Warhammer Fantasy: Divided Loyalties - an Advisor's Quest

[Somic]

The Tzar's protections are adequate enough, you suppose, against disgruntled peasants and amateur assassins, but you don't see anything that will present much of an obstacle to you, or towards a theoretical Lahmian. You suppose that if he'd considered the matter at all, he'd considered his non-interference with the Boyars' business to be adequate defence.

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Well, the assumption that he hasn't planned against magic is one we are making that carries a lot of risk, right?

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why do you not trust the assessment of the
*checks charsheet*

Intrigue: 19+2+2+2+1+1=27

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Unseen: Unless specifically on the lookout for magical infiltration, active defences are no obstacle to you. +2 Intrigue

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Assassination, Advanced: You know how to end a variety of forms of life with a single stab. +2 Intrigue
Infiltration, Advanced: It takes significant effort to make it even slightly difficult for you to enter somewhere. +3 Intrigue

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grey LM with skills specifically in assassination and infiltration in addition to unique magical advantages, such as

Substance of Shadow: A single person or item that falls within a shadow becomes invisible, silent, and insubstantial, though they can selective choose to physically affect the world. Lasts until the item or character is illuminated.

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a spell that literally makes us invisible and insubstantial with no duration limit, presumably enough awareness to pick a place unlikely to be randomly shined a light into, Mindhole for the absolute worst case scenario that we've been using for this purpose since the first few turns of the entire quest, and let's not mention that Mathilde, being able to move around the palace unimpeded, will notice if something adds significant risk to the plan. And, returning to the original point, if there are defenses against magic that Mathilde hasn't noticed, then the whole mission is hopeless because it'd take insane competence to set something like that up and fool her into thinking that nothing in there presents an obstacle to her.

That's not a fun grey wizard level of paranoia, that's a frustratingly baseless level.

 

[Abhorsen]

Why tho? It would be planting a bit of really obscure evidence that we are one of the rare people know is actually a thing. We can just stab the man while he's under our paralysis and be done with it.

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Straight stabbing would be failing. Literally not meeting requirements of implicating the Lahmians at all. Stabbing with shadow knife? The first conclusion I'd have in regards to that isn't that someone stabbed with a magic knife, but that they needed to take off the clothes to count ribs to make sure they had an instantly fatal stab. Or it might not even get noticed! if you see your liege bleeding/bleed out, it's quite reasonable you'd rip the clothes off to check quicker. And those rips could hide the lack of a knife hole too well.

Well, the assumption that he hasn't planned against magic is one we are making that carries a lot of risk, right?

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If it was an assumption about someone we didn't know, yes. But it isn't an assumption, it's a reasoned conclusion. He has no one with magic on his side. His defense against the Lahmians is not interfering. This is a fair conclusion to make based on the info we have. And if he has planned against magic, then guess what? None of the other plans work either, as they also 'assume' (come to the reasonable conclusion based on known evidence) that he has no protection vs magical infiltration.

See, you don't seem to have an actually grasp of risk assessment. You are putting any risk at an unacceptable level. In reality, there's a small, imperceptible level of risk to everything. There isn't a low risk plan seriously being considered by the voters. Both are so unlikely in risk that comparing the risk between them leads to stupid statements. It's like finding out that wearing a certain coat doubles your lifetime chance of spontaneously combusting. But it's from 1/billion to 2/billion.

 

[Fouredged Sword]

Straight stabbing would be failing. Literally not meeting requirements of implicating the Lahmians at all. Stabbing with shadow knife? The first conclusion I'd have in regards to that isn't that someone stabbed with a magic knife, but that they needed to take off the clothes to count ribs to make sure they had an instantly fatal stab. Or it might not even get noticed! if you see your liege bleeding/bleed out, it's quite reasonable you'd rip the clothes off to check quicker. And those rips could hide the lack of a knife hole too well.


If it was an assumption about someone we didn't know, yes. But it isn't an assumption, it's a reasoned conclusion. He has no one with magic on his side. His defense against the Lahmians is not interfering. This is a fair conclusion to make based on the info we have. And if he has planned against magic, then guess what? None of the other plans work either, as they also 'assume' (come to the reasonable conclusion based on known evidence) that he has no protection vs magical infiltration.

See, you don't seem to have an actually grasp of risk assessment. You are putting any risk at an unacceptable level. In reality, there's a small, imperceptible level of risk to everything. There isn't a low risk plan seriously being considered by the voters. Both are so unlikely in risk that comparing the risk between them leads to stupid statements. It's like finding out that wearing a certain coat doubles your lifetime chance of spontaneously combusting. But it's from 1/billion to 2/billion.

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Implicating the Lahmians is not a requirement. It is a stretch goal. Killing the Tzar and not getting caught is the only requirement.

 

[Sinsystems]

Implicating the Lahmians is not a requirement. It is a stretch goal. Killing the Tzar and not getting caught is the only requirement.

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And when has Mathilde ever only gone for the base requirement when on a job? During our time as a Lore master there was a running theme of going above and beyond with all out assignments.

It is in character to do the same thing here.

 

[Abhorsen]

Implicating the Lahmians is not a requirement. It is a stretch goal. Killing the Tzar and not getting caught is the only requirement.

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It's definitely not a stretch goal when we can get the original thing in our sleep. There's no real previous goal to hit, we hit it by existing. It's a failure. It doesn't give Boris a free hand to do his job. It was literally in the sentence right after 'don't get caught'.

As Sinsytem's points out, we aren't just clocking in and clocking out at our job, we excell.

 

[Wiggy]

Ice magic is very much a hammer. They assassinate people, but it tends to be "vanished into a sudden winter storm while hunting" rather than "knife in the dark that leaves no trace."

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I bet they could do a great job of the, 'ice projectile that melts and leaves the murder weapon a mystery' style of murder mystery at least.

 

[SightUnseen]

Well, the assumption that he hasn't planned against magic is one we are making that carries a lot of risk, right?

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How does one protect against magic when one hates magic and distrusts witches and mages?

Khorne. The answer is Khorne. It's not likely, but possible - and it is the sort of thing that Mathilde would keep an eye out for.

We don't need to assume either way - we have judged it less likely, but that's something we have to do. Making judgements, I mean.

 

[Fouredged Sword]

How does one protect against magic when one hates magic and distrusts witches and mages?

Khorne. The answer is Khorne. It's not likely, but possible - and it is the sort of thing that Mathilde would keep an eye out for.

We don't need to assume either way - we have judged it less likely, but that's something we have to do. Making judgements, I mean.

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Ether that or priests of various gods. Divine blessings of protection are a thing.

 

[Somic]

Khorne. The answer is Khorne. It's not likely, but possible - and it is the sort of thing that Mathilde would keep an eye out for.

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Consider: Avatar. (And Windsage, to some extent). She can sense divine interference, and she has very, very keen Magesight in general.

Which is to say, if this is the case somehow, she's the best woman to pick up on it.

 

[DragonParadox]

How does one protect against magic when one hates magic and distrusts witches and mages?

Khorne. The answer is Khorne. It's not likely, but possible - and it is the sort of thing that Mathilde would keep an eye out for.

We don't need to assume either way - we have judged it less likely, but that's something we have to do. Making judgements, I mean.

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Khorne would be ideal because then we could just point at all the mutated bits on the inside and be a public hero. Keep in mind that not every Khornite is going to fight like that one Kul Champion in the actual Wastes.

Ether that or priests of various gods. Divine blessings of protection are a thing.

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Divine blessings might help against actual vampires (depending on their weaknesses, vampires do occasionally cheat), but they would not do much to a human infiltrator. Also the one thing we know about Kislev's priests under Vlad is that they are kind of shit because all the good ones died at Praag and no reform was ever made, that is why the Cult of Ulric has been gaining so much ground. and finally Boris is in good with the priesthood, he'd probably know about any priestly protections.

 

[Somic]

Let's think about the possible outcomes of NHA from the perspective of the people who will find the body.

1) The knife spends all its energy inside the body.
Massive internal injuries, certainly shredded lungs - there will be blood in his mouth, and likely outward signs of internal bleeding. Spooky! "Some sort of magical curse" is a likely conclusion, and that the assassin had tried to imitate a natural death but failed is plausible.

2) The knife flies out upwards.
Pretty much exactly the scenario of NVwS. Those who voted for it should find this a good outcome. The Tzar was obviously assassinated, though the only hint towards the involvement of magic is his clothes and lack of any sound or struggle.

3) The knife flies out in an unusual direction for a stab.
The Tzar was assassinated, and the manner of it was strange! Given a lack of other obvious suspects, and the same absence of sound or struggle or torn clothes, this is also easy enough to pin on the Lahmians. Who else would be so spooky?

It's not that the plan is complicated or requires everything to go right to succeed. Quite the opposite: every outcome plays into our hand. (And the other possible outcomes are, in my opinion, better than NVwS because they introduce spookiness and make this easier to pin on magic vampires who were stirred into action, rather than hoping that very subtle clues will be enough to support Boris's plan).

 

[SightUnseen]

Consider: Avatar. (And Windsage, to some extent). She can sense divine interference, and she has very, very keen Magesight in general.

Which is to say, if this is the case somehow, she's the best woman to pick up on it.

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Absolutely agree.

It's the sort of thing that is absolutely Dame M. Weber's specialty.

 

[Fouredged Sword]

My only regret is that getting the Lahmians to actually assassinate the Tzar was not a viable option. We could have framed the Skaven for the manipulation too!

Regardless of outcome we should tell the new Tzar we managed to do that anyway. Gotta keep em guessing.

 

[Glau]

See, you don't seem to have an actually grasp of risk assessment. You are putting any risk at an unacceptable level.

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Bluntly, if you can't be bothered to read my arguments clearly enough to distinguish between 'this is a risk that should be acknowledged' and 'this is a risk that will blow everything up if taken', then you could at least not make your response a personal attack.

Y'all might look back at your responses to me and note that the ratio of 'yes, this is a risk, but a small one' to 'no and you are dumb for even thinking this might be a risk' is like 1 to 20.

It feels like trying to argue for gun safety- that you should always treat a gun as loaded and never point it at anything you aren't willing to shoot- and having the nigh-universal response be 'why should I care where it's pointed, I know I unloaded it last time when I put it away?'

 

[picklepikkl]

As part of our graduation to Magister twelve years ago, we stole a full-sized model skeleton from the University of Altdorf. While students were taking an exam in that room. Against posted guards on alert for specifically this thing, because the Grey College has been pranking them like this for nearly two hundred years. We had eight less Intrigue than we do now and did not have the Unseen trait, which, as a trait, gives us narrative effects above and beyond simple stat points. Like, I know we've mostly been leaning into the researcher thing and also taking a lot of straight-up fights for the last few years, but we are, in fact, a superspy.

So: I take it as read that, against mundane defenses, the chances of Mathilde being caught during any variation on Nighttime Visit are minuscule. Mathilde could stay in his room literally all day and I am confident she would not be noticed without some sort of exceptional individual on the other end of a dedicated search. If you believe that, as I do, the question just boils down to "which mode of assassination fits the bill better?" And the Nighttime Heart Attack does, from my perspective, because "fuck your internal organs" is the sort of thing that someone might do to simulate a natural death (such as an aortic aneurysm), but which leaves signs of being decidedly unnatural (aortic aneurysms might cause death by massive internal bleeding, but they generally don't slice up organs the way shadow knives will). And Somic did a good job of pointing out that even the non-ideal cases for Nighttime Heart Attack are totally fine outcomes for us.

(Fundamentally, though, I think this vote is mostly just a case of "people have different prior probabilities on things." Which, you know, is fine; if you start with one set of assumptions, you will get a different result from a different set of assumptions. Figuring out which set of assumptions conforms most closely to the fictive reality is what thread discussion is for.)

 

[Fouredged Sword]

We also need to do the new Tzar a big favor and hand him the same sort of "Here are all the flaws in your security" report we gave the Gold College after we stole their Grand Magister.

It wouldn't do to put in all this work for the Lahmians to assassinate him.

 

[Somic]

It feels like trying to argue for gun safety

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Guns are handled by millions of different people of varied skill, sanity, and in different circumstances. You're arguing that a gun nut who's been juggling guns easily twenty years ago, who's disassembled and reassembled and shot most guns in existence, and who has specific traits for being inhumanly good at aiming guns, has an appreciable chance of fumbling a shot that would barely give trouble to amateurs. While we're arguing that her ability to only aim where she needs to aim has been a damn near constant, a background fact through most of the quest ever since she got gud at it.

 

[Mystic Pentagram]

As part of our graduation to Magister twelve years ago, we stole a full-sized model skeleton from the University of Altdorf. While students were taking an exam in that room. Against posted guards on alert for specifically this thing, because the Grey College has been pranking them like this for nearly two hundred years. We had eight less Intrigue than we do now and did not have the Unseen trait, which, as a trait, gives us narrative effects above and beyond simple stat points. Like, I know we've mostly been leaning into the researcher thing and also taking a lot of straight-up fights for the last few years, but we are, in fact, a superspy.

So: I take it as read that, against mundane defenses, the chances of Mathilde being caught during any variation on Nighttime Visit are minuscule. Mathilde could stay in his room literally all day and I am confident she would not be noticed without some sort of exceptional individual on the other end of a dedicated search. If you believe that, as I do, the question just boils down to "which mode of assassination fits the bill better?" And the Nighttime Heart Attack does, from my perspective, because "fuck your internal organs" is the sort of thing that someone might do to simulate a natural death (such as an aortic aneurysm), but which leaves signs of being decidedly unnatural (aortic aneurysms might cause death by massive internal bleeding, but they generally don't slice up organs the way shadow knives will). And Somic did a good job of pointing out that even the non-ideal cases for Nighttime Heart Attack are totally fine outcomes for us.

(Fundamentally, though, I think this vote is mostly just a case of "people have different prior probabilities on things." Which, you know, is fine; if you start with one set of assumptions, you will get a different result from a different set of assumptions. Figuring out which set of assumptions conforms most closely to the fictive reality is what thread discussion is for.)

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Mathilde capacity to kill the Tsar was never in question (at least for me). My discussion was abaout wich aproach would gave us the most favorable aftermarth.

Wich one will make the transition of power to Boris smoother and paint a target on the back of the Vampires.

Wich is why i voted for the Heart Attack plan with Magic Dart. Because it feels like the best outcome.

 

[DragonParadox]

Bluntly, if you can't be bothered to read my arguments clearly enough to distinguish between 'this is a risk that should be acknowledged' and 'this is a risk that will blow everything up if taken', then you could at least not make your response a personal attack.

Y'all might look back at your responses to me and note that the ratio of 'yes, this is a risk, but a small one' to 'no and you are dumb for even thinking this might be a risk' is like 1 to 20.

It feels like trying to argue for gun safety- that you should always treat a gun as loaded and never point it at anything you aren't willing to shoot- and having the nigh-universal response be 'why should I care where it's pointed, I know I unloaded it last time when I put it away?'

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We know precisely five things about Vlad the Dad:

1. He is the Tsar of Kislev
2. He likes to hunt
3. He likes to fight
4. He does not rule much
5. He hates and distrusts magic users

Him having secret anti-magic protections not only presupposes a previously unknown skill at intrigue, fair enough on its own, but goes directly against point five since the only magic users in Kislev are female and the only neighboring nation he could have gotten magic users from is the Empire which we would know about by virtue of our position.

This I feel makes the danger of any kind of anti-magic protections very unlikely.

Now if we take it one step further, what is the cumulative that the protections are not only there but good enough to inconvenience the Learning 29, Windsight specialized infiltration expert with a full month to prepare? I think that some risks are indeed too small to acknowledge.

As a contrast here is an alternative theory of risk, the Tsar is in fact a vampire himself. This explains why he likes to hunt (vampiric instincts) why he is good at fighting (vampiric resilience) why he does not rule much (he does not want the boyars paying too much attention to his undead self) and why he keeps magic users are arms' length (he does not want to get caught). His performative hatred of Lahmians would in this instance be to throw others off the scent. So this theory too presupposes that he is much better at keeping secrets than he appears to, but it does not assume super secret magical traps that can somehow slip by Mathilde.

'Surprise Vampire Tzar' would be enough of a threat on its own so it is more likely than the above.

 

[BurnNote]

As part of our graduation to Magister twelve years ago, we stole a full-sized model skeleton from the University of Altdorf. While students were taking an exam in that room. Against posted guards on alert for specifically this thing, because the Grey College has been pranking them like this for nearly two hundred years. We had eight less Intrigue than we do now and did not have the Unseen trait, which, as a trait, gives us narrative effects above and beyond simple stat points. Like, I know we've mostly been leaning into the researcher thing and also taking a lot of straight-up fights for the last few years, but we are, in fact, a superspy.

So: I take it as read that, against mundane defenses, the chances of Mathilde being caught during any variation on Nighttime Visit are minuscule. Mathilde could stay in his room literally all day and I am confident she would not be noticed without some sort of exceptional individual on the other end of a dedicated search. If you believe that, as I do, the question just boils down to "which mode of assassination fits the bill better?" And the Nighttime Heart Attack does, from my perspective, because "fuck your internal organs" is the sort of thing that someone might do to simulate a natural death (such as an aortic aneurysm), but which leaves signs of being decidedly unnatural (aortic aneurysms might cause death by massive internal bleeding, but they generally don't slice up organs the way shadow knives will). And Somic did a good job of pointing out that even the non-ideal cases for Nighttime Heart Attack are totally fine outcomes for us.

(Fundamentally, though, I think this vote is mostly just a case of "people have different prior probabilities on things." Which, you know, is fine; if you start with one set of assumptions, you will get a different result from a different set of assumptions. Figuring out which set of assumptions conforms most closely to the fictive reality is what thread discussion is for.)

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During her graduation, she also tried her hand at emperor assassination, and it was rather concerning.

And that was not only before she got the Unseen trait, but also before she had advanced assassination (and I think before advanced infiltration as well).

 

[GrimTheMad]

Between Windsage and Avatar, about the only magical defense Mathilde wouldn't be able to sense right off is Dwarven runes, which are explicitly invisible to her.

Or, at least, their function is- she could see the runes themselves.

Somehow I doubt he has those, however.

We also need to do the new Tzar a big favor and hand him the same sort of "Here are all the flaws in your security" report we gave the Gold College after we stole their Grand Magister.

It wouldn't do to put in all this work for the Lahmians to assassinate him.

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I assume he knows, considering his father's willful sidelining of magic is one of their main points of contention.

We can tell him, I guess, but I doubt his security will have any resemblance to the current Tzar's regardless.

 

[Nerdasaurus Rex]

As far as I can tell, no one is arguing that Mathilde lacks the skill or ability to pull off the assassination. That is just a strawman argument people are using to detract from "hey, isn't it risky spending an entire hour in the Tzar's room casting a spell that has to be restarted each time we're interrupted?" That's it, that's the actual argument, and the only responses I'm seeing to that argument is "Mathilde won't get interrupted", "Mathilde can deal with the interruption without problem because she's super skilled, even though it means restarting the spell", "Mathilde won't get spotted because she's using an invisibility spell that has well defined limitations", and "well, we can always fall back to plan b of stabbing him and then running away from the guards, even though that fails objective 1: don't get spotted".

And none of those reasons are satisfactory to me.

 

[Somic]

During her graduation, she also tried her hand at emperor assassination, and it was rather concerning.

And that was not only before she got the Unseen trait, but also before she had advanced assassination (and I think before advanced infiltration as well).

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And it was during a drill, when the guards were especially alert and expecting an attack! In a state that takes the protection of its head more seriously than Kislev right now! (To be fair, it was also a very high roll, but rolls only ever result in things that are in the realm of possibility: it is an established fact that Mathilde was capable of this when she was capable of much less than she is now.)

 

[dinomannitro6]

"well, we can always fall back to plan b of stabbing him and then running away from the guards, even though that fails objective 1: don't get spotted".

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The thing is though, the actually objective 1 is: don't get spotted as Mathile Weber. Since we're doing this in disguise and have illusion magics, we can easily just make it look like a Lamian did the stabbing, which works pretty well for us.

 

[Fouredged Sword]

Between Windsage and Avatar, about the only magical defense Mathilde wouldn't be able to sense right off is Dwarven runes, which are explicitly invisible to her.

Or, at least, their function is- she could see the runes themselves.

Somehow I doubt he has those, however.


I assume he knows, considering his father's willful sidelining of magic is one of their main points of contention.

We can tell him, I guess, but I doubt his security will have any resemblance to the current Tzar's regardless.

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Knowing there IS a problem and having the expertise to FIX the problem are different things. If he had professionals of our caliber at his disposal he wouldn't be relying on us to give him the throne.