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Warhammer Fantasy: Divided Loyalties - an Advisor's Quest

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Dice 1: Tzar's sleeping habits

....
Turning that 2 on a d6 into a 7.

Isn't Mathilde lovely? Helping him to be able to sleep better.
 
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storryeater said:
I read this as "How troublesome his sleeping habits are for an assasin".

So a 2 probably means he is very well guarded/paranoid... but not enough for Mathilde.
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Probably more "paranoid" (and/or just "restless/light sleeper/etc.") than "well-guarded" since there was a separate roll for how well-trafficked the room was, but basically yeah that's my read as well.
 
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Long Live the Tzar, Part 3
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    • [*] Plan: Nighttime Heart Attack
    -[*] Sneak into the Tzar's room, use mockery of death on him then implant him with a Matrix loaded with Shadow Dagger loaded. Set the matrix off immediately, so he dies in bed.

    Tally

    You spend some time tinkering with the idea of a nighttime visit with differing means of execution, wondering if a stab with a Shadow Dagger that would go through the Tzar's clothes would be a noticeable and believable enough indication of a magical assassin, and how that might be foiled if the Tzar slept without a nightshirt. Eventually you hit upon the idea of using one of your very first eponymous creations, Mathilde's Mystical Matrix, to store a spell within the Tzar to be triggered later. While it would been better for widespread usefulness if the way the Matrix would interact with Shadow Knives was by allowing the host to fire the spell in the direction of their choice, the way it actually works is that the spell is fired from the inside of their chest cavity, and that might actually be of significant use here. The shredding of the internal organs without any visible sign on the body's exterior is an undeniably mystical form of assassination, and one that an assassin might have hoped would have been taken for natural causes. The only potential problem is that setting up the Matrix within the Tzar will take about an hour of effort and unobstructed access to the Tzar, but it's a challenge you feel your skills are capable of overcoming without undue risk.

    You consider shadowing the Tzar for a time to memorize his schedule, but you end up deciding that the risk of being spotted while doing that is greater than the benefit it would bring you. Shroud of Invisibility lasts less than a minute, after all, and Substance of Shadow is ill-suited to the presumably well-illuminated hallways and rooms the Tzar would be moving through. So instead you wait until the early hours of the morning and slip into Bokha Palace through one of your scouted routes, making your way through the mostly quiet and mostly dark of the Palace at night. There are guards, of course, and servants going to and fro, but the former are helpless against intruders capable of becoming invisible for long enough to slip past them, and the latter give warning of their approach with the candles they carry.

    [Rolling...]

    The Tzar, despite being widowed, is not as alone in bed as your plans would have hoped. While that makes your task significantly more unnerving, it doesn't actually compound the difficulty in any meaningful way, as a Sleep to make sure they're asleep and a Mockery of Death to keep them that way are as effective upon the Tzar's paramour as it is on the man himself. You'd had an idea that you would be able to lie under the bed to perform the Matrix, but it turns out to be too low to the ground to make that practical, so you're forced to loom over him for the duration. Luckily the fire is far enough from the bed and burned down far enough that you'd not be immediately obvious if anyone entered, but it's still going to be a very tense duration.

    The work of forming a Matrix is, unfortunately, quite simple. Far too simple to keep your mind from wandering while you do it, and it does not need to wander far to get mired in some very discomfiting thoughts. The Tzar is, by all accounts, not a bad ruler, merely an inadequate one. By no means is death an entirely just punishment for his inadequacies. But, the more Ranaldian part of yourself chimes in, no man is entitled to a throne by birthright alone - he must earn it, year by year and day by day. If the Tzar has no desire to rule, he should have let someone else step in in the aftermath of Tzarina Kattarin and the questions surrounding Tsarevich Pavel, or have abdicated at some point in the years since. The powers he does not yield are powers that must be used to prepare Kislev for the next Everchosen. Compared to the ruin an unprepared Kislev would bring to the Old World, the death of a single man is an evil so lesser it barely registers. Or so you tell yourself.

    At long last, the Matrix is complete, and you suspend the Ulgu tracery of Shadow Knives within its web. You look down at the man and think a prayer that his soul arrives swiftly and unburdened in Morr's realm, and an apology to the other sleeper for what they'll find when they wake. Then you reach back into him and trigger the unravelling of the Matrix, releasing the spell within his chest. His inhalation stops, and his lungs empty with a soft sigh.

    You stand over him for a moment longer, then reabsorb the remaining Ulgu, release the other sleeper from Mockery of Death, and leave, eager to put your back to Kislev and this night's deeds.
     
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    • I first thought that the dice were D100, so that was interesting, with me seeing the rolls as "Well we didn't actually roll a one".

    Edit: Technically Weber'd in that the discussion is on die interpretation.
     
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    ...Here's hoping the next update isn't preceded by an exfiltration roll.

    Edit: Sidenote, I like how Boney continues his trend of not specifying the gender of certain characters' night companions.
     
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    So uh. Does this fulfill the contract of a seemingly magical death?

    Someone else was literally sleeping in his bed, and what, the knives literally came out from inside him thanks to the Matrix?
     
    This is a sad moment. We deal death to the corrupt to protect the innocent. But this... Corrupt? Well, this is why the Greys have ethics classes.
     
    This might be a stupid question, but couldn't we have triggered the matrix at essentially any other point later (to a point at least)?

    Mostly asking because I had originally thought we where putting the matrix on him to be triggered later during the day, rather than triggering the matrix immediately.
     
    Mathilde pulled that like a profesional.

    No witness, the ex-lover sleeping next to the body,
    No visible trace of anything weird outside, and a knife wound to a vital organ to discover with the autopsy,
    Last of all not even remains of Ulgu in the corpse.

    If this was a dish I kiss my fingertips, like an Italian cook.
     
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    Rockeye said:
    This is a sad moment. We deal death to the corrupt to protect the innocent. But this... Corrupt? Well, this is why the Greys have ethics classes.
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    Given the stakes incompetence is bad enough and this was incompetence in the face of Chaos. Thinking about what Chaos does to people, what it will inevitably do to people even with a competent Tsar, nevermind an incompetent one... well there is a reason why the vote to take this was a lopsided as it was.
     
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    DragonParadox said:
    Against who? We are an invisible assassin facing normal guards who have no reason to suspect anything is up.
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    Listen, this is just the paranoia talking. Mathilde has a history of bad exfiltration attempts.

    Darik29 said:
    So uh. Does this fulfill the contract of a seemingly magical death?

    Someone else was literally sleeping in his bed, and what, the knives literally came out from inside him thanks to the Matrix?
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    It fulfills all the prerequisites. It's a crime without visible evidence, impossible to do via mundane methods, seemingly done via natural causes at first glance, and upon closer examination by Boris will reveal that it is in fact very much unnatural.
     
    DevilsAdvocate said:
    This might be a stupid question, but couldn't we have triggered the matrix at essentially any other point later (to a point at least)?

    Mostly asking because I had originally thought we where putting the matrix on him to be triggered later during the day, rather than triggering the matrix immediately.
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    It was triggered now so that we could reabsorb the magical traces. Otherwise a mage might have been able to deduce the spells used (i.e. the rather unique MMM).
     
    Interesting to see Mathilde's justifications for assassinating the Tsar. Not really a surprise that Ranald is in there, of course, but still interesting.

    Also, carefully avoided gendering the paramour. Possibly interesting?
    Boney said:
    While it would been better for widespread usefulness if the Matrix would interact with Shadow Knives was by allowing the host to fire the spell in the direction of their choice,
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    This seems... awkwardly put. "If the Matrix interacted with Shadow Knives by", perhaps?
    Boney said:
    as your plans would have hoped
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    Feels a bit off to me, at least, in that it personifies the plans. "As you hoped when planning" isn't great, but it might be better? Or there might just be something I'm not thinking of.
    Boney said:
    is as effective
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    Are as effective, I think — that's two spells, at least. Alternatively, "the combination of a Sleep..." could work.

    DevilsAdvocate said:
    Mostly asking because I had originally thought we where putting the matrix on him to be triggered later during the day, rather than triggering the matrix immediately.
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    This was Plan: Spontaneous Heart Attack, while we went with Plan: Nighttime Heart Attack. For me, ah least, it seemed like it would better fit the "as quietly as possible" request, plus it does mean less chance for someone random to happen to have windsense and notice the Matrix.
     
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    DevilsAdvocate said:
    This might be a stupid question, but couldn't we have triggered the matrix at essentially any other point later (to a point at least)?

    Mostly asking because I had originally thought we where putting the matrix on him to be triggered later during the day, rather than triggering the matrix immediately.
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    We didn't just want him to die somewhere random, we wanted to make it look like a Lamian assasinated him. Including that they wouldn't want his assassination to be obvious.
     
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    Parabola said:
    ...Here's hoping the next update isn't preceded by an exfiltration roll.
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    She gets out without trouble, the next update will resume with the remainder of her tasks for the month. It was more narratively wossname to end the update there.

    Darik29 said:
    So uh. Does this fulfill the contract of a seemingly magical death?
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    With a Tsarevich that knows to call for an autopsy, yes. His heart got shredded within his chest.

    DevilsAdvocate said:
    This might be a stupid question, but couldn't we have triggered the matrix at essentially any other point later (to a point at least)?

    Mostly asking because I had originally thought we where putting the matrix on him to be triggered later during the day, rather than triggering the matrix immediately.
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    That was 'Plan: Spontaneous Heart Attack'. The winning vote specified immediately.

    UDwarf said:
    Feels a bit off to me, at least, in that it personifies the plans. "As you hoped when planning" isn't great, but it might be better? Or there might just be something I'm not thinking of.
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    Mathilde is keeping the deeds at arm's length by attributing the hopes to the plans instead of herself.
     
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