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Warhammer Fantasy: Divided Loyalties - an Advisor's Quest

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SightUnseen said:
I hadn't realized Mathilde was so unprincipled. I still don't think she is.
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It's not "unprincipled" for the hypercompetent extremely-in-demand Wizard Lord to want to be paid for taking on an extremely high-risk request that doesn't directly benefit her or any of the groups she's beholden to. That's an extraordinary claim to make.

Boris is getting a kingdom out of this and saving his people, he's not coming to us cap-in-hand for charity.
 
Deathbybunnies said:
It's not "unprincipled" for the hypercompetent extremely-in-demand Wizard Lord to want to be paid for taking on an extremely high-risk request that doesn't directly benefit her or any of the groups she's beholden to. That's an extraordinary claim to make.

Boris is getting a kingdom out of this and saving his people, he's not coming to us cap-in-hand for charity.
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Frankly it feel kind of unprincipled to not take this chance to improve the world in some major aspect by not naming a price
 
Woltaire said:
Frankly it feel kind of unprincipled to not take this chance to improve the world in some major aspect by not naming a price
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It would be unprincipled not to take the chance to improve the world. Nothing about naming the price he's explicitly asked us to name prevents us from doing that.

Imagine if Boris thought the same way you do. "Hey, can you use your extremely specialised skills to take on a huge risk for the benefit of me and my people? Don't ask for anything in return though, that'd be greedy." We'd have threadgoers voting to assassinate him.

If taking payment was some shocking thing, Boris wouldn't be asking us right now what our price is.

Somic said:
To be fair, the Empire is right behind Kislev in the Everchosen's path, and Mathilde more than has the foresight to take that into account...
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Yeah, that's why I said "directly."
 
I think a distinction needs to be made here about the kind of things we could ask. Our common purpose, the reason Boris asked us to kill the father he loves and the reason Mathilde was even inclined to accept is in order to stop Chaos. Any request that makes Boris less able to stop Chaos is indeed immoral so if we were to ask him to take part in the dwarf campaigns for the Silver Road, but I do not think all the things we could ask him would make him less able to do his job.
 
Clearly the only ethical option is to ask Boris for his father's corpse; to be used in entirely wholesome matters.

And by wholesome matters I mean that some of his matter will remain whole.
 
Omegahugger said:
Clearly the only ethical option is to ask Boris for his father's corpse; to be used in entirely wholesome matters.

And by wholesome matters I mean that some of his matter will remain whole.
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Ngl, in all the arguing and sidetracking and arguing about sidetracks, this has got to be consistently my favorite part of the thread. Just pure, wholesome joking yearning for that Dhar :D
 
Deathbybunnies said:
It would be unprincipled not to take the chance to improve the world. Nothing about naming the price he's explicitly asked us to name prevents us from doing that.

Imagine if Boris thought the same way you do. "Hey, can you use your extremely specialised skills to take on a huge risk for the benefit of me and my people? Don't ask for anything in return though, that'd be greedy." We'd have threadgoers voting to assassinate him.

If taking payment was some shocking thing, Boris wouldn't be asking us right now what our price is.
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yah I am agreeing with you tbc that we should name a price cause we should take a chance to improve the world hence why it would be unprincipled to not name a price
 
Prime 2.0 said:
For the good of the world we should get all of Kislev's books. It would probably be unprincipled somehow if we didn't :V
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I mean, unironically yeah. If we copy those books and enter into an agreement where Kislev's allowed to copy them again at a later date, then the next time an Everchosen marches south and destroys a city, they won't have lost them.

Woltaire said:
yah I am agreeing with you tbc that we should name a price cause we should take a chance to improve the world hence why it would be unprincipled to not name a price
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Ah, I misunderstood you; my apologies.
 
DragonParadox said:
If any of those books get destroyed when we could have saved them that is... entirely true. If one's principle is the preservation of knowledge and culture at least
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Verena: "Ranald is a thief and a liar, skulking in the shadows. He is entirely untrustworthy."
Verena: "As such, it is hard to believe that one of the greatest living contributors to my cause is a Ranaldite."
 
Jyn Ryvia said:
to add on this, We will be killing his dad.

on his request, yes, but he is obviously not happy about it, this will probably close any door on being good friends with him. colleagues in saving the world? yes, but not friends.

I would not expect any fuzzly feelings and headpats from him for this. so if we don't ask for anything, we aren't getting anything.
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This is actually exactly why I think we should avoid the appearance of being a mercenary on this subject. Which are you more likely to forgive and be able to work with, someone who shares your ideals and helps to kill your father because of those ideals, or someone who kills your father in exchange for a specific reward?

That second one seems a lot more likely to provoke resentment and unpleasantness.

Deathbybunnies said:
It would be unprincipled not to take the chance to improve the world. Nothing about naming the price he's explicitly asked us to name prevents us from doing that.

Imagine if Boris thought the same way you do. "Hey, can you use your extremely specialised skills to take on a huge risk for the benefit of me and my people? Don't ask for anything in return though, that'd be greedy." We'd have threadgoers voting to assassinate him.

If taking payment was some shocking thing, Boris wouldn't be asking us right now what our price is.
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It depends on the favor, really. If we needed someone to kill somebody we really cared about for reasons of principle, I suspect the thread would be much more likely to not hold a grudge against them if they agreed out of principle than if they clearly did so to get something out of us. This is a painful enough thing for him to ask without being charged for it.

We can, and perhaps should, suggest better ways to oppose Chaos together, but that should not be phrased or thought of as a price for our help, because we sure don't want him thinking of it that way.
 
DeadmanwalkingXI said:
Which are you more likely to forgive and be able to work with, someone who shares your ideals and helps to kill your father because of those ideals, or someone who kills your father in exchange for a specific reward?
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Entirely unironically, I would be more comfortable afterwards with someone who clearly and openly has their own interests, and is therefore to some extent predictable, than someone who regarded killing my father as such a no-big-deal that they refused my offer of payment.

In either case, and I cannot say that enough, if Mathilde didn't agree with Boris's reasons, she would've refused to help him outright, which is fully in her right. He has zero power over her. She holds the entirety of the decision in her own hands, and she's not at all desperate to extract anything from him.
 
Somic said:
Entirely unironically, I would be more comfortable afterwards with someone who clearly and openly has their own interests, and is therefore to some extent predictable, than someone who regarded killing my father as such a no-big-deal that they refused my offer of payment.
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That's why I suggested we do technically give him a response to his offer of payment, but one along the lines of "I want an ally against Chaos." there's no ambiguity there, no acting like it's not a big deal, the interests involved are clear, it's also just not actually a payment per se, but an expression of solidarity in terms of cause.
 
Clearly the multiple-galaxy-brain play is for him to take our hand in marriage as the price and thus become Tzarina or something. Mostly so we can use our open theft of a nation to flex on Heidi, rather than any reason sensible or sane.
 
I'm not comfortable declining a payment of some sort from Boris. It seems weird to say "I agree, your farther needs to die, and I'll do it for free."

I'm not suggesting we extort Boris, or try to enrich ourselves—the former is just rude, and the latter is against the vow of poverty—but I do think it would be better and more professional to conduct this as an exchange of services.

And Boris is going to be making sweeping changes to Kislev anyway—if we can put our thumb to the scales and get him to prioritise something we think is important, then I don't see how that is a bad thing at all.
 
Nerdasaurus Rex said:
I'm not comfortable declining a payment of some sort from Boris. It seems weird to say "I agree, your farther needs to die, and I'll do it for free."
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To be faiiiir, an argument can be made that it's more saying "I wouldn't have thought of interfering on my own, but since this is your homeland and your family, and you have identified a grave problem, exhausted your options on how to solve it, and reached out for help, I will trust you on this and act."

But overall, I agree with you.
 
I think payment should be either open trade with EIC, all Kislev books, or to stop killing magical men and allow them to join the imperial colleges.
 
Didn't we already dismiss the male magic users thing as not a good idea? True, the Ice Witches are more concerned about that prophecy than actually stopping all men from using magic, and they're perfectly happy turning a blind eye to anyone who goes across the border to learn from the Colleges. But officially sanctioning the whole thing when they're using "men are just not suited for magic" as an excuse to cover prophecy-avoiding policies is a little too far.
 
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