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Warhammer Fantasy: Divided Loyalties - an Advisor's Quest

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Well things do not look like they are about to explode, that is kind of all we needed to know. We do not have the time to spare playing kingmaker, nor would we be a good fit for it. In a vacuum Mathilde's sympathies would probably be with the Norlanders since they are the anti-hierarchical ones who are looking for more religious freedom in things like female priests. But Norland is also the faction of let's kill those foul elves who are probably lying about serving our god and also cut down the forest for glorious Ulric-profit. So it is a wash unless the Norlanders actually look like they might be winning and risk compromising the goals of the project... in which case some of those reformers might not wake up the next day.

Those Lahmian assassins really do get around. ;)
 
Christ. I mean, and it's not like it's easy to pick a "deserving" winner, the guy who "deserves" to win based on righteousness... ... or based on grievance.

This is inextricably tied into history, and also political power-gathering and power-jockeying... on both sides. ((And that's if you were to ignore the "And also, this is highly religious" angle too. And ignore that "Also, Gods are pretty active here" factor too.)) And it's not like "people like to compete with each other, people like to advance themselves, and one of the ways to compete can be to pick a deserving target... but other ways to compete can be to try to out-compete or out-perform somebody else, or take from somebody else" is abnormal; it's the normal state of affairs! You can't stop that, any more than you can try to get people to stop being enthusiastic, or spirited, or ambitious, or pissed off about grudges, or a bunch of other motivations.

And then there's the fact that a ton of Nordlanders and Middenlanders, and a ton of Ulricans, are... just a bunch of people. Who believe in their Elector Counts, and believe in their religious leaders, and believe their religion, and also hold their bloodlines and history to be important. And who might feel slighted or might feel bold or jingoistic or who knows. Even aside from the people at the top who might be planning things, there are also people at the bottom who just... exist. And who probably feel strongly about everything. And who might be clamoring for some of this, too.

Somehow, some way, people will want to have it out and to settle things until they come to a status quo that they will agree with or will find acceptable. Who knows what that's going to look like. Or what it's going to take.

We can do some stuff to mess with that, but... I dunno if we even should, even if we were able to identify what outcome we 'wanted' to go for and then were able to identify 'how to get there?' too. We're working with Laurelorn, and working on Waystones, and we've got our own hands full with our stuff too.

God, I hope Chaos Cultists or Sigmarites don't throw any hand grenades into this mess too. It's not like Sigmarites would be entirely political actors if they were to do this, either. "Maintaining or trying to maintain peace and justice!" might even be a true and valid motivation for somebody who had been watching all this and wincing and going 'The Empire really does not need this right now...' And they might be working under unclear and uncertain knowledge, or being provoked or motivated by outside factors or outside meddlers too.

We've barely gotten a handle on Laurelorn's politics, or Laurelorn's politicking or outreach to the Druchii, either. And all those are directly(ish) relevant to us, given our work with Laurelorn.
 
Boney said:
Most of the Order do so by building and stocking monasteries in the coldest and most remote parts of the continent, but an extremist portion do so by burning silos and storehouses to the ground in winter as sacrifices to Ulric, and to force people to learn to survive frozen privation.
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They what

A troublesome situation all around, and I'll add to the sentiment that I'd side with those who want to open the gates and keep on a level if they weren't in Nordland, but this fragment stuck with me. Holy crap it's outright sabotage in the name of religion, really helps understand how badly the Empire is challenged on all fronts when things like this are just a footnote rather than a huge cause for alarm.
 
Somic said:
They what
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This is normal. Every cult has an incredibly extremist downright heretical faction that everyone within the faction hates.

What stupefies me is that until this moment, word from Boney has been more along the lines that these extremists (in general, not just the Ulrican sect) are mostly seen as total idiots and shunned. That we now find out that these ones appear to have a large degree of influence on the church as whole is extremely concerning... But still not really our problem.
 
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I found this update interesting, I love worldbuilding after all. But I can sort of understand why someone wouldn't be fond of the delivery method being entirely reading off a summary of historical events. Not that I'm criticisng Boney in any way, that is literally what the thread voted for. Mathilde considered doing her usual method of bothering people until they told her, which would have been a more interactive method more fitting of a social turn, but she had to reluctantly shelve that because of how sensitive the situation is.

Anyways, my thanks to @Boney for the update. I appreciate anything and everything you put out.
 
pucflek said:
This is normal. Every cult has an incredibly extremist downright heretical faction that everyone within the faction hates.

What stupefies me is that until this moment, word from Boney has been more along the lines that these extremists (in general, not just the Ulrican sect) are mostly seen as total idiots and shunned. That we now find out that they appear to have a large degree of influence is extremely concerning... But still not really our problem.
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The ones that build stockpiles are the ones with influence, not the ones that burn silos. The stockpile dudes are benign, just Ulricans with a weird quirk.
 
Andres said:
The ones that build stockpiles are the ones with influence, not the ones that burn silos. The stockpile dudes are benign, just Ulricans with a weird quirk.
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That makes lot more sense, the delienation between the two was just not very clear in the text itself. It goes smoothly from describing the extremist to describing the influence of the sect at large, so my reading comprehension stumbled there.
 
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So my overall take away from this is that the largest branches are in a stalemate, unable to muster the sufficient influence, power, or threats to force the other side to submit. However, there are tons of minor factions—including some unpleasantly extremist ones—who can weigh in and tip the scales one way or the other.

Hopefully this will settle into a peaceful "Grand Council of Ulric" that pulls all of the factions together, but external pressure from, say, the Sigmarites or Chaos, could cause those leaders to draw in those extremist elements.

In which case, someone should probably act to rebalance the scales. Maybe even us.
 
Somic said:
They what

A troublesome situation all around, and I'll add to the sentiment that I'd side with those who want to open the gates and keep on a level if they weren't in Nordland, but this fragment stuck with me. Holy crap it's outright sabotage in the name of religion, really helps understand how badly the Empire is challenged on all fronts when things like this are just a footnote rather than a huge cause for alarm.
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Warhammer Fantasy isn't nearly as grimdark as Warhammer 40K, but the writers for Warhammer Fantasy still have a habit of putting very long lists of small grimdark things in almost every part of the setting at weirdly high density. Tome of Salvation lists multiple horrible fanatic sects associated with every major God, and one might wonder how these all fit in the same empire if they're "sects" of any notable size, rather than "five assholes with a banner". Some examples:

For Manann, there's the Holders of the Shore, who think the sea is sacred to Manann, and humans shouldn't go on it, so they express their fanaticism by burning boats and destroying ports.
Morr has a sect of violent fanatics who think Shallyans are evil for healing people who were "supposed" to die, so they murder Shallyans.
Ranald has a sect of sadist fanatics who pick a wealthy or prominent person, then slander (to the point of "make up Chaos connections"), cheat, impersonate, defraud, and finally murder that person.
Shallya has a sect of masochist fanatics who think it's wrong to help anyone else before having maximally suffered themselves.
Sigmar has a sect of monotheist fanatics who believe all the other gods are dead, fake, or Chaos in a mask.
 
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Mathilde wasnt kidding, that grey order intelligence apparatus can give a breadth of information.

I can appreciate that people would prefer more character interactions in their social turns, but i for one love the opportunity to just get a hefty whack of knowledge about something. And i felt like the writing here did manage to avoid the dry feeling some wiki pages and history textbooks get when going into detail

Learning about all the different subsects of the ulrican faith has really fleshed them out in my eyes. Relgion is complicated especially in this setting, and knowing more than just 'middenland and nordland have some rather serious disagreements' is satisfying
 
My reading is that it's almost entirely diplo, and not the external kind we have a lot of experience with, but a murky mess of the kind that we've typically stayed out of. It's certainly good to be appraised on it so that we aren't caught unawares if or when it escalates, but it's not in our wheelhouse enough to justify fitting into our tight schedule, when there are things we're actually in a unique position to do.

Not that we can't interfere, but that it's entirely an internal Empire religious/political mess, and even our info comes pre-gathered from the Grey Order, so there's a lot of people who can interfere and not a lot who could do our other jobs if we get distracted on this.
 
They are Ulricans. Shouldn't they solve this by a bareknuckle cage match between the Ar-Ulric and whoever the most Nordlanders accept as the leader?

I am not even sure is this needs a :V tbh.
 
I have a SOLUTION. Hubert needs to form his own splinter sect that preaches that Ulricans have actually been worshipping Azyr all along, and that he will lightning-fisticuffs anyone who disagrees.

Surely this will solve everything.
 
Somic said:
My reading is that it's almost entirely diplo, and not the external kind we have a lot of experience with, but a murky mess of the kind that we've typically stayed out of. It's certainly good to be appraised on it so that we aren't caught unawares if or when it escalates, but it's not in our wheelhouse enough to justify fitting into our tight schedule, when there are things we're actually in a unique position to do.

Not that we can't interfere, but that it's entirely an internal Empire religious/political mess, and even our info comes pre-gathered from the Grey Order, so there's a lot of people who can interfere and not a lot who could do our other jobs if we get distracted on this.
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Yeah for better or worse Mathildes way of dealing with this complicated and ambiguous mess throughout the Empire has been to ignore it and focus on weakening the multiple flavors of omnicidal factions out there (Chaos, Skaven etc)

I'd think the only group she wouldn't have to build a relationship with from ground up is Ulrikadrin and I'd at least feel a little bad about having them wade back into politics when they last claimed to want out
 
It occurs to me that the theology of the schismatics probably aligns better with Laurelorn and how they relate to their gods as well- particularly since both the restriction on gender and the vow of chastity were political restrictions on the Cult of Ulric.
 
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