... True, hadn't even thought about that! Cool new way to use the thing but as you said, not really applicable to elfcation.
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Warhammer Fantasy: Divided Loyalties - an Advisor's Quest
- Thread starter Boney
- Start date
- Fantasy Users' Choice!
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- Tags
- warhammer warhammer fantasy fantasy be gay do crimes (gay) female protagonist pansexual protagonist ck2 quest divided loyalties mountain vietnam ranald is real this is a dwarf quest (dwarfs) this is maybe an elf quest this is not a vampire quest this is not an empire quest try it and find out open voting
Voted best in category in the Users' Choice awards.
When we took the exam Mathilde had met the Zhufbar dwarves, and scribed Asarnil's memoirs, but hadn't really spent any time living in a non imperial culture. It was a low point in fondness for the Empire though, between Abelheim's death souring her on Sigmar, the failure to convert the Stirland Watch to Ranald, and Roswita firing her because she was a wizard.
The protector has two effects: telling people you protected them, and convincing them it was done selflessly. The first effect is, in fact, very useful when you are doing sabotage and assassinations and whatnot because not everyone will necessarily see what Mathilde actually did. You know how Mathilde has a tendency to sneak into enemy camps and kill leaders? If Mathilde pulls that sort of thing off without the Protector the Shadow Warriors may or may not believe that her contributions are as big as she claims once the dust settles, if the Protector is on that's not a problem.
The second effect is always useful when you're protecting people. It is not at all the case that people Mathilde protects will invariably believe she did so selflessly. They may very reasonably believe that she did it in hopes of a reward, since she has no personal connection to their fight and the whole thing was explicitly sold to her as a chance to learn from them. Convincing the Shadow Warriors that Mathilde is a fellow traveler and not a human opportunist hoping to learn from the superior elves could be hard to impossible without the Protector, but will be trivial with it.
Eh, we are sneaky but I'd think the extra sneaky murder elf's with the a history of using ulgu, can probably keep up with mathy. So them not believing we killed someone seems weird.
As for the selfless thing? Well we still can do that without the protector. Saving an elf that we are working with will still mean that elf thinks we saved him.
But your somewhat right, the protector does all these things, I just don't think it's better then the gambler in a situation where we are absolutely expected to fight druchii in some form. They are dangerous and I'd rather have mathy intact and without trauma from being knitted back together from the seed then having impressed some elf's we will almost certainly never see again.
- Location
- Somewhere between the stars
- Pronouns
- She/Her
While there is a difference between the big names, i do think Mathilde has reached a point where she is effectively a "Hero" unit in terms of what she can do. She could probaly make a not-so insignificant help to the Shadow Warriors. Even if people have millenium of an advantage upon you, we've seen that younger ones can and will out-compete them.
Not to say that we should run screaming for the hills with Blade in hand, but i don't think we'll find ourself constantly out-competed on the battlefields of the Northren Asurs.
Not to say that we should run screaming for the hills with Blade in hand, but i don't think we'll find ourself constantly out-competed on the battlefields of the Northren Asurs.
Oh no, I don't think they will overshadow us. But I rather doubt they are so incompetent they won't notice someone who sneaks good. Which was the point I tried to make. There are probably elves who can teach us a thing or two (even without being elith(?) anar) about stealth.
This assumes that Mathilde will literally never split up from the other Shadow Warriors. Do you think Mathilde will never, in 3 months in Nagarythe, go on solo missions? Not once? Or do you think the Shadow Warriors will always send someone to shadow Mathilde?
This literally does not address the point at all. "Think we saved him" and "think we saved him selflessly" are not the same thing. You are for some reason assuming that the first gives us the second, and it generally doesn't, at least not without the coin.
The Gambler is very powerful on actions that require a few rolls, but much less effective on something like Elfcation. Two +20 modifiers is awesome on a research or enchanting action, but 3 AP worth of fights will no doubt include much more than two rolls. If you would rather invest in Mathilde's effectiveness than in Mathilde's ability to capitalize on her contributions you might be better off with The Night Prowler, which might allow Mathilde to sneak through Druchii bases (though I don't know if I'm willing to bet that they'll count as towns or cities).
- Location
- Denial
- Pronouns
- She/Her
A long term combat heavy mini adventure like this feels like the worst possible place to use the gambler. Ultimately Boney has to make a decision of where the gamblers bonus is applied and for something like this it's impossible for him to look ahead to multiple updates in the future and see what is likely to be happening.
It's very possible the gambler gets spent on something early on only for Mathilde to get shishkabobed later with it not available. Alternatively if Boney keeps saving it to prevent catastrophic failure it could just never get used and end up thrown on some low impact stuff in the final update.
If we split up from the shadow warriors we will probably not be saving them won't we? And thinking every solo mission will be a opportunity to use the protector comes back to hoping a black ark lands so that we can be a hero.
For your second point, what difference does it make? We still have saved someone from something. Do they need to absolutely know we did it selflessly for them to be thankful?
As for the gambler being somewhat suboptimal I will address that together with the other quote.
The gambler is not the best choice, I agree there but I still think it's absolutely a better choice then the protector because the protector is so absolutely situational and without having a kingdom sized threat to defeat won't help us pretty much at all.
Yes boney would need to make a choice for those two +20 but he has done so before when we put the coin on weird things, it might not be easy to decide but I'm perfectly confident he won't screw us over.
- Location
- New Brunswick, NJ
- Pronouns
- He/Him/His
What? That's nonsense. The Protector is most dramatic in that instance, sure, but that doesn't make it useless. For example, during the reclamation of Karagril, we got Dwarf Favour for killing warbosses... but since we did it in private, we only got Favour for the one we killed in public.
The value of the Protector is making sure that we get maximum credit for every useful thing we do regardless of circumstances like "was anyone around to watch and clap" or "do the trust our motives". This is extremely useful for a situation where we have a short amount of time to impress people if we want to get maximum access to their shinies (like "Ulgu tricks from a non-Hoethian tradition").
We didn't know, going into Dum, that we were going to rescue an entire polity. And if we had known, we would have guessed wrong about which polity. We had the Protector then so that we would get maximum credit for what we did, which we assumed would be "killing random encounters along the way and then daemons or chaos warriors at the end." We just lucked out. That doesn't mean that "rescuing entire polities" is the standard use case of the Protector.
chocolote12
A Penguin Flailing Against The Keyboard Of Life.
The Protector maximizes our reputation gains. In Elfland, where reputation with the people we interact with is the only thing we're getting, that's sort of a big deal.
We got in on reputation, and if we come back it'll be on reputation, and the whole time there reputation will be the only thing we've got to work with that isn't some war camp supply material.
The Gambler lets us try to do a specific thing somewhat better. It's nice. However, it doesn't change what is possible. We have spent real life years prepping to do things better on our own, so taking the option that changes what is possible is better for us.
We got in on reputation, and if we come back it'll be on reputation, and the whole time there reputation will be the only thing we've got to work with that isn't some war camp supply material.
The Gambler lets us try to do a specific thing somewhat better. It's nice. However, it doesn't change what is possible. We have spent real life years prepping to do things better on our own, so taking the option that changes what is possible is better for us.
I just like the image of Ranald going up to a bunch of random people and going "hey, did you hear what Mathilde did? Wait, what do you mean who? She's only the greatest bloody hero in all the Empire! Here, let me tell you all about it..."
Tasoli
Life is for Living
- Location
- Behind the Keyboard.
You know there is an interesting thought about the rewards we are going to get from the Elfcation, we think we won't get a lot of influence in the Ulthan (which I think is questionable but won't argue) but instead we might end up with more influence inthe Empire court.
I mean the current Ulthan ambassador is from Naggerythe so if we do good enough he might end up as and ally in the Empire politics and in case Ulthan Ambassador changes getting introduced as a friend and ally of Naggerythe to the next ambassador would mean we are always with an easy access to Ulthan Embassy so that would get us quite a bit traction if we are minded to leverage that.
I mean the current Ulthan ambassador is from Naggerythe so if we do good enough he might end up as and ally in the Empire politics and in case Ulthan Ambassador changes getting introduced as a friend and ally of Naggerythe to the next ambassador would mean we are always with an easy access to Ulthan Embassy so that would get us quite a bit traction if we are minded to leverage that.
But it doesn't change what is possible. The protector does not make something from nothing it just tells people what we already have done and puts it in the best light.
We still need to actually save people for it do anything and if it's not one and we save someone that person is still saved and more likely then not knows it's saved.
On the matter of how much Nagarythe's gratitude is worth I think something needs to be said here...
Remember that Bilbo Shirt that we could still technically vote for? One that is worth the equivalent of Tens of Thousands of Gold Pieces, enough to warp the economy of an imperial province for years. The Nagarythans have those too, probably more than Laurelorn does in fact, just because they are part of Ulthuan and Ulthuan can still make them. Post Apocalyptic Wasteland that it is the Kingdom of Nagarythe is probably worth more in ancient treasures than the entire cash economy of the Empire of Sigmar. That is one of the reasons why it is so valuable to have them indebted to us... you know in addition to the Ulgu and stealth lore.
chocolote12
A Penguin Flailing Against The Keyboard Of Life.
It convinces them that we saved them selflessly. The 'they' in question are the closest we're getting to good guy Dark Elves. Getting them to look at our deeds and have an automatically good opinion of us, as opposed to a good opinion of bad things happening to the people they hate, is practically impossible.
People do not just become automatically grateful at the drop of a hate (pun intended), even if you do things that they would like. People suspect forced politeness or profit motives. People shrug things off by assuming that it was duty, or an accident, or that it wasn't really a big deal in the first place and they could have gotten themselves out of that mess.
Having Ranald poke them lets them know that they really were in that situation, and that we really did do whatever specific thing to save them, and convinces them that we did it because we were a good person. It's a red hot butter knife that can even cut through an ancient legally-not-Dark elf's jaded worldview.
If we weren't also actually a mostly good person who really did do whatever we did mostly selflessly it would probably also count as a horrible tool of mind control.
- Location
- Oklahoma
I highly doubt that they'd give us any reward that would make them less able to keep fighting the Druchii.
I also think it's important to remember that these are people who think that killing Druchii is it's own reward, so I wouldn't expect much in general.
Even if that is the case they do understand that other people do not fight Druchi for fun. Also those Druchi have the same elven loot one can claim off their corpses if you kill one that's high status enough. Unlike Chaos or vampires with their Dhar leaking garbage Druchi loot is generally worth taking, but whether we are allowed to claim it may well depend on how much our fellow sneaks like Mathilde.
You really think they will go "you saved my life! What ulterior motives do you have!"
Like, that's what you think they will do. And hey, maybe they will! But then I doubt that just Ranald telling them will change the equation. Because the coin does not enforce gratefulness it only communicates the "being saved selflessly" part.
- Location
- California, USA
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Relevant quote:
Parabola
Divided Loyalties Librarian
- Location
- The Destination of Fate
- Pronouns
- She/Her
I actually think it'd be very applicable to establish an alternate persona when going around killing Druchii, who are known for the lengths they'd go to for vengeance.
...Also it'd be the right kind of funny to see Mathilde come up with an appropriate Eltharin name, like she was a weeb coming up with an Elfsona. I actually came up with one in an omake, Issariour.
It could also mean that Mathilde is good at using magic for trickery, or that she's using her normal trickery for evil deeds. The moon is also quite silver, which could add to Mathilde's repertoire of titles that are silverish - the Silver Savage and Azrildrekked.
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chocolote12
A Penguin Flailing Against The Keyboard Of Life.
They can pay us in ways to kill Druchii better, a method of payment which incidentally we would also prefer.
I think it is likely that Mathilde will get to keep loot from the Druchii. I don't agree that it is likely that Nagarythe will give us anything for what we do, other than the training. The reward here is the training in how to kill Druchii. The ambassador knows that Mathilde will return home to the Empire and tell the Colleges how to better kill Druchii. For us to get anything more than that would require coming across important Druchii, which I don't think will happen. Boney has described how the ambassador sees the trip and it is obvious that they view the trip and training itself as the reward.
Sinsystems
Patron Librarian
I think there is a simple job we can give Eike in Lothern: Make friends.
Seriously just give her the task of building as many contacts as she can with the various merchants, elves and the like. The more contacts that she has the better as it gives her more resources to draw upon or potential patrons during her journeying phase.
Hell just imagine a situation where Eike is just randomly friends with a bunch of powerful people.
Seriously just give her the task of building as many contacts as she can with the various merchants, elves and the like. The more contacts that she has the better as it gives her more resources to draw upon or potential patrons during her journeying phase.
Hell just imagine a situation where Eike is just randomly friends with a bunch of powerful people.