at assassination. She's got the skills, spells, and traits to manage it pretty easily, and not leave a trace as she does. She's just, you know, never done it stealthily because she never needs to. Most people Mathilde murders can be obvious murders and not cause her issues. It doesn't mean she can't cover it up though. She just never bothered before.
Derpmind said:
hey
mathilde
become EVERCHOSEN and we'll give you access to "THE WEB"
it's got all the books ever
and a few other surprises
no downsides, we promise
what do you say? :V
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When the internet is invented, it had better be named the World-Wide-Web in homage to Mathilde.
K von Carstein said:
We didn't. When Mathilde was working for Stirland, there was a noble who refused to pay taxes. He mysteriously disappeared, and we asked his successor for his taxe ledger, and he was very happy to give it to us. Here it's not taxes that are at stakes, it's the very existence of the Old World's buffer against Choas.
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Said noble was conspiring with vampires IIRC. As far as we know Vladimir hasn't done any conspiring with monstrous powers.
 
K von Carstein said:
We didn't. When Mathilde was working for Stirland, there was a noble who refused to pay taxes. He mysteriously disappeared, and we asked his successor for his taxe ledger, and he was very happy to give it to us. Here it's not taxes that are at stakes, it's the very existence of the Old World's buffer against Choas.
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The difference being that Von Stolpe was definitely guilty of colluding with the enemies of mankind, and Vladimir just seems generally negligent rather than corrupt.

Like, I'll still probably vote Yes, but I do not expect Mathilde to feel good about it.
 
Nerdasaurus Rex said:
Vladimir might dislike magic, but I wouldn't be surprised if he had some magic items on his person, we should approach this assuming he has some form of arcane protection.
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Likely.

It's unlikely it can stand up to a grey lady magister attempting to kill him.

It may be enough to make subtle impossible, but in that case we go loud and do so in a way it can be blamed on an enemy of Kislev. Aka chaos.
 
Also I find it absolutely hilarious that Boris is asking Mathilde, a potential Everchosen candidate, to help him gain control of Kislev so he can prepare to fight said Everchosen. It's all sorts of convoluted. Tzeentch must be having a real good laugh.
 
The one problem with a hunting trip as the solution is that while we know Vladimir will go out and fight something eventually, we have no guarantee that he will conveniently do so in the time period this AP is slotted for.

Hopefully he helpfully goes out into the wilds soon.
 
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