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Warhammer Fantasy: Divided Loyalties - an Advisor's Quest

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I will reiterate my plan of pushing to improve the EIC paramilitary navy. More river traffic from the Black Water canal opening (and this second one) means more wealth means more targets for people willing to risk being bandits.
 
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mathymancer said:
Personally I would hold off on inserting agents in Middenheim until the fog path is completed. Partly because our next EIC action should probably be used on helping make the fog path, but also because I expect the EIC's presence in Middenheim to increase by quite a bit as soon as a major trade route from it to Tor Lithanel is established, and then we'll probably be in a better position to establish our intelligene network there.
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The problem I have with this idea about middenheim is that we kinda want info about the state of the city before we suddenly introduce major economic changes.
It doesn't matter that the eic presence is small as long as it's there. So introducing a agent now would let us hopefully get an idea about the power blocks in the city.
 
Nerdasaurus Rex said:
Maybe have Eike and the Hochlander infiltrate Marienburg? Seeing as we hate them so much, it might be good to get some ears to the ground over there.
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Probably better to ask for a briefing from either the Grey College or the regular imperial intelligence services. We don't know what operations they're running there or whose toes we might step in, or what the opposition is like. This is particularly relevant as the Marienbergers have their own magical college, which very likely has had the benefit of elven teachers, alongside the mages of Sith Rionnasc'namishathir itself. On top of that, it's a centre for the Cult of Mannan, which may also help with security and counter-espionage in a city built on an archipelago of small islands.

I'd prefer that Eike gets a bit more practiced before going after something that has a fair chance of being pretty hostile territory.
 
I'd be up to sending Eike to Middleheim, though I would rather not specify 'just with the Hochlander'. After all the reason it costs a half action is that it also takes some time from Mathilde. I'd like to see a scene with the two of them doing intrigue together.
 
DragonParadox said:
I'd be up to sending Eike to Middleheim, though I would rather not specify 'just with the Hochlander'. After all the reason it costs a half action is that it also takes some time from Mathilde. I'd like to see a scene with the two of them doing intrigue together.
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If we can wrangle the thread to set up a spy ring in middenheim via an ap that be even better. Or maybe Nordland would be even better because the point was made that the eic hasn't reached there yet
 
Alratan said:
Looking at that quote, my way of interpreting this bit 'though on paper they'll retain their current title and they'll still manage enough regular work to keep up appearances'. Is that our agents can actually only be n places where they'd be doing regular work for the EIC. If we send agents into Nordland, those agents have to be doing the actual job of an EIC merchants at least part time so they can pretend to be one the rest of the time. That's much harder if there are no full time merchants in Norldand whose work they can leverage, as they would stand out if they're not part of an organisation that appears to be profit focused (and profitable over the medium term).
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I dunno, I'd say "member of a trade organization considering expansion looking for unrealized economic niches" is a fairly decent cover for a spy. Not a PERFECT cover, in that people will notice them sticking their noses places, but a cover with a ready-made excuse for WHY they're sticking their noses places.
 
Just looking at the canal option, here's the map of the Reik basin:



There's a tributary of the Urskoy that reaches a lot further north than the main channel.

Mopman43 said:
I feel like it being the center of the Cult of Handrich would be more relevant to the intrigue game.
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Relevant, but if priests of Mannan can do things like have supernatural insight into what happens on the sea and the shores, then that covers pretty much all of Marienberg. Depends on if they're limited to canon spells.

Handrich is an interesting one here. He has a spell to enforce a deal, but I'm not sure how good the god of honest businessmen is at counter-espionage. Information security to make it harder to learn trade secrets would be in theme, but actually catching spies? I'm not sure.
 
I do think people overestimate the average amount of skulduggery an EIC agent is getting involved in. They could go in with absolutely zero cover and still get pretty much exactly the level of information that we've ever gotten from the network.

Agents aren't breaking into manses, rifling through papers marked "TOP SECRET" and conducting moonlight duels with Jan Bondt. Or at least nothing we've ever received from the Hochlander has ever indicated that they're doing that. They're listening in on marketplace gossip, observing trends in what's being bought and sold, and chatting with locals of minor importance.
 
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Alratan said:
Handrich is an interesting one here. He has a spell to enforce a deal, but I'm not sure how good the god of honest businessmen is at counter-espionage. Information security to make it harder to learn trade secrets would be in theme, but actually catching spies? I'm not sure.
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The Cult of Handrich also has an entire deniable underbelly of operators and thieves in the Brothers of Handrich.

They play the intrigue game, is what I'm saying.
 
So yeah, good options for a intrigue action for eike to tag along
A) an EIC action to get an agent into Middenheim
B) a Mathilde Action to start a spy ring in salzenmünde.
 
I'd be fine with handing off our organisations and reclaiming the AP. I'd prefer to prioritise Vlag's books before we do so though, as the potential benefit of having the Fire Spire's magic books are immense to Mathilde specifically, and probably aren't going to be a priority for our successor.

I'd also like to spend a single EIC AP to get thousands of gold, before the now-exploring elves figure it out for themselves.
 
Gavin Prince said:
I do think people overestimate the average amount of skulduggery an EIC agent is getting involved in. They could go in with absolutely zero cover and still get pretty much exactly the level of information that we've ever gotten from the network.

Agents aren't breaking into manses, rifling through papers marked "TOP SECRET" and conducting moonlight duels with Jan Bondt. Or at least nothing we've ever received from the Hochlander has ever indicated that they're doing that. They're listening in on marketplace gossip, observing trends in what's being bought and sold, and chatting with locals of minor importance.
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I think it depends on what we ask of them. Mostly we used the EIC to get 'rumor mills', which you can achieve by listening in on market gossip etc. But one time we asked the EIC to infiltrate a Cult, which required the agents to, well, infiltrate a Cult.
Boney said:
Getting someone in wasn't easy, they tend to be the sorts that take decades to generations to warm up to newcomers, but one of the EIC's Talabeclander employees managed to get in.
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If we just ask our agents to keep an ear to the ground in Middenheim then sure, no super spying will take place. If we want to have a fly on the wall in the meetings of the Marienburg Directorate then that'll take a bit more effort.
 
Mopman43 said:
The Cult of Handrich also has an entire deniable underbelly of operators and thieves in the Brothers of Handrich.

They play the intrigue game, is what I'm saying.
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That's true (although not all Brothers are thieves or legbreakers), and there's also this:

One of the reasons that the Cult of Handrich seeks out talented individuals with a bent for magic is to expand their own fledgling school of arcane knowledge. The Brothers often serve as a test bed for ways to bend the rules in a way that Handrich finds pleasing. Knowingly or not, a few blessed Brothers are able to channel the power of their God to casts spells that shift fortune in their favour. High brothers are charged to keep an eye out for Brothers that seem luckier than average or who land deals that seem improbable, even impossible. The full Priests of the Cult usually watch these individuals with greater scrutiny and elevate them into the Inner Ring for additional training and insight into the mysteries of Handrich, sometimes without their consent. The Cult is particularly interested in magically talented Brothers with visions of prophecy—if the Cult can see into the future and get insight into how the winds of the market blow, they will make more money and further the Cult's agendas. Brothers with this gift often find themselves living life in a gilded cage: pampered and protected, but never allowed to leave the Cult—alive...​

From Shades of Empire. Interestingly they go straight from talking about arcane magic to channelling the power of their god. Unless it's just loose language, is the Cult of Handrich trying to reproduce something like the Damsels' of Liche Priests' hybrid of arcane and divine magic?
 
mathymancer said:
If we just ask our agents to keep an ear to the ground in Middenheim then sure, no super spying will take place. If we want to have a fly on the wall in the meetings of the Marienburg Directorate then that'll take a bit more effort.
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I'm pretty sure that considering the context of this discussion was sending Eike in as basic spycraft training, the former is what we're looking for rather than the latter. But apparently the Priests of Manaan make even low-level intelligence gathering too deadly a task if its in Marienburg.
 
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We could use an influx of gold if only because I expect that it can be used to get Titan metal. Most people would trade in titan metal for it's weight in gold.
 
mathymancer said:
I think it depends on what we ask of them. Mostly we used the EIC to get 'rumor mills', which you can achieve by listening in on market gossip etc. But one time we asked the EIC to infiltrate a Cult, which required the agents to, well, infiltrate a Cult.
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If you want to infiltrate a CULT cult, yes, but like when we were considering spying on the cult of ulric, that's not actually going to involve THAT much active infiltration of the cult of ulric, a lot of it is literally just going to be setting up business relationships with the cult, because the cult of ulric is a large organization with the supply demands of such, and there's a lot of room to pick things up during chat when you're supplying the priest whose job is to make sure there's enough high quality candles with the 3000 dollars worth of candles he needs.

Alratan said:
From Shades of Empire. Interestingly they go straight from talking about arcane magic to channelling the power of their god. Unless it's just loose language, is the Cult of Handrich trying to reproduce something like the Damsels' of Liche Priests' hybrid of arcane and divine magic?
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TBH that sounds less like there's a deliberate end goal and more like they don't 100% know what they're doing and some of them are ending up with arcane magic and some of them are ending up with divine magic. Which is something that down the line might get synthesized as those two subgroups continue to work together, but that's not the same thing as it being what they're specifically working towards.
 
K von Carstein said:
It is? I wonder why, because most cults aren't exactly Intrigue specialists.
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Well, they may be, given they police themselves for internal heresy and subversion from the Ruinous Powers or vampires seeking to subvert them from the inside, and they have to contend with rival cults, the nobility, and now the Colleges of Magic for social influence, temporal power, and simple survival, I'd expect any cult that's survived to the modern day to have a pretty top tier intrigue game simply on Darwinian grounds.

Effects on the scale of Ranald's Coin presumably aren't unprecedented when it comes to competition between the Cults, so presumably they have some way of managing social/espionage threats of that magnitude. If that's the kind of threat environment these institutions have survived and prospered in for thousands of years, they're presumably damn good at it.
 
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KingCrimson1081 said:
So once the AV research is done and the BÖÖK is published what is the next decades long research project Mathilde should embark on?
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Double down on Windherding, maybe. Pull in divine casters, other wind-users and Hedgewise to test the limits of what can be done with that.

Or we try our hand at learning Hedgecraft ourselves. We're a champion of Ranald with his favour and a divine artefact, which may be enough to convince the Ranaldite Hedgewise that we can be entrusted with a certain level of cult secrets. We'd never, ever be able to spread those out to the Grey College, but there's probably insights to be synthesised from learning the lore of a tradition that ancient.
 
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