- Location
- Chicago
- Pronouns
- She/They
True. Not lying to ourselves is the first step to not becoming worse than the people we kill- best to avoid the classic vigilante to villain route.
Warhammer Fantasy: Divided Loyalties - an Advisor's Quest
- Thread starter Boney
- Start date
- Fantasy Users' Choice!
Voted best in category in the Users' Choice awards.
True. Not lying to ourselves is the first step to not becoming worse than the people we kill- best to avoid the classic vigilante to villain route.
NSMS
Probably evil, unfortunately.
- Location
- A rapidly widening tear in the fabric of reality
Honestly, by the sounds of it? Compared to a lot of real life rulers he was actually pretty good; 'let the local nobles handle things while I run around personally killing threats to the kingdom' is a huge step up from a lot of royalty who've existed in the real world. It's just inadequate in the face of a looming existential threat.
Something that would probably help with the (hypothetical) nightmares is the recognition that "kill someone in power because they're 'not doing enough' " is a tactic that only is beneficial when they have a known/certain successor who will do better. (And won't cause more trouble due to transfer-of-power chaos.)
That's... pretty rare.
That's... pretty rare.
- Location
- A Pit Of My Own Making
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Who is asking the other what their healthcare is like?
Yes, but within the framework of kings and empire the only justice a King can find is the one he deals himself, for the king is the ultimate judge and his word the ultimate justice.
The king who fails to deal himself justice will face a fate without justice.
- Location
- Greece
I hope his death was painless.
I am not actually sure if it would be. On one hand, shredding your heart sounds pretty bad, on the other, he was under two layers of "anesthesia" and the trajectory got a perfect 6 for being clean.
I am not actually sure if it would be. On one hand, shredding your heart sounds pretty bad, on the other, he was under two layers of "anesthesia" and the trajectory got a perfect 6 for being clean.
Or divine retribution, but the gods were sadly quite slow on the uptake here.
Tasoli
Life is for Living
- Location
- Behind the Keyboard.
You know we are thinking books for the boon but it just occured to me there is another boon we can ask for.
What if we ask Boris to accept Ranald as a god of Kislev? He already mentioned he is planning to reform the religions so adding a temple of Ranald to capital should be doable.
And there is something delicous about asking a son that come to throne with the help of ranaldine but more importantly one that was set to do Protectors work by rebelling against his father and rightfull ruler of the country on behalf of the downtrodden. IT is so thematic.
And well Ice Witches were offering forgiveness perhaps Ranald would be pleased and want to do it if first step of reaching out were to come from new Tzar rather than Ranald himself reaching out first.
In short it is actually fulfills a lot of points we want to do;
IT would please Ranald to have more temples and more believers,
It is good for prepearing against the new Everchosen as one more god would help Kislev.
Another connection between Mathilde and Kislev by shared god.
So on so forth. I think this is a good idea and nothing can go wrong with such request.
What if we ask Boris to accept Ranald as a god of Kislev? He already mentioned he is planning to reform the religions so adding a temple of Ranald to capital should be doable.
And there is something delicous about asking a son that come to throne with the help of ranaldine but more importantly one that was set to do Protectors work by rebelling against his father and rightfull ruler of the country on behalf of the downtrodden. IT is so thematic.
And well Ice Witches were offering forgiveness perhaps Ranald would be pleased and want to do it if first step of reaching out were to come from new Tzar rather than Ranald himself reaching out first.
In short it is actually fulfills a lot of points we want to do;
IT would please Ranald to have more temples and more believers,
It is good for prepearing against the new Everchosen as one more god would help Kislev.
Another connection between Mathilde and Kislev by shared god.
So on so forth. I think this is a good idea and nothing can go wrong with such request.
Parabola
Divided Loyalties Librarian
- Location
- The Destination of Fate
- Pronouns
- She/Her
I wonder how the Kislevite pantheon feels about kinslaying by proxy. It's possible they may be ruthless enough that they'd be fine with it as long as Boris dedicates his all to fighting Chaos.
...I suppose if we use the boon on BOOK we might find out quickly enough, depending on whether we also get Cult books.
...I suppose if we use the boon on BOOK we might find out quickly enough, depending on whether we also get Cult books.
We got locked into a trolly cart problem. One one track, a coup/civil war + weakened defense against an Everchosen. On the other, no civil war and a strengthened defense—but we had to personally kill the Tzar.
There's no "good" answer, just a less bad one.
There's no "good" answer, just a less bad one.
- Location
- Oklahoma
He was forcefully kept unconscious by magic for the entire process.
From his perspective, he just went to sleep and didn't wake up.
- Location
- Before the Ninth Gate
I don't think we are going to have nightmares about this. Quite bluntly, humans have gotten over murdering people though a collection of self justification and not-caringness. And we've literally been taught not to care by the Grey College. Add to that our inhumanness by literally stabbing our soul with Ulgu, and you get someone who's much more fine with killing than most would be. We've also had lead up to this: killing non-humans, then killing guilty humans in war, then killing guilty humans in cold blood, now killing incompetent humans in cold blood.
I loved the omake, it was great, but I don't think we'll actually have problems from this.
I loved the omake, it was great, but I don't think we'll actually have problems from this.
I mean, it's not like we are not in the same boat being a magister. We ether live up to service to the Empire or we die as too much a risk of chaos corruption. Not serving was never an option presented to us. Born with magic... Born in the line to rule a nation... These things are not that different.
She was indoctrinated into the Empire's secret police as a child. I think she would care as a general human reaction, after all she has such a reaction in the lead up to the murder, but not to the point where it would impede her job or general well being. Her training is designed to stop that and again, she got that starting at age eleven. Children are really easy to mold in all sorts of ways, including as @Abhorsen said self-justification and not-caringness.
- Location
- New Brunswick, NJ
- Pronouns
- He/Him/His
I disagree; executing the Mors breeders was worse than this, and Mathilde did not have onscreen trouble from that. Vladimir, at least, had moral culpability, even if his sins were of omission rather than commission. The Mors breeders were completely innocent civilian victims, first of their society, and then of us: we killed them because the support structure to keep them alive no longer existed, because we killed everyone who could do it. It was horrible, to be sure, the worst thing we've ever done, but we did not have lasting problems from that.
- Location
- Chicago
- Pronouns
- She/They
Right- but my worry is that she will start to kill too quickly and too easily. When you have a hammer everyone looks like a nail and all that. And the grey wizard training is (presumably) an aggravating factor in that.
Especially since she is in a place where the only thing holding her back is her own conscience.
There's a big difference, at least in my head, between mercy kills to minimize suffering and proactive murder to make future objectives easier.
Especially since she is in a place where the only thing holding her back is her own conscience.
There's a big difference, at least in my head, between mercy kills to minimize suffering and proactive murder to make future objectives easier.
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The circumstances under which we killed Vladimir were extraordinarily uncommon, from the heir who asked us outright, to the fact that we knew he was competent and well intention-ed, to the enormity of the danger we all faced and the scale of the reward that comes with royal gratitude. One can in fact kill without guilt without killing lightly. 'When you have a hammer everyone looks like a nail' is a stupid way to act given that all our greatest successes were predicated on diplomacy.
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imo the worst thing Mathilde has ever done was shrugging when Codrin Petrescu's told her that he's going to deliberately get men under his command killed. The breeders at least were going to die anyway, the only decision was whether it'll be by Mathilde's hand or by another, but Codrin Petrescu could've been stopped.
- Location
- Actually pretty lost
I honestly don't feel bad about killing Vlad at all. If he didn't want to damn a country's worth of people to Chaos, he could either do his incredibly-sought-after job or abdicate. Living a life of luxury paid for by the very people he was damning and just not bothering is a truly heinous act.
I'm sure his internal monologue paints him differently. Plenty of truly awful people have avoided thinking too hard about how terrible the thing they're doing is.
We have absolutely, categorically, paid for a much brighter tomorrow by giving Vlad a peaceful death today, instead of dying and seeing his kingdom fall to ruin a decade from now, even before considering Boris's civil war plans.
It's really not all that ambiguous.
I'm sure his internal monologue paints him differently. Plenty of truly awful people have avoided thinking too hard about how terrible the thing they're doing is.
We have absolutely, categorically, paid for a much brighter tomorrow by giving Vlad a peaceful death today, instead of dying and seeing his kingdom fall to ruin a decade from now, even before considering Boris's civil war plans.
It's really not all that ambiguous.
- Location
- Chicago
- Pronouns
- She/They
But we didn't really face any danger? I was the one banging on hardest about risk and I'm pretty sure even I never brought up any possible danger to Mathilde personally.
Or am I misreading that, and it's the enormity of the danger the next (still hypothetical) everchosen represents?
True, but feels kinda dirty killing a more-or-less innocent man because of the reward on offer.
I did really like the idea of asking for Ranald to be allowed into Kislev as the reward though...
Counterfactuals are always ambiguous, because we'll never know if the situation we were trying to avoid would have been avoided without our intervention anyways.
Stack enough 99% likely scenarios on top of eachother and the chance of the whole package actually happening approaches zero.
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Moving on from the matter of morality
As shown by the Bretonian books there is a limit to what books money can buy and that limit can be quite harsh, in terms of our ability to leverage the EIC to get books if they are in Kislev I do not doubt we can, but I suspect that much like with the book clan's ability to buy Bretonian we will not be getting any magical books and only limited religious books and that is some of the juiciest stuff from any body of works. I don't know if we would be limited to +2s otherwise, but I also do not think we would get up to esoteric otherwise either.
As shown by the Bretonian books there is a limit to what books money can buy and that limit can be quite harsh, in terms of our ability to leverage the EIC to get books if they are in Kislev I do not doubt we can, but I suspect that much like with the book clan's ability to buy Bretonian we will not be getting any magical books and only limited religious books and that is some of the juiciest stuff from any body of works. I don't know if we would be limited to +2s otherwise, but I also do not think we would get up to esoteric otherwise either.