I think it was implied that the miscast was already curdling Shysh into Dhar yeah. The most clear cut example of Mathilde making Dhar was the exposure of AV to Morslieb and her experiments into Tongs. Both of them had a reasonable expectation of making Dhar and that is what they made.
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.
I think it was implied that the miscast was already curdling Shysh into Dhar yeah. The most clear cut example of Mathilde making Dhar was the exposure of AV to Morslieb and her experiments into Tongs. Both of them had a reasonable expectation of making Dhar and that is what they made.
- Location
- Mid-Atlantic
To be fair, Mathilde's watching of her brothers is pretty theoretical too.
Romv
A Memory of TREES
She's only watching one brother.
My first thought was "Sure, she probably did some babysitting when she was little, but how is that relevant, and how would you know she only had one brother that applied to".
Then I realized you meant the Greys. But I'm not sure which. Eike is maybe a little sister, or niece. Regimand is dad. Algard (who did once watch her with the daemon think and all) is the family patriarch, and not really a brother. The Bursar is the Scary Aunt. Melkoth is the Possibly-Only-Pretend-Senile Uncle. What's his face is the Sketchy Uncle. And finally there's Frail-Uncle-We-Don't Know, and Aunt-We-Don't-Know-Who-Might-Be-Into-Frail-Uncle.
Oh, and Likes-Sigmar-Too-Much. I guess he's a cousin? No one who likes Sigmar too much could be a Brother*.
*The other alternative is wanting to call him daddy.
Can't be Ranald at least, we got warned off of watching him too closely.
Johann's kind of a battle brother?
Last edited:
You know if this meeting taught us anything it is how good the Lahmian disguise is for us. I mean they are broadly human looking Ulgu wielding intrigue specialists who are loathed by all civilized nations, it is not like they can clear their name. And then it struck me... this applies to all Grey Wizards. I wonder how many Lahmian assassinations over the years weren't them at all?
Well, male Greys would have slightly harder times, but yes. Though with how convoluted the shadow games get, neither side is probably entirely certain. The Lahmians occasionally think (and maybe do) have a grip on a Grey, and might task them with an assassination. Who might be actually a double agent, assassinating someone the Greys want dead anyway. And both sides might try to feed false information to the other to get them to act.
Romv
A Memory of TREES
Actually, I was just being an ass. "Fratris" is singular.
I imagine one of the first thing you learn in Grey College intrigue classes (Abstracted in the basic infiltrator skill maybe) is how to walk and generally act like the opposite gender and then they move on to more complex stuff
- Location
- alphen aan den rijn
i do not remember us having much contact with the grey collage/order that much.
some of the leadership sure. but other then that i do not remember us doing that much?
unless a lot of its happening in the BG that we do not see or is not spoken about.
some of the leadership sure. but other then that i do not remember us doing that much?
unless a lot of its happening in the BG that we do not see or is not spoken about.
Parabola
Divided Loyalties Librarian
- Location
- The Destination of Fate
- Pronouns
- She/Her
I don't doubt Algard has people watching Mathilde's actions, at least indirectly (it'd be hard to track her actions directly). We straight-up told him we have the attention of a Greater Daemon, you don't just shrug that off. If anything, I find the idea comforting. I can't find the exact quote, but I swear one of the Discworld books has Vimes go "We all keep an eye on each other."
But it's true that we don't exactly keep constant contact with the rest of the Order. Many times we've interacted and worked together, taught them and been taught from them, sure, but not so much actual contact, somehow.
But it's true that we don't exactly keep constant contact with the rest of the Order. Many times we've interacted and worked together, taught them and been taught from them, sure, but not so much actual contact, somehow.
- Location
- New Brunswick, NJ
- Pronouns
- He/Him/His
We've spent our entire Magisterial career out of the Empire. If we had looked like we were resting on our laurels and coasting, they might have given us marching orders, but as it was we did a good enough job on our graduation to decide our own next steps, and then we have been doing important prosocial things while also turning out a ton of high-quality research. The correct way to manage someone who is doing everything right by themselves is to not do so, and consequently we haven't really needed a lot of oversight; then, of course, we joined the leadership, and so now we move in those circles.
Back in the very first turn of the quest, we wrote to the Greys for intel. We had spent a character creation point on contacts within the college. However, we rolled like shit when it came to asking our peers, rolled amazingly well when it came to asking our Master, and rolled OK when asking the College's bureaucracy. So this became reflected in the truth of Mathilde's relationship with the Greys: she had a very close relationship with her Master, but didn't really make friends among wizards at her own level. As such, there wasn't really a need for a cast of characters among other Greys until we graduated to Magister, were identified as a rising star, and started crossing paths with the movers and shakers.
A reasonable expectation is very different from certain knowledge. The whole reason she carried out those experiments was a hope/potential that it might do something other than create dhar, so she could do them under the "I wasn't sure what would happen and needed to find out" clause. That's why it was "okay" (under the internal guideline in Mathilde's head) to do the tongs experiment once when she hoped she could make it work, and then it became not okay to repeat the experiment once she found out it wouldn't work.
Probably depends on the person. There are some people who will not pass without magic. There are some people who don't need anything to pass. And some people can be trained to do it, but frankly it seems like something for the advanced classes, because the basics are already broad and time consuming enough.
The Greys don't have enough people to waste them on watching their own without very good reason. Doubly so with an LM, who are assumed to be trustworthy and also really hard to watch on account of being better than nearly all possible watchers. Mathilde doubly so because she moves a lot, very fast, and is mostly in places where potential watchers would stand out a lot.
Honestly, even then it took a while. We first met Algard (and Dragomas) after the Black College, a bunch of high level Greys for the building of the Tower, and then for the Waagh and Peace lecture. We dumped stuff on Algard a few times, and hired Melkoth for tutoring, but we only really got to know the leadership once we got the LM rank and started doing College Politics for the Waystone Project.
- Location
- New Brunswick, NJ
- Pronouns
- He/Him/His
Au contraire; we met Algard when we graduated to Magister (where it was clear he already knew who we were), and then got his personal attention for spell-learning before we headed off to hang out with Belegar. And the spell he taught us became one of our key assets in the Reclamation, so, y'know, that worked out well.
And then we met our second Wizard Lord right after the Reclamation:
So right after we hit Magister, we attracted attention from those above us within the College and crossing paths with them. I agree that this didn't really become a regular thing until after we soloed like sixty necromancers and a centuries-old Necrarch in an evening, though; that's definitely the watershed moment where Algard went from "remote authority figure of mystery" to "the guy we drop in on for headpats and ask for help building doom lasers." And then, of course, we got our promotion pre-Dum and now the Collegiate leadership are our peers.
- Location
- Chicago
- Pronouns
- She/They
Sure, but we are paying for the hochlander to run our merchant spy ring, and we use the EIC as support almost everywhere we go- it really wouldn't be that hard for him to write reports on what Mathilde has been up to just by tracking the EIC side of our interactions. And since he's already there and already doing spy things for the grey college...
dinomannitro6
all your gender is belong to us
- Location
- The Land Where The Sunflowers Bloom
While her fellow Greys don't watch her that much, she does work closely with a Light LM, which counts for something.
Mopman43
Mountain-Hermit of Nitpeak
- Location
- Vermont
Yes, the best guard against Mathilde's hypothetical corruption is the ever-reliable Egrimm van Horstmann!
The interactions that come out to a cumulative 2 weeks every six months? I'm sure an account of the new charcoal selling route is of some interest, but you are not going to deduce many of Mathilde's other actions from it. I mean for one her major source of mobility, the Gyrocopter has nothing to do with the EIC and it cannot meaningfully be tracked without spies the length and breadth of the Old World. Say we go to KaK or Kislev city, where it the EIC going to hear about that?
I had forgotten those initial two interaction with Algard, but they were also not particularly personal. Of course he appears to know who she is, no Grey would let it be otherwise, and there aren't that many graduating at any given time. Everyone gets at least the one meeting, and I wouldn't be surprised if every graduate doesn't also get him (or some other LM if need be) to pop in and offer some advice. That's good management, and the Greys depend on internal bonds for loyalty.
The bursar is more personal, so fair enough on that.
It's fair enough that the EIC would have at least some idea where she's going, and the Hochlander probably keeps it in mind. But it's also not information that's particularly useful for making sure she doesn't do evil. Reports on the EIC/information from the EIC are definitely going to the Greys, though I'm not sure how regularly and how officially. They seem very compartmentalised, with each Grey building their own network. But I do doubt he's sending reports on Mathilde, because A) it's not particularly useful to discover nefarious things and B) it represent a breach of OpSec, which could endanger her operations and also herself.
Trustworthy fellow that van Horstmann, a true patriot and loyal citizen of the Empire.
Parabola
Divided Loyalties Librarian
- Location
- The Destination of Fate
- Pronouns
- She/Her
I did say indirectly. The Colleges know that Mathilde runs a trade company, manages a library, has an Apprentice, and also that she spends enough time on the Waystone Project that the other Colleges haven't presented any complaints to them. How much time she has for personal actions is unknown but still pretty limited.
That's enough to think "well she interacts with so many other people that it's not worth actually directly observing her'.
- Location
- Washington
Don't think I ever actually voted so...
[X] Plan: Nighttime Heart Attack
[X] Plan: Nighttime Heart Attack