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Warhammer Fantasy: Divided Loyalties - an Advisor's Quest

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All of you making elaborate plans are missing a really simple one.

(X) Plan Ghoul On A Stick

Go in there and drink his freaking blood to death. Try pinning THAT on someone besides a Lahmian.
 
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DragonParadox said:
Windsight cannot see though magical disguises, all they would see if Ulgu, which is a natural thing to see when faced with a casting vampire.
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Vampires are full of Dhar, and while they are capable of surpressing that part of them so they can't be detected instantly by any compentent mage with Windsight, they can't really do that while casting. It's not atypical to see a Vampire casting Ulgu, but a Vampire casting Ulgu without a hint of Dhar is somewhat suspicious. Dhar is a "get rich quick" scheme for adding power, and Vampires can use it with much less consequence than a human, so not using it is also somewhat suspicious.

That being said, it's irrelevant because it's extremely unlikely that someone with Windsight, especially someone experienced enough to recognise the specifics of Vampires, would come across the whole thing in the palace when Vlad hates mages.
 
DragonParadox said:
Interruption 1: It is Vasily the heroic martial captain of the Kreml Guard
First Clash: 1 vs 100: Grievous wound
Second Clash 1 vs 100: Mathilde is killed
Does the Seed work: 1 Mathilde's hand had been cut off in the struggle: Mathilde is dead and her memory is forever dishonored

Bad enough rolls can make anything worth rolling for fail, that is the point of the system.
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I just want to point out that it took two Nat 1's and three <10 results to kill Abel (plus Jovi Sunscryer who also rolled 1), and he was significantly more squishy than Mathilde both in terms of narrative and literally so in-universe.
 
Omegahugger said:
I just want to point out that it took two Nat 1's and three <10 results to kill Abel (plus Jovi Sunscryer who also rolled 1), and he was significantly more squishy than Mathilde both in terms of narrative and literally so in-universe.
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Yeah, but Abel died to goddamn skeletons. If a Grave Guard had been the one to fight him, I wager it would take one less Nat 1 to kill him. The circumstances surrounding the roll is also very important.
 
Codex said:
Yeah, but Abel died to goddamn skeletons. If a Grave Guard had been the one to fight him, I wager it would take one less Nat 1 to kill him. The circumstances surrounding the roll is also very important.
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The fight itself was over fairly quickly when the dwarfs arrived. What really killed Abelhelm was that everyone failed their healing relate roles.
 
Codex said:
Vampires are full of Dhar, and while they are capable of surpressing that part of them so they can't be detected instantly by any compentent mage with Windsight, they can't really do that while casting. It's not atypical to see a Vampire casting Ulgu, but a Vampire casting Ulgu without a hint of Dhar is somewhat suspicious. Dhar is a "get rich quick" scheme for adding power, and Vampires can use it with much less consequence than a human, so not using it is also somewhat suspicious.

That being said, it's irrelevant because it's extremely unlikely that someone with Windsight, especially someone experienced enough to recognise the specifics of Vampires, would come across the whole thing in the palace when Vlad hates mages.
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I do not think a vampire would randomly add Dhar to an Ulgu spell, Dhar makes spells more powerful, not it is not like all of them know the First Secret, Dhar would also make the spells unstable.
 
BurnNote said:
The fight itself was over fairly quickly when the dwarfs arrived. What really killed Abelhelm was that everyone failed their healing relate roles.
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Well yes, but I think it's credible that with the same abysmal combat rolls against Grave Guard instead of plain skeletons, there would've been fewer and/or harder healing rolls available after - so Codex's assessment still holds up.
 
I'm not sure this is a productive line of discussion. There's always something else to blame if you go far back enough.

We could blame Abelhelm's death on the army of Stirland's charge failing so miserably where his and Mathilde's succeeded - if it'd succeeded he'd never have been in the position for him to get so wounded in the first place. Or we could say that he simply didn't have any protective magical equipment - even if he was a witch hunter, he was also an Elector Count, and could have used at least some personal defenses to be less squishy against skeletons. Or we could blame it on how he never got used to the Runeblade - Boney once said he spent most of his career using his halberd, and this was reflected on his raw Martial being higher than his martial with the Runeblade; he might have still rolled a 1 but it might have mitigated the wound somewhat.

This is why I see Abelhelm's death as incredibly dramatic bad luck. He had a lot of chances to make it back to the realm of the living, but they failed. It really felt like Sylvania was straight up working against us to generate a tragedy. Everything that could have gone wrong, did. We can't linger on what we can't change.
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...To go back to Vasily the hypothetical Kreml Guard champion, I really doubt Mathilde wouldn't see him coming in the first place with her great Windsight, wouldn't put Alarm in front of the door in the first place to warn her of something she'd miss, wouldn't have time to hide mundanely or invisibly, wouldn't be able to go "uhh please dont tell anyone I'm having an affair with the Tzar" because she's dressed as a servant, or that she'd do so terribly that she'd be grievously wounded in one nat 1 and dead on the another.

It's far more likely that a nat 1 in that situation has the dude screaming so loudly the entire floor hears him and that it's impossible to salvage the situation as a quiet assassination, similar to how when we assassinated the Orc Warboss in Karagril we were suddenly in a really bad situation rather than immediately wounded and bleeding out.
 
Voting closed, writing has begun.

Adhoc vote count started by Boney on Sep 28, 2023 at 8:08 PM, finished with 1121 posts and 213 votes.
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You know... I don't think it can be understated how the hopeful new Tzar must be knowingly handing his ass to the emperor. He must know that we are loyal to the Empire, very likely to be willing to die for the Empire.

And if the Emperor ever wants to end the Tzar's reign all he needs to do is burn one gray magester and boom he can prove that the Tzar is a kinslayer, and he can say he honestly ordered none of it. He can just "uncover" the crimes of his subordinate and order us hung. He may even actually hang us rather than we just change our name and hairstyle.

The Emperor will have damned solid blackmail over the Tzar for at least a generation.
 
Fouredged Sword said:
You know... I don't think it can be understated how the hopeful new Tzar must be knowingly handing his ass to the emperor. He must know that we are loyal to the Empire, very likely to be willing to die for the Empire.

And if the Emperor ever wants to end the Tzar's reign all he needs to do is burn one gray magester and boom he can prove that the Tzar is a kinslayer, and he can say he honestly ordered none of it. He can just "uncover" the crimes of his subordinate and order us hung. He may even actually hang us rather than we just change our name and hairstyle.

The Emperor will have damned solid blackmail over the Tzar for at least a generation.
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I'd vote against telling the Grey College about this explicitly, much less the Emperor.

Boney said:
Voting closed, writing has begun.
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Now that the vote is closed... I will admit that I've come around a fair bit on Nighttime Heart Attack, specifically because the pivot in the case there are complications does seem pretty straightforward, and should still accomplish our goals.
 
DeadmanwalkingXI said:
This assumes we tell the Emperor. I'm not sure we do that, actually...this might be better as a plausible deniability thing even after the fact. It certainly gives Mathilde some very solid leverage, but I'm not sure it does exactly this.
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Yes, but we will know and we are loyal. Should the Tzar and Emperor ever come to loggerheads he must know we could hand the Emperor a lever to move the Tzar as much as he needs.

Therefore he must never come to true loggerheads with the Emperor.

So long as we live and that is over his head, and the risk we leave a confession is too high for him to kill us. We may give him his throne, but the Empire very much now has leverage over Kysliv even of we say nothing. That we could say something is enough.
 
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DeadmanwalkingXI said:
This assumes we tell the Emperor. I'm not sure we do that, actually...this might be better as a plausible deniability thing even after the fact. It certainly gives Mathilde some very solid leverage, but I'm not sure it does exactly this.
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We probably won't. But Boris can't actually know that. And if it came down to it and we thought it was necessary for the sake of the empire we would.
 
Eh, from the "your job is to ... take it to your grave" part of the notes under the penultimate update, I assume that even if we do ask Algard/Dragomas/Luitpold what the Grey College/Colleges/Empire wants, we won't just come out with "hey I killed Vladimir and now Boris owes me", we'll approach them with careful inquiries: since we have ties with Boris, and he respects us, and we'll have an easier time convincing him of things, what would benefit the [insert organization] most in relation to Kislev? And if somebody reads something into it, well, the deniability is still plausible.
 
Now I will go to sleep and pray to Ranald that we roll well. Best case scenario is a crit and Mathilde figuring out how to make a new spell from this combo or something.

Honestly if all goes well Boris should have all the justifications he could ever want to purge those vampires. Pity we likely won't be invited along due to being a foreign actor and because Boris wouldn't want to associate too closely with us so soon after his dad's assassination.
 
Fouredged Sword said:
Yes, but we will know and we are loyal. Should the Tzar and Emperor ever come to loggerheads he must know we could hand the Emperor a lever to move the Tzar as much as he needs.

Therefore he must never come to true loggerheads with the Emperor.

So long as we live and that is over his head, and the risk we leave a confession is too high for him to kill us. We may give him his throne, but the Empire very much now has leverage over Kysliv even of we say nothing. That we could say something is enough.
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But if Mathilde did for some reason tell the Emperor, and the Emperor tried to use the fact that he requested a hit on his father as leverage...

Boris could just say 'no I didn't'.

Like, even if Mathilde admits openly to doing it, knowingly accepting the consequences- she's still beholden to the Empire, which in this situation has terrible relations with Kislev, so she could just be lying to get one over on Kislev.

In order for that leverage to work as leverage, the people of Kislev would need to believe the Emperor over their own Tzar, when the Emperor has every reason to lie to defame him.

There's nothing special about the truth that makes it more believable than a lie.

(Ironically, with the Deceiver, Mathilde would have a better shot at convincing people she killed the Tzar if she didn't do it.)
 
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Fouredged Sword said:
Yes, but we will know and we are loyal. Should the Tzar and Emperor ever come to loggerheads he must know we could hand the Emperor a lever to move the Tzar as much as he needs.

Therefore he must never come to true loggerheads with the Emperor.

So long as we live and that is over his head, and the risk we leave a confession is too high for him to kill us. We may give him his throne, but the Empire very much now has leverage over Kysliv even of we say nothing. That we could say something is enough.
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Or he just denies it. A grey Lord Magister claiming she killed a Tzar is going to be the bold print, the accusation that his son ordered the hit is going to be massively disputed. I think trying to use this as leverage hurts the Empire much more than Boris.
 
Somic said:
Eh, from the "your job is to ... take it to your grave" part of the notes under the penultimate update, I assume that even if we do ask Algard/Dragomas/Luitpold what the Grey College/Colleges/Empire wants, we won't just come out with "hey I killed Vladimir and now Boris owes me", we'll approach them with careful inquiries: since we have ties with Boris, and he respects us, and we'll have an easier time convincing him of things, what would benefit the [insert organization] most in relation to Kislev? And if somebody reads something into it, well, the deniability is still plausible.
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"Oh, Boris is the Tzar now? Love that guy! Good man, that Boris. Let's see... do you want to hear the story of how I prevented a Daemonic invasion of Kislev and rescued a Dwarfhold at the same time? How about the time I totally saved his fiance's Master, their best Ice Witch, in the Chaos Wastes? There's also that time we fought an army of Wood Elf spirits together! Say, I hear that there's a lot of opportunity to be found in the north, if you hear what I'm saying, yeah?" :V
 
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